Friday, July 06, 2007

 

Blades go to High Court

Oh, FFS.

"We are going to the High Court to appeal, and that date is 13 July," confirmed Blades chairman Kevin McCabe. "I still believe Sheffield United have a legal case that can now be taken from what I loosely term the sporting courts to the commercial courts. Where that will take us I really don't know."

They are not seeking reinstatement to the EPL, but instead around 50 million squid in damages!

1) Did West Ham do something wrong? - we already know that the answer is yes.
2) Did they do it willingly? - yes.
3) Did West Ham benefit from doing this? - probably. You could argue that if the deal hadn't been made as it was then Tevez would not have signed, and you could further argue that if we hadn't had Tevez then we might have been relegated instead of Sheffield United. This is obvious but I think would need to be proved in court.
4) Did Sheffield suffer? if West Ham benefited, then yes, most likely.
5) If the above is all true, then the other club would have legal rights to seek damages from either/both West Ham or the EPL since West Ham have not honoured a contract (i.e. the contract they signed to "do the right thing" by the other clubs in the league).

I'm no legal eagle but I do think Sheffield have a civil case here. It's quite a different set of rules between fines/docking points and a civil litigation case so I'm concerned about it. The basis for EPL vs West Ham is contractual, but the basis for SUFC vs WHUFC is legal, which is different (and "higher").



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