FOR the past 43 years the Weston family of Stoke-on-Trent have been in and out of court arguing over a legacy. They should have known better.

What must be one of Britain’s longest running legal battles ended in the Court of Appeal yesterday with a judgment that means, in effect, that most of the £480,000 the clan were fighting over will disappear into the pockets of lawyers.

It was headed for the lawyers’ pockets anyway. The ruling by three appeal judges simply means that the money will get there by a less direct route.

The case was, as Lord Justice Ward observed in his ruling, a scenario straight from Dickens, who satirised the 19th Century English legal system in Bleak House with the famous case of Jarndyce and Jarndyce. That case went on so long that the legacy in dispute was entirely swallowed up by m’learned friends’ fees.

The Westons first went to court over who should inherit the family signwriting business in 1963. Since then all but one of the original litigants have died, as have many of their children. Even the judge who heard the original case is no more. “I fear I will be turning up my toes myself before this dispute is settled,” Lord Justice Ward said yesterday.

Three judges allowed an appeal by Glyn Weston, the only surviving original litigant, that the £480,000 lodged with the court as being the approximate current value of the signwriting business should be distributed among various members of the Weston clan in accordance with a court ruling of 1984, and that it should not be used to cover the hefty legal costs.

The ruling, although welcomed by Mr Weston, is likely to be a pyrrhic victory, as legal costs are estimated to total more or less what the signwriting business is worth. The judge ruled that all the clan members in the litigation should pay their own legal bills. “This brings to an end 43 years of litigation. The costs will lie where they fall,” the judge said.

Robert Weston founded his signwriting business in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, in 1896. On his death it passed to his three sons, Fred, Robert and Charles. When Fred and Charles died the seeds were sown for a family feud.

Fred’s widow, Ellen, and his son, Glyn, occupied the blue corner. In the red corner were Charles’s widow, Gladys, and the surviving sibling, Robert.

In 1984, when the business was valued at about £53,000, a court appeared to resolve the issue, awarding 40 per cent of the business to Ellen and Glyn, 34 per cent to Gladys, and 25 per cent to Robert. It helped to resolve the fact that the two warring branches were each running their own signwriting business in Stoke, both trading under the name Weston’s.

Ellen, Gladys and Robert are all long dead, but the dispute carried on for 20 more years, with each succeeding generation of Westons pitching into the fray. At least nine family members have been involved in the litigation over the years.

John Gregrory, appearing for Robert and Gladys’s side of the family, argued in vain that the legal costs should be paid out of the £480,000 lodged with the court before the balance — if any remained — was divided.

David Weston, Glyn’s brother, said after yesterday’s ruling: “The judge has compared the case to Dickens. We have just won a victory to stop it being like that and all the legacy being swallowed up in legal costs. But it isn’t a victory for all those people who have died, I’m afraid.”

If the Weston family business was now to celebrate by producing a sign, it would read: “Don’t go to law unless you absolutely have to.” And it would be in red neon, as a warning.

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