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Points battle heads for High court
Points battle heads for High court
Monday, 21st Jan 2008 13:42

The case of the missing 15 points is about to go legal, as Leeds are going to serve a writ on the Football League

Ken Bates will ask for an "urgent and early" hearing into the punishment handed out to Leeds before the start of the season. The 15 point deduction was made after the club failed to exit administration with an agreed Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) in place, which was against the Football League’s insolvency policy.

 

The punishment was upheld on appeal with after a vote of the other 71 lower-league clubs, but Bates has never accepted this decision on the basis that other clubs had a vested interest in maintaining the points deduction. Leeds then appealed to the FA without success, so the next step was to request independent arbitration, which is allowed under FA rules. But the club have now bypassed that step by initiating High Court action, and according to the Yorkshire Post this was because Bates had “doubts over the process”, even though Leeds had reached agreement with the FA over the make-up of the three-man tribunal.

 

In August Leeds signed an agreement promising not to take legal action, as a condition of

the Football League’s return of the ‘golden share’, without which we couldn’t have started the season. But Bates said today that the document had been accepted by the club "under duress”, and that the club’s legal team believe European Union laws permit them to ignore the agreement and fight the 15-point deduction, which they believe to be a "wrongful decision".

 

Bates told the Yorkshire Post "We're suing the Football League for our 15 points because we believe, as we always have, that there was no justification for the penalty. The agreement we had saying we wouldn't take legal action was signed under duress. We were a couple of days from the start of the season and we wouldn't have been able to fulfil our fixtures without regaining our share in the Football League. We did ask the FA for independent arbitration but we've been waiting five months for them to do anything, and the whole thing is a shambles. We want an open and independent review of this decision, and the only way of ensuring that is by going to the High Court." The Football League declined to comment.

 

Obviously Bates has been prompted by the need for a hearing before the end of the season, as he thinks that he might run out of time if he sticks with the ongoing arbitration process. However, FIFA rules prevent clubs taking action against the game’s governing bodies, and there is also the question of the signed agreement. If the Football League only returned the ‘golden share’ on the basis that we wouldn’t go to court, then it must be possible that they could withdraw it again as we hadn’t kept our side of the bargain. So technically we could be booted out of the League.

 

Never mind, I’m sure Ken Bates knows what he’s doing.

Photo: Action Images



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