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Great post, wit. Good to have some solid background. Do you believe this is the reason the Coral team has concentrated on the definition of the word?
I’ve no dog in the fight but see no reason to condemn Mr Kinloch for having a bet on something which he could legally perhaps turn to his advantage. Maybe he spent a long time dissecting Coral’s rules before placing the bet. Reportedly, he asked the cashier to put the phone on loudspeaker so that head office could be heard clearly approving/refusing the bet. That suggests to me he did not try to sneak it past an inexperienced member of staff and, in asking to hear the conversation, it should have acted as an alert to Coral that maybe something unusual was afoot.
The key could be that Mr Kinloch knew, from research, that Coral had no definition of relegation and that Coral did not know this. Who then is negligent and deserves condemnation?
Deportatio removed citizenship, ie membership of the group. Relegatio did not – you stayed a citizen/member but were banished to another place
Presumably Nicola Sturgeon favours a Relegatio Brexit and Theresa May a Deportatio Brexit
reductio et argumentum ad absurdio
I think it will be a close decision. In Mr Kinloch’s favour he has the benefit of several press articles saying Rangers were “relegated” and dictionary definitions in his favour. Also his counsel raised a point of consumer law that the benefit of the doubt goes to the customer. Coral’s argument seemed to be rather complicated and technical whereas, as people have pointed out here, they could have kept to a simple point about the generally understood meaning of relegation in the context of football betting.
I think I would make Mr Kinloch slightly odds on. Incidentally I wonder if he is using a contingent fee arrangement? I would assume so.
hi steeplechasing
if there is no special definition given by the contracting parties to the word ‘relegation”, the Court will start by trying to establish its “natural and ordinary” meaning, and then see how that fits into the circumstances of the particular case.
the Roman-Dutch source is a natural starting point for a Scottish Court. that here would seem to work against Corals – so they need to present an argument for some other source more favourable to them to be a stronger basis for the “natural and ordinary” meaning of “relegation”.
for those who want to get into the technicalities of what actually happened regarding the SPL and SFL, may i recommend section 6 of the Administrator’s Progress Report filed here on 28 Aug 2012:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/SC004276/filing-history
section 6 reports that, after selling its assets, the old Rangers company ceased to meet the criteria for being a football club and member of the SPL. the SPL did not accept that the share in the SPL held by the old Rangers company could transfer to the new Rangers company, and in the end the old Rangers company transferred its SPL share to Dundee Football Club.
so in effect old Rangers disqualified itself from membership of the SPL, was required to leave, and required to forfeit its interest in the SPL to Dundee. that seems to me to be a lot more Deportatio than Relegatio.
the other obvious place to look in terms of trying to understand the word “relegation” is to see how it is used in the Articles of Association of the SPL itself, and its Rules. there was a flurry of changes to the Articles of Association starting mid-2012 as coincidence with the problems of Rangers:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/SC175364/filing-history?page=2
do not have time at the moment to follow those uses/ changes through, but the Court should.
I watched a High Court Appeal where a barrister spent the thick end of 2 hours in front of 3 judges trying to convince them that a ‘trustee rule’ could mean something else with the use of one word having a different meaning and therefore change the way in which the rule was interpreted. The barrister was trying to persuade the judges that the ‘draftsman’ had made a mistake in the use of this word and therefore it meant something quite different. It was quite easy to see from the ‘cheap seats’ that the barrister did not quite believe what he was doing and put together a nervous and stuttery account of his appeal. Three judges had quite a party with him and an inward laugh watching what was most probably a well known colleague tie himself up in knots. Depending on how good the barrister is at trying to convince a judge what he thinks ‘relegation’ could mean, will win or lose the day, sometimes even the most uneasy glance from client to barrister can start to change the game, and that is what it is. I would guess that whoever loses will win an appeal and it will all revolve around for a second bite at the clients pockets. I have also witnessed someone lose a very winnable case with a poor barrister, whose grasp of a specialist subject was not good enough.
If you have time, follow the tweets from James Ooleman ( https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman )
The witnesses called to the stand by Coral did them no favours; Simon Clare and the Prof; the latter beyond a parody.
The critical thing for me is that the Rangers the lad placed the bet on were not demoted or relegated, they went into liquidation and ceased to exist.
The new club did not drop from the SPL, they were voted INTO the league so were not a relegated team, they were a new entity voted into the league.
I think legally, as well as morally, the guy is on a loser but fair play for having a go.
For those unfamiliar with Scottish football, if you run into a Rangers fan (esp in a bar) don’t remind them they are a new club with no history, they don’t like it. As a Hibs fan who has seen his own team on the brink I’d almost feel for them… if they weren’t RangersThe Oxford Dictionary definition of relegate is:
Assign an inferior rank or position to:
(British) Transfer (a sports team) to a lower division of a league:There is absolutely no mention of the words “points or table position”.
In an English Court where a contract is made between corporation and customer, more weight is put on the corporation being the professional side and an expectation that they have the resources to ensure their side of the contract is water tight and they can fully look after their interests. The customer is at a disadvantage not usually having such resources and also, in any case, it is not practice that the customer can impose any terms and conditions onto the bookmaker. It is a one-way, unfair contract situation, which is illegal under the Gambling Act (unfair T&Cs now under investigation) and Unfair Terms law. The Juge will see that, and all things being otherwise equal, rebalance by weighing things towards the side of the punter.
The Judge would further tend to sympathise with the customer if the bookmaker had not specified any particular terms on the bet in question. This may be why Corals are trying to paint the claimant as an ex-bookmaker and semi-professional (an undefined status).
The punter would probably have asked for a bet with say the Oxford Dictionary meaning of the term “relegation”.
The odds setter was probably not giving too much thought to the bet other than it was just another easy money mug bet. The odds offered were likely given for a points only relegation which was a mistake by the professional side and a message not conveyed to the punter at the time. They offered the odds for the bet asked for and the punter took those odds in good faith.I can’t see that the Judge has any option but to come down at least half way on the side of the punter with all costs to be carried by the bookmaker – the negligent party.
The critical thing for me is that the Rangers the lad placed the bet on were not demoted or relegated, they went into liquidation and ceased to exist…..
Corm
i fear the timeline shows that logic does not work.
the old Rangers company was not put into liquidation until 31 October 2012.
the 2012-13 season of the SPL with Dundee in place of old Rangers had begun on 4 Aug 2012.
the vote not to allow old Rangers to transfer its share in the SPL company to new Rangers had happened on 4 July 2012.
the sale of assets by old Rangers which had disqualified it from remaining a member of the SPL had happened on 14 June 2012.
all available from the public filings here:
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/SC004276/filing-history
so old Rangers was fully alive at the time of its exclusion from the SPL, and for several months afterwards.
best regards
wit
The thing is Wit, ‘old’ Rangers weren’t relegated or excluded. They were not incorporated into that season’s (12/13) fixture list as they had no stadium and no players. So they weren’t ‘relegated’, they were unable to fulfill the requirements for league membership.
The ‘new’ Rangers were, in the view of the Scottish Football league and the majority of Scottish football supporters, a new club had to apply for membership and were granted permission to enter into the lowest league in the upper tier of Scottish Football.No actual relegation or demotion occurred.
Should have asked for odds on Rangers ‘not to play in the 2012/13 SPL’
Also his counsel raised a point of consumer law that the benefit of the doubt goes to the customer.
That would set a dangerous precedent imo. Does that mean I could go into bookies, write ambiguous numbers on dog bets (a common enough scam as it is) and claim the winner as ‘benefit of the doubt’?
The thing is Wit, ‘old’ Rangers weren’t relegated or excluded. They were not incorporated into that season’s (12/13) fixture list as they had no stadium and no players. So they weren’t ‘relegated’, they were unable to fulfill the requirements for league membership……
whether they were “relegated” or not in 2011/2012 – not 2012/13 – is the question: the bet was placed in 2011 and related to relegation in 2012:
https://dsportsnews.com/coral-in-court-over-250000-rangers-relegation-bet/in that season, ended 13 May 2012, old Rangers finished second in the table.
when on 14 June 2012 old Rangers sold Ibrox and Murray Park and other assets necessary to run a football club, old Rangers ceased to meet the requirements for SPL membership. in the fixture list published on 18 June the name of Rangers was replaced by “Team 12”.
but old Rangers did not just evaporate.
it continued to be a member of the SPL, ie it continued holding one of the shares in The Scottish Premier League Limited, Scottish company number SC 175364.
like bottom-of-the-table-in-2011-12 Dunfermline, old Rangers was obliged under the Articles of Association of the SPL to transfer that share.
both shares were transferred to teams coming up from the First Division. Dunfermline’s share was transferred to D1 champions Ross County; Rangers’ share was transferred to D1 runners-up Dundee. the transfer of old Rangers’ share was not effected in the register of members until 3 August 2012.
no argument that Dunfermline were “relegated” and Ross County “promoted”.
but if Rangers were not “relegated”, were Dundee also not “promoted” ?
the Articles of Association of the SPL indicate that promotion and relegation go hand-in-hand – ie if there is one, there must be the other.
although (on your side) they only talk of promotion from and relegation to the SFL, (on my side) why would they specify from/to the SFL if promotion and relegation was not also possible to/from other places (including out-in-the-cold) ?
interesting to see what the Court reasons out.
Would we be having this debate if the club that entered the Third Division in the 2012/13 season had decided to call themselves anything other than ‘Rangers’?
fair point.
on a broad brush level, the club playing in blue at Ibrox with the same employees (transferred under TUPE) was in the SPL end of one season and in SFL Div 3 the next season.
in non-technical talk, how can it be said it wasn’t just relegated from the one to the other ?
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