It was the end of a bruising legal tussle which exposed a venomous 30-year feud between mother and daughter that began when the pair - along with Hersmen-Wilkinson’s then husband, Cathay Pacific pilot Ian Wilkinson, moved to Hong Kong in 1985.

Ian Wilkinson gave evidence against his ex-wife at the London hearing which was told that the mother-daughter feud festered in Hong Kong for years and, according to Caroline, exploded when her mother called the police and had her arrested for stealing the family’s dog ‘’Fluffy’’.

Hersmen-Wilkinson rejected that version of events saying she was simply worried that her ‘’out of control’’ daughter had gone missing, ‘’could be in the company of a herion-dealing triad gangster’’ and simply added that Fluffy the dog was missing too.

However it was an earlier violent argument between Caroline’s mother and father on New Year’s Eve 1992 at their home in Hong Lok Yuen in the New Territories that led to consternation at the very top of the city’s legal system.

Court records form the time report that Ian Wilkinson attacked his wife with a knife and “applied pressure to her throat with his hands’’.

Wilkinson - who had been seeing a psychologist at the time - was initially charged with wounding under The Offences Against the Person Act, which carried a maximum jail term of three years. But to the amazement of many - including the presiding magistrate Ernest Lim - when the case finally came to trial, prosecutors offered no evidence, leaving Lim no option but to dismiss the charges against Wilkinson and order him to be bound over for a year with a bond of HK$20,000.

Not only did this provoke a a dramatic courtroom outburst from Ann Wilkinson, who leapt up from her seat in the public gallery and shouted: ‘’ If this is Hong Kong justice, it is an absolute disgrace’’, there was fury from women’s groups who feared the decision would deter other victims of domestic violence from coming forward.

It also prompted lawmakers in the Legislative Council to demand answers from Hong Kong’s top legal official at the time, Attorney General, Jeremy Matthews, over why the original charges against Wilkinson were dropped.

A lengthy explanatory document in response to lawmaker concerns went only as far as saying that the decision took into account ‘’the interests of the defendant, the victim and the public’’ fuelling the anger of women’s rights advocates.

Hersmen-Wilkinson has been living in Spain for many years but wants to return to live in England, prompting the legal action over her Kensington property.