Here’s my objective view on this case - I’m not a lawyer but have plenty of experience of clients going through legal disputes and the correlation between final outcome and figures banded about during the cases.
it seems to me to be blindingly obvious there was a breach - Elite had a contract for X years and they were not to know that we were not fully clear to enter into it (ie only became clear after the SD position was concluded). We were forced through no fault of Elite’s to terminate it early after the SD ruling. I don’t see how we don’t lose this case and the question is about the size of the award.
at this stage of a case like this, the £9.5m will be exaggerated and just tactical to help influence the judge and get the info they need to Make a properly calculated claim. It will Be well South of the £9.5m from experience.
Elite all the while have withheld £3m from us (citing breach of contract which is what this case is based on) so that is intrinsically linked and will be offset against any award made to Elite without much fuss. The real cash impact to us of any award made to Elite can therefore be reduced by £3m right off The bat.
We also have a provision for other legal disputes of £1.25m already in the accounts and I would be shocked if this wasn’t in respect of the Elite legal dispute so ultimately we likely have already accounted for a £4.25m - ie if final award is £4.25m then it doesn’t really have any additional impact on us as we already factored it in.
Overall I can’t get too excited about this despite the £9.5m headline grabbing figure.
My Slight concern is re our KC’s flimsy argument about comparing apples and oranges - that would be fair if they were wanting full profitability details or strip sales for the whole of Castore, however, assuming they simply want kit sale figures for rangers strips from the relevant rangers shops then the figures requested go to the heart of the calculation of what Elite may have lost out on From early termination. I say concern as our reluctance to share this info might indicate we don’t want them to see it (strip sales in the last few years likely through the roof) and might lead to a slightly higher outcome than the £4.25m already factored in.
To everyone clinging to the ‘no judgement has been passed yet’ mantra, as I’ve said above the outcome doesn’t sound like it is in doubt from an objective assessment of the publicly available info on this case, just the amount.
All in all Much ado about something is my prediction that won’t move the needle for us financially and at least we can expect this to be the last in the frustrating episodes to the whole kit supplier debacle we’re all well aware of over the last few years.
Attack me at will ;-)
