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Court It Is Then


Bobbyhouston
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https://ptfc.co.uk/ptfc-news/board-update-17th-june-2020/?fbclid=IwAR3GCHhLCGDYj0cbrud8PvAoZcr38CK2YS426c_LSTa4rlHe9sAgNVdCWcg

Wednesday 17th June, 2020 at 5:13pm

Heart of Midlothian Football Club and Partick Thistle Football Club have today lodged a petition with the Court of Session to challenge the unfair and unjust decision of the SPFL to enforce relegations, to the extreme detriment of those clubs affected.

Unfortunately, Scottish football has been unable to pull together at this time of national crisis to obviate the need for this legal challenge. We desperately hoped Court action would not be necessary, but we were left with no other option.

For clarity, our petition does not seek to set aside or unravel the fee payments made to clubs, nor indeed the declaration of Champions, or the nomination of clubs who will participate in European competition.

Instead, the petition primarily seeks to reduce the unfair resolution insofar as it changed the SPFL’s rules on promotion and relegation. If that remedy is not granted by the Court, we seek, in the alternative, awards of compensation relative to the significant financial loss which the unfair relegations will visit upon us.

As matters stand, we have not asked the Court to grant an interim interdict which would prevent next season commencing on 1 August. However, we have to reserve our right to do so in the event that becomes necessary.

We would emphasise instead that we have no wish to disrupt Scottish football but rather our aim is to have the proceedings litigated to a conclusion as quickly as possible. In that regard, the Court has today granted our motion to reduce the normal period within which the SPFL must answer our petition to 7 days.

No further comment will be made by either Club at this time.

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10 minutes ago, Duke Gekantawa said:

https://ptfc.co.uk/ptfc-news/board-update-17th-june-2020/?fbclid=IwAR3GCHhLCGDYj0cbrud8PvAoZcr38CK2YS426c_LSTa4rlHe9sAgNVdCWcg

Wednesday 17th June, 2020 at 5:13pm

Heart of Midlothian Football Club and Partick Thistle Football Club have today lodged a petition with the Court of Session to challenge the unfair and unjust decision of the SPFL to enforce relegations, to the extreme detriment of those clubs affected.

Unfortunately, Scottish football has been unable to pull together at this time of national crisis to obviate the need for this legal challenge. We desperately hoped Court action would not be necessary, but we were left with no other option.

For clarity, our petition does not seek to set aside or unravel the fee payments made to clubs, nor indeed the declaration of Champions, or the nomination of clubs who will participate in European competition.

Instead, the petition primarily seeks to reduce the unfair resolution insofar as it changed the SPFL’s rules on promotion and relegation. If that remedy is not granted by the Court, we seek, in the alternative, awards of compensation relative to the significant financial loss which the unfair relegations will visit upon us.

As matters stand, we have not asked the Court to grant an interim interdict which would prevent next season commencing on 1 August. However, we have to reserve our right to do so in the event that becomes necessary.

We would emphasise instead that we have no wish to disrupt Scottish football but rather our aim is to have the proceedings litigated to a conclusion as quickly as possible. In that regard, the Court has today granted our motion to reduce the normal period within which the SPFL must answer our petition to 7 days.

No further comment will be made by either Club at this time.

In other words they are asking the court to invalidate only parts of the resolution.

Total non starter.

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Obviously we will have to see the written cases when they are published, but this action seems to be based on a fundamentally ill-conceived notion as to what the SPFL resolution did in legal terms.

Insofar as it “changed the rules” on relegation and promotion it did so in relation to the *playoffs* (it scrapped them) and not with regard to the automatic relegation and promotion places.

The *rules* on automatic promotion and relegation were completely unaffected; only the rules about how positions were arrived at differ for automatically promoted and relegated clubs. You cannot challenge *legally* the decision to relegate based on those positions without challenging the positions themselves. By necessary implication you are rejecting the basis for awarding the championship and European places. You can’t just pick and choose which bits of the resolution should stand.

The legal complaint is therefore not that the rules were changed, but that they were changed in a way that was unfavourable to Hearts and Thistle. That’s a non starter.

This is quite separate from whether the rules, as a matter of sporting principle, ought to have been changed in that way. In my view they clearly shouldn’t. But this litigation is a terrible way to make that point.

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15 minutes ago, jlsarmy said:

I’m sure that’s only what they’re saying publicly to avoid a backlash at this point .

Thats not how legal arguments work. Note in other respects the club are very careful to assert that they reserve the right to do something later they aren’t asking for now. Not so their core legal argument; only for remedies.

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6 hours ago, fenski said:

I agree that we are risking goodwill and good relationships with other clubs. What happens in future when we're in market for loan players? What about all the mutual back-scratching and favours that likely goes on, that ordinary fans never hear about?

Good relationships are always critical. We may think recent events demonstrate these relationships are a bit hollow, however we have definitely benefited in past, and could've used the goodwill that extended to us as the injured party as leverage in future.

That's gone now. For a court case that we will likely lose. Even with someone else picking up the bill, this is most definitely not a shot for nothing.

I really don't see this playing out well for us in the long term.

What’s the point of thinking about future relationships if there might not be one

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2 minutes ago, javeajag said:

Hearts and Partick Thistle are claiming £10m from the SPFL should the courts rule not to overturn their relegations.

The pair lodged a petition with the Court of Session on Wednesday, with Hearts claiming £8m and Thistle £2m.

Where'd you get this?

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9 minutes ago, javeajag said:

Hearts and Partick Thistle are claiming £10m from the SPFL should the courts rule not to overturn their relegations.

The pair lodged a petition with the Court of Session on Wednesday, with Hearts claiming £8m and Thistle £2m.

Fantasy amounts. Utter fantasy. That’s about as much money as was there to be disbursed from the final prize-money for the entire SPFL Premiership in 2019-20.

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7 hours ago, Woodstock Jag said:

But they’d then also have to pay back their prize money if season 2019-20 hadn’t been completed, so six and two threes.

I have absolutely no interest in telling the Club what to do with someone else’s money.

What I don’t want is to see fans peddling myths that conflate fairness with the law and which generate an unrealistic expectation in the support that the courts will be our salvation.

They won’t. We are ******. This is a waste of time. Manage your expectations and aspirations accordingly.

Ok you are probably right. My expectations have been duly managed, I do not expect us to " win" by which I mean I do not expect the demotion decision  to be reversed or the reconstruction question to be asked again. I am hopeful we might be awarded some compensation but if not ce la vie. The main thing is that we cause anguish, disruption and uncertainty for the SPFL.

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I never went on p and b until this web site went down last year for a week or so. Since then i have went on p and b on a regular basis, although i have never opened an account to post. Anybody who thinks we will lose out on away fans because of our latest action should visit this web site. Most fans from other clubs think we should take our medicine and get doon( as they put it), from the very start of this complete farce. Strange as i thought that medicine should help you and not potentially kill you off. I will not lose a wink of sleep worrying about what effect this action has on what other clubs fans think of us. It is time to think about only one club and that is Partick Thistle FC.

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Absolutely AJ. It appears that sadly there are also some Thistle fans that think we should just roll over and take our medicine.

i for one am glad we are pursuing legal action and hope that all the shady shenanigans, furtive phone calls and withheld information all come to light and show the SPFL hierarchy up for what they are.

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Woodstock Jag is not the man to have on your side if you are 2-0 down with 5 minutes to go - "We can't win...we shouldn't even try to score in case we annoy them" For goodness sake, don't you realise the satisfaction you would get from at least having a wild hack at them? 

I haven't seen the QC's Opinions or the Petition so I am not sure what arguments will be put forward. However, WJ is right to caution about the likelihood of success in the Court Action - I posted on the first page of this thread that a Court was not a forum to ensure fair play.

I have no expectation of seeing Ann Budge & Jacqui Low  being carried triumphant in Sedan Chairs from the Court of Session carrying a judgement reinstating Hearts & Thistle and awarding them huge sums in compensation. If our case is truly the crock WJ fears, it will probably be thrown out at an early stage. However, I remain hopeful that we might at least embarrass Doncaster & the SPFL Board  and possibly be given some compensation to go away.

While fans of other Clubs can point and laugh at us, I actually think we have had quite a lot of goodwill & sympathy from other Clubs and the Media...it has done us no good whatsoever. I don't care if we aggravate the other Clubs. We have been consigned to a Diddy League which may not play any games so there may not be any promotion...or maybe they will relegate us again on alphabetical placings.

I am scunnered with Football just now. We have been thrown under the bus but to some extent we have only ourselves to blame for our predicament My enthusiasm drained during the Caldwell era which lasted about 9 months too long and I don't see any prospect of watching a good Thistle side for the foreseeable.

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OK Woodstock Jag, we get it, you're a lawyer. Your opinion is we won't win. However, some other lawyers (who I suspect are more experienced than you) think it's worth proceeding with this. Perhaps you are deliberately being pessimistic so we won't be too disappointed if Thistle lose the case.

As for the goodwill argument - I for one am not interested. We are well past any goodwill or warm wishes from any other club being of value to us. This is competitive sport and we need to try to protect out interests. 

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7 minutes ago, milhouse said:

OK Woodstock Jag, we get it, you're a lawyer. Your opinion is we won't win. However, some other lawyers (who I suspect are more experienced than you) think it's worth proceeding with this. Perhaps you are deliberately being pessimistic so we won't be too disappointed if Thistle lose the case.

As for the goodwill argument - I for one am not interested. We are well past any goodwill or warm wishes from any other club being of value to us. This is competitive sport and we need to try to protect out interests. 

I think it is important to manage expectations so that fans and the club don’t make fools of themselves.

When the fall is all that’s left how you fall matters a great deal.

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4 minutes ago, Woodstock Jag said:

I think it is important to manage expectations so that fans and the club don’t make fools of themselves.

When the fall is all that’s left how you fall matters a great deal.

To be honest I think we were .....no one I could see was getting too excited about winning this but at least we were fighting our corner .....you seemed to be revelling in showing how much cleverer you were compared to our lawyers 

David Winnie says our chances are 50/50 and that’s worth pursuing 

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I'd rather fight this and lose from the start, than ride off the back of a Hearts lone fight, should they have won.

As for what any one of the other teams think. I couldn't care one jot.

In fact, I can't wait to shake off the patronising cuddly toy image.

F the lot of them.

Edited by CotterJag
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