I'm not sure exactly why someone wanting to be paid for doing her job is a "greedy selfish money grabber exploiting a situation to her own advantage."
If the conversation had been:
- I'm raising some money for charity. Will you do some PR work?
- Sure. Seeing as it's for charity I'll do it for free.
then I'd probably agree.
But it appears the judge thinks the conversation was instead:
- I'm raising some money for charity. Will you do some PR work?
- Sure. My day rate will be £550.
- OK.
If that's true, then taking steps to recover the debt seems entirely reasonable. And if we can take her statement as quoted in the article at face value,
Ms Barber said: "Katie could have sorted this out easily. I gave her a year to pay it back but at every point, instead of contacting me, she kept giving interviews to the media."
then perhaps you should be spelling 'ruthless' 'long-suffering'.