£1 million down - Gus MacDonald

I think there's a collective **** up here though. One of general administration in dealing with something at speed and under time pressure. I'd hope that we have specialist lawyers on speed dial in transfer windows and I'd have thought some form of retainer is fairly common practice. We can't ask our CEO's to do everything in the process, especially as our headcount isn't very big. But if we haven't asked them to run the rule over the contracts, that's another internal fault in the process.

Where we've messed up is speaking to and getting wording from the club doctor.

Very expensive lesson in a highly unusual case. Most transfers that get signed have little issue there after and it just had to be this one where an admin error has proven to very costly.

It will be interesting to watch for changes in personnel internally, at other ConLee clubs or whether we get wind of a change in legal advisors.

 

No bigy..Just sell a player in the summer

 

They were claiming alot more than they were awarded by the tribunal. So I assume if we hadn't fought it we'd have had to pay out even more.

 

* an extra.....

 

We might be the so called bad guy according to the judgement but I would still say this shows Hull City in the worst light. Clearly they only value the players like mercenaries and not the player behind it.

Wonder if there’s history of other clubs chasing previous employers like this due an ill health event out of anyone’s ultimate control.

 

We tried to argue that the question of whether his medical history affects his fitness/ability to play football should be qualified by reference to BFC's reasonable belief. There was nothing in the contract to suggest such a reading, and the Tribunal found that it is an objective test. The authorities on contractual interpretation over recent years (notably Arnold v Britton) place an emphasis on the words actually used, particularly where a contract is between savvy commercial entities. The courts are these days generally reluctant to imply anything into the wording if it isn't there - they take the attitude that unless it makes little sense, the contract should be regarded by reference to the ordinary meaning of the words used. If commercially aware parties meant to say something different then why didn't they include wording to that effect?

I think the Tribunal reached the correct decision, and the decision was predictable.

 

They aren't doing that. We signed a contract whereby we said we'd told them everything and they relied upon that in buying the player. It turned out we hadn't told them everything and that they suffered a loss as a result. If we'd held up our end of the bargain they wouldn't have signed him. It's understandable for them to seek redress.

 

That’s quite a bigy. We’ll be selling a player to pay for selling a player years ago.

The more I think about this, the more it irritates me. How much are we paying crap lawyers?!

 

yes but you can usually do a deal and avoid court costs. Who took who to the tribunal?

 

And given that both sides were under a time pressure surely Hull should have highlighted any clauses that weren't the norm in a transfer contract? Or did they and we ignored them?

 

It's in the full document. I think it says we knew they were going to make a claim, so we claimed for the 200k first. It was then agreed to merge the claims together as they related to the same deal.

 

Thanks

 

I think they had us bang to rights when our club Dr. Knew nothing about the deal until afterwards, how can we claim to have disclosed all medical facts? GG should not have allowed them to write up the deal, or should have acted on the clause once he got it through instead of just signing it.

 

No requirement to do that. They sent through a contract for us to review, we approved it. There's no imbalance of bargaining power and nothing to suggest any form of actionable mistake. The clause isn't so far outside the norm to justify an argument that Hull put it in knowing we would never agree to it if we noticed it and just hoped it slipped through.

Additionally it's not as if we have a long and extensive history of player sales to Hull so as to establish a presumption that this contract would be in a standard form.

 

Is it normal for the buyer to draw up the contract I would have assumed the seller would do that and the buyer signs or doesn't.

Seems a bit like me writing up a contract with weird clauses in it and asking admiral insurance to sign that for me to buy their insurance

 

That’s not really how it works unfortunately Helen.

 

Certainly seems a bit odd to me.

 

Cant believe your having a dig at Heckingbottom when he was answering questions on the clubs injured players prior to the Villa game. Maybe managers should not disclose any information on injured players full stop so us fans aint got a clue. Then thall have summat to moan abart.
Tit

 

He wasn't having a go at heckingbottom. He was saying that hecky mentioned it publicly prior to Hull signing him so hull should really have known about the issue.

 

He was giving an update on the squad prior to a game 2 weeks before he was transferred, a transfer which came as a shock to Sedgy.