Debbie Ashenhurst
Partner
Reputation Management Principal Contact
01722 427 679
“In the company law sphere, I have worked with Debbie Ashenhurst who impressed me with a calm, logical approach and general common sense. She clearly knows the law as well.”
Legal 500, 2020
Debbie is a partner in our Property & Commercial Litigation team. She read law at Jesus College, Cambridge, before training at Dentons in London. Post-qualification she worked at media firm Olswang and in-house at The Guardian newspaper and the RSPCA. She joined Wilsons in 2016, having returned from the U.S. where she obtained a LL.M from Georgetown University and worked in the environmental litigation field.
Debbie has a broad commercial litigation practice which includes handling a wide range of contractual, commercial and corporate disputes.
She has particular expertise in reputation management including defamation, privacy, confidentiality, data protection and harassment law. Her practice also focuses on information law and she regularly advises clients on compliance with data protection and marketing laws. She has advised businesses, charities and schools on GDPR compliance, responding to subject access and similar requests and bringing or defending claims for breach of confidence, breach of data protection laws, misuse of private information, removal of online material and harassment.
Recent work
- Acting for minority shareholders in unfair prejudice disputes;
- Acting for claimants and defendants in restraint of trade and breach of contract claims;
- Successfully representing claimants against a local authority for a serious misuse of private information and data breach;
- Helping numerous businesses, charities and schools become GDPR compliant and to respond to subject access and freedom of information requests;
- Defending schools and individuals against claims for defamation and discrimination;
- Defending businesses in defective goods claims;
- Helping businesses, charities and schools with reputation management issues.
Career highlights
- Successfully defending The Guardian in libel proceedings brought by Jonathan Aitken MP;
- Acting for the claimant, Grigori Loutchansky, in the first defamation trial to consider former defence of Reynolds qualified privilege;
- Acting for Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in a libel case against a national newspaper;
- Acting for a Mills & Boon author in a libel, breach of contract and copyright infringement case arising out of false allegation of plagiarism against her.
