Bra boss Mone is sued over race row
Tory peer accused of ‘waste of a white man’s skin’ insult
TORY peer and bra tycoon Baroness Mone is facing the prospect of a High Court defamation battle after she was accused of branding a man of Indian heritage a ‘waste of a man’s white skin’.
Businessman Richard LyntonJones has lodged legal papers demanding damages of at least £200,000 over a dispute stemming from a boating accident in the South of France.
Baroness Mone, 50, who founded bra firm Ultimo and was given a peerage in 2015, is also accused of calling Mr Lynton-Jones’s then partner ‘a mental loony’ and ‘nut case bird’.
She has previously insisted she did not know that Mr Lynton-Jones ‘was anything other than white British’ on the grounds that his appearance is ‘100 per cent white, with a cut-glass English accent’.
But his lawyers say he ‘discussed his heritage with the defendant [Baroness Mone] and her husband Mr [Douglas] Barrowman on various occasions previously’.
They say Baroness Mone had even touched metal plates in Mr LyntonJones’s face, which he had explained were part of medical treatment following a racist attack in Spain.
The row is said to stem from a fatal boat crash off Monaco in May 2019.
The text argument between Baroness Mone and Mr Lynton-Jones allegedly began after she queried whether his partner had been psychologically affected by the incident, given she had been partying ‘only a few days after’.
The slanging match is said to have escalated when Mr Lynton-Jones told Baroness Mone to ‘back the f*** off’ before she allegedly called his girlfriend a ‘mental loony’ and wrote: ‘Your [sic] a low life, a waste of a mans [sic] white skin so don’t give us your lies. Your [sic] a total disgrace.’
In his High Court filing, Mr LyntonJones says Baroness Mone’s behaviour, including publishing a statement on Instagram in which she denied the claims, ‘caused serious harm to the claimant’s personal and professional reputation’.
He is said to want an injunction to stop her from repeating the comments as well as damages of at least £200,000 plus his costs.
Baroness Mone’s representatives, who were contacted for comment yesterday, have previously said she is ‘100 per cent not a racist’.
The rebuttal said it was ‘as illogical as it is inconceivable that she could or would have made such a comment or made it with the slightest racist intent’.
Baroness Mone is also the subject of an allegation of a racially aggravated malicious communication over the row, which is being investigated by the Metropolitan Police.
‘Cut-glass English accent’