West Ham United vice-chairman Karren Brady has launched a legal action against the Daily Mirror over stories she claimed linked her to a campaign to undermine manager Avram Grant.
Brady, who also appears in The Apprentice TV show with Alan Sugar, is suing publisher Mirror Group Newspapers over two stories and two online versions of those articles – all from January.
In a writ filed at the High Court on her behalf by lawyers Henri Brandman and Co, Brady claims a story headed ‘Upton no good’suggested she sent text messages to West Ham players encouraging them to rise up against Grant and demand his sacking.
Brady claims the story, and an online version of the article, suggested she undermined the relationship between the club’s players and manager.
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Both versions of the story, the writ claims, suggest that she behaved in a ‘shameful, utterly disloyal, grossly reprehensible and wholly unprofessional manner”.
Brady, who spent sixteen years as managing director of Birmingham City Football Club before joining West Ham, is also suing over a story headed ‘Jibe was just banter but Dad so sorry”.
The writ claims that by innuendo, the story suggested that Brady’s public denunciation of comments made by sacked Sky Sports football pundit Andy Gray and colleague Richard Keys was hypocritical as she laughed and joked with Keys about his comments when they spoke privately on the phone.
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Brady claims her personal and business reputations have been injured by the stories, which have also caused her anger and distress.
She argues that damage to her reputation has been increased by the prominence of the first story, and the paper’s malicious conduct by describing her actions as the ‘worst and most extraordinary act”.
Brady is seeking damages and aggravated damages for libel for the stories, and an injunction banning the paper from making the same, or similar, allegations about her.
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