Next Derby owners face extra £1m legal bill as Middlesbrough and Wycombe compensation claims head for ugly court battle

Soutra said:
That's where it gets hard though. Establishing how much loss MFC incurred is tough. Does it follow that Boro would have been in the playoffs? Would Boro have beaten whoever they would have played? Would Boro have won the playoff final? At each step it gets harder, less likely.
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agreed, I'm 99% confident we would have achieved the play offs, 55% confident of doing Leeds at that point but 10% on beating Villa in a final. That's just my view and every one would have a view some wildly different. However would Gibson be this dogmatic if he didn't feel he had a case? He is acting like he did with Liverpool, dog with a bone, he won that won....or would have but they folded before court. The case isn't 100% without merit, we can't really say that without being privy to what the evidence or even what the actual case that has been filed looks like. At this point it's all opinions
 
Adi_Dem said:
If you’d read it you’d understand why this following post:



is both inaccurate and unnecessary.

I’m not surprised you didn’t want to read my post. No funny moods, just correcting you on something that I happen to be an expert in.
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You are an expert in law, but not all law, no one is....in fact no one is an expert in this particular case as there are no comparable examples. But I guess Gibson knows absolutely zilch and is purely playing a pantomime game here 🤷‍♂️
 
...and for the record, I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm simply saying that until it gets to a court (if it ever does) then it's just conjecture. And for the case to have carried on this long, and remember there are two cases not just ours, then maybe their is an angle you haven't considered, maybe there is some evidence that you are not aware of.
 
BoroMart said:
You are an expert in law, but not all law, no one is....in fact no one is an expert in this particular case as there are no comparable examples. But I guess Gibson knows absolutely zilch and is purely playing a pantomime game here 🤷‍♂️
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😂

You don’t need comparable examples to understand the law on causation and remoteness of damage. If you read my post instead of ignoring it and talking about my mood you’d understand it a bit better. I am an expert on this I’m afraid. The absence of a comparable example is completely irrelevant to the tests that will be applied to the facts.


BoroMart said:
agreed, I'm 99% confident we would have achieved the play offs, 55% confident of doing Leeds at that point but 10% on beating Villa in a final. That's just my view and every one would have a view some wildly different. However would Gibson be this dogmatic if he didn't feel he had a case? He is acting like he did with Liverpool, dog with a bone, he won that won....or would have but they folded before court. The case isn't 100% without merit, we can't really say that without being privy to what the evidence or even what the actual case that has been filed looks like. At this point it's all opinions
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Of course it is all opinions. I am not and have not claimed otherwise. Again you’d understand that had you read the post. It just happens that my opinion is an expert one. What I picked up on is your incorrect view that the absence of a precedent (misunderstanding the concept of legal precedent) means that nobody can provide an expert view on causation. There are numerous precedents through which tests on causation have been developed and which are then applied to the facts of any particular case, including this one. And I’m telling you in my expert view it is highly unlikely based on what is publicly available that we will meet the standards required to prove causation

The very fact that you concede that everyone would have a different view and some wildly different tells it’s own story as far as causation is concerned.

BoroMart said:
...and for the record, I'm not saying you are wrong, I'm simply saying that until it gets to a court (if it ever does) then it's just conjecture. And for the case to have carried on this long, and remember there are two cases not just ours, then maybe their is an angle you haven't considered, maybe there is some evidence that you are not aware of.
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As I have already said numerous times. The caveat I provided at the beginning was that I haven’t seen the pleadings. But based on what we know this case is frivolous and will not succeed. That is not simply conjecture but my expert opinion. How long or aggressively something is pursued is almost never good evidence that a case has merit.
 
Adi_Dem said:
As I have already said numerous times. The caveat I provided at the beginning was that I haven’t seen the pleadings. But based on what we know this case is frivolous and will not succeed.
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so, yes, based on not knowing any of the details...
 
BoroMart said:
so, yes, based on not knowing any of the details...
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So that’s the argument you’ve switched to now? You’ve gone right round the houses including dabbling in legal precedent to ultimately argue that we don’t have the detail of the case and therefore can only offer opinions as to merit based on what is in the public domain?

Well what a waste of time that was.
 
BoroMart said:
nope was inherant in my initial point, i'll make sure I spell every single nuance out for you next time
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That’s just deflection. The first batch of posts were all about how much merit the case has. You then moved on and concluded the absence of legal precedent rendered any opinion as pure conjecture. Only after I had explained why your precedent nonsense was, well, nonsense did you then move on to an argument that because we don’t have all the details we can only opine on the publicly available information.

That’s not a case of missing nuance, it’s shifting an argument as the rug gets pulled. But we got there in the end.

I agree that we can only opine on that which we know and so any opinions are caveated by that. It’s a given and has been acknowledged throughout the thread. Maybe you missed it, who knows.

So with that caveat I repeat: we will not prove causation. The legal tests in place are unlikely to be met since any loss and damage is too remote and a causal link can’t be proven on the balance of probabilities.

We have to prove that Derby’s financial breaches over a three year period caused us the loss and damage of a potential failed promotion in one of those years. Do you know how incredibly difficult that will be?
 
fmttmadmin said:
I had a lengthy telephone conversation with Steve Gibson about this case. He called after I appealed to him on behalf of two Derby supporter groups that had contacted me. I was making the appeal asking him to consider how he had rescued us in 1986.
He phoned me straight away and spoke in detail about why he brought the case - he discovered Mel Morris and other Derby officials had quite deliberately set out on a strategy to cheat their way to the Premier League.
He told me how they did it and how eventually they were caught out on not depreciating values of players, year by year, so considerably over valuing. This meant they could spend far more under FFP.
He also told me how he arrived at £45m. It makes total sense - I can tell anyone that asks me privately but is based on an average value of the worth of promotion to the Premier but also divided by the bookies odds if we made the play offs and not Derby.
Steve Gibson also detailed why he needs to continue his legal action. He does not believe Derby are paying anything like a just price, or being valued anything like their true worth as a club. They are even being valued much less than Boro.
Obvously Mel Morris should be paying a price but he is walking away with his fortune in tact having set the club towards destruction.
There was a lot of other stuff that is disturbing and more recent than Morris that may be I cannot legally relay.
Derby and not Boro have made this personal. That is the way it looks.
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Derby fans picked up on this post
https://twitter.com/x/status/1478454893983809536
 
Adi_Dem said:
That’s just deflection. The first batch of posts were all about how much merit the case has. You then moved on and concluded the absence of legal precedent rendered any opinion as pure conjecture. Only after I had explained why your precedent nonsense was, well, nonsense did you then move on to an argument that because we don’t have all the details we can only opine on the publicly available information.

That’s not a case of missing nuance, it’s shifting an argument as the rug gets pulled. But we got there in the end.

I agree that we can only opine on that which we know and so any opinions are caveated by that. It’s a given and has been acknowledged throughout the thread. Maybe you missed it, who knows.

So with that caveat I repeat: we will not prove causation. The legal tests in place are unlikely to be met since any loss and damage is too remote and a causal link can’t be proven on the balance of probabilities.

We have to prove that Derby’s financial breaches over a three year period caused us the loss and damage of a potential failed promotion in one of those years. Do you know how incredibly difficult that will be?
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applogies if this has all ready come up there is a lot of posts on here. But from what I can see we aren’t claiming for a promotion though, we are claiming 25% of the value of a promotion as the playoffs give you a 25% chance of promotion. So would we not just have to prove they robbed us of a playoff place due to their actions?
 
Priv said:
applogies if this has all ready come up there is a lot of posts on here. But from what I can see we aren’t claiming for a promotion though, we are claiming 25% of the value of a promotion as the playoffs give you a 25% chance of promotion. So would we not just have to prove they robbed us of a playoff place due to their actions?
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We have to prove the causal link between their financial breaches during the three year FFP window and our failure to get into the play offs in one of those seasons. In other words, we have to be able to show (on the balance of probabilities) that if Derby hadn't broken the FFP rules we would have got into the play offs.
 
Adi_Dem said:
We have to prove the causal link between their financial breaches during the three year FFP window and our failure to get into the play offs in one of those seasons. In other words, we have to be able to show (on the balance of probabilities) that if Derby hadn't broken the FFP rules we would have got into the play offs.
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Is it not the case (potentially) that we dont have to prove that, if we were able to prove that the punishment that should have been applied was a points deduction in that particular season? If we were able to demonstrate that according to the rules, their points deduction should have been applied IN THAT SEASON, then we would have been in the Play Offs anyway - then the claim of 25% of the lost earnings would seem to me to be completely fair.

Albeit the EFL may in fact be liable at least partly, as opposed to DCFC.
 
CheshireBoro said:
Is it not the case (potentially) that we dont have to prove that, if we were able to prove that the punishment that should have been applied was a points deduction in that particular season? If we were able to demonstrate that according to the rules, their points deduction should have been applied IN THAT SEASON, then we would have been in the Play Offs anyway - then the claim of 25% of the lost earnings would seem to me to be completely fair.

Albeit the EFL may in fact be liable at least partly, as opposed to DCFC.
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No, I don't think so. There are a couple of problems with that I think (again with the caveat that I haven't seen any docs:

(i) the breaches for which Derby were charged (I think) relate to FFP compliance during a three year window i.e. they exceeded the permitted losses. Difficult to argue that an individual one of the seasons covered by that three year period is the 'right' one for points deductions unless of course the shenanigans with the stadium were in that particular year were they?

(ii) the rules included an appeal process which by necessity means that decisions are very often taken after a season has been completed and final placings confirmed. Very difficult then to apply a point deduction retrospectively; and

(iii) the EFL rules provide that the Disciplinary Commission may "at any time make a decision, and may make more than one decision at different times on different aspects of the matters to be determined" and one of those decision may be a points deduction. It is not prescriptive as to the season to which such a deduction is applied and says this: "These sanctions may be imposed immediately or may be deferred or suspended for such period and on such terms as the Disciplinary Commission shall decide."

So I think, for different reasons, an argument that the points deduction should be applied to that particular season in which we were a point behind would be extremely unlikely to succeed.*

*I am getting this from the 21/22 EFL rules and so they may have been different in 2018.
 
Priv said:
applogies if this has all ready come up there is a lot of posts on here. But from what I can see we aren’t claiming for a promotion though, we are claiming 25% of the value of a promotion as the playoffs give you a 25% chance of promotion. So would we not just have to prove they robbed us of a playoff place due to their actions?
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Championship Play Off Final 2019
Middlesbrough 0-3 Aston Villa
1641388593255.png
 
Adi_Dem said:
No, I don't think so. There are a couple of problems with that I think (again with the caveat that I haven't seen any docs:

(i) the breaches for which Derby were charged (I think) relate to FFP compliance during a three year window i.e. they exceeded the permitted losses. Difficult to argue that an individual one of the seasons covered by that three year period is the 'right' one for points deductions unless of course the shenanigans with the stadium were in that particular year were they?

(ii) the rules included an appeal process which by necessity means that decisions are very often taken after a season has been completed and final placings confirmed. Very difficult then to apply a point deduction retrospectively; and

(iii) the EFL rules provide that the Disciplinary Commission may "at any time make a decision, and may make more than one decision at different times on different aspects of the matters to be determined" and one of those decision may be a points deduction. It is not prescriptive as to the season to which such a deduction is applied and says this: "These sanctions may be imposed immediately or may be deferred or suspended for such period and on such terms as the Disciplinary Commission shall decide."

So I think, for different reasons, an argument that the points deduction should be applied to that particular season in which we were a point behind would be extremely unlikely to succeed.*

*I am getting this from the 21/22 EFL rules and so they may have been different in 2018.
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Appreciate the detail there.

Assuming that is the case (and I have read substantially less about this then you will have done), would that not mean that a club could effectively throw the kitchen sink financially at gaining promotion / avoiding relegation - effectively ignoring FFP - so long as over the next 2 years they corrected 66% of their own overspend?
 
CheshireBoro said:
Appreciate the detail there.

Assuming that is the case (and I have read substantially less about this then you will have done), would that not mean that a club could effectively throw the kitchen sink financially at gaining promotion / avoiding relegation - effectively ignoring FFP - so long as over the next 2 years they corrected 66% of their own overspend?
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Yep. To be honest, we kind of did that under Karanka. It's why you will see Gibson's financial support ebbing and flowing and why occasionally (Strachan/Karanka/Monk) there will be a huge splurge of cash. That's my take on it anyway.
 
One of many gripes Steve Gibson has in this whole scenario is that it has cost him personally £28 million to keep Boro at the same level through COVID, so writing off all sorts of things including our £10 streaming costs per match last season - lots of EFL clubs did not write this off and charged fans afterwards. Gibson argues he could have spent this considerable sum on his family or on Middlesbrough town, where it would have gone a long way. He feels Derby are not paying any kind of reasonable price for what was a sustained policy of deliberately evading FFP to reach the Premier League. It was a policy carried out under Mel Morris, the real villain of the piece but also needed the assistance of officials at the club. Even the accountants were in house.
Remember Steve Gibson brought this to the attention of the authorities at the time. He reported it to EFL and the national press. That is a long time ago now. We have had three managers since.
I think this will need Derby administrators to try and reach some kind of agreement or make some form of undertaking with Steve Gibson. The relationship between both parties might not be good though.
 
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Good old Mel.
 
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