A COUPLE who operated a shipping business ran up lawyers’ bills of about £2.3 million in “nihilistic litigation” after their marriage broke down, a High Court judge has said.

Mr Justice Peel said Caroline and Paul Crowther, who are both in their 50s and married 25 years ago, had argued about net assets worth less than £1.4 million.

He said they had become involved in litigation which resulted in more than 30 court hearings.

The judge, who is based in the Family Division of the High Court in London, has outlined his thoughts in a written ruling after considering the Crowthers’ case at a hearing earlier this month.

Mr Justice Peel said because “the visible assets” were “so limited”, he “had to concentrate” on how to divide debts fairly.

READ MORE: Michele Spicer evicted from beach hut in Goring near Worthing

He concluded that the “primary requirement” was to enable the pair to clear as much of their debts as possible, and said the legal costs were “utterly disproportionate”.

The judge said the Crowthers, who have three children, had enjoyed “a very high standard of living”.

“They lived in a luxurious house in Sussex, bought in 2014 and sold in late 2020 for £4.5 million, owned a house in France worth more than £3 million, employed a housekeeper and fulltime gardener, educated their three children privately, owned horses (for which purpose they employed a groom), a collection of expensive cars, and a private aeroplane,” he said.

“They relied on irregular, but large, sums of money being made available to them through a combination of profits turned on their various homes and the marine operations.”

He heard that business had taken a “downturn”, and millions of pounds of debts had been run up.

The judge concluded: “The only beneficiaries of this nihilistic litigation have been the specialist and high-quality lawyers.”

Paul and Caroline Crowther filed for divorce in September 2019 but legal hearings continued for months on end as they wrangled over ships thought to be worth about £8.15 million.

The affluent Hartfield couple owned Hove shipping firm Atlantic Marine and Aviation, which went into liquidation, as well as “horses and expensive cars”.

In 2020 Lord Justice Sir Stephen Males said the Crowthers had enjoyed an “affluent lifestyle”.