Absolutely. The forum is a better place for their views.
But I do wish they would try to explain to non-legals in a less legal way, sometimes. 99% of the people on here don't have any legal training, so sometimes pick up the wrong end of the legal argument stick purely from the way it is explained. A better way to explain the right to appeal would be to say there IS a right of appeal in certain, unlikely circumstances, rather than saying there is no right of appeal except in certain, unlikely circumstances. People are looking to the experts on here for comfort as well as legal explanation. A little comfort would go a long way on a particularly stressful issue, imho.
My point is more psychological than legal maybe.
Maybe I have no point.
Maybe there is no point at all, anywhere.
Philosophical as well as psychological then :)
Obviously, I'm not going to leave this without some kind of response. What I'd say is that, when discussing legal issues, words matter and there may well be reasons why lawyers choose the formulations they do.
I've quoted at length the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1996, which is the only basis under which aspects of this arbitration procedure can end up being litigated in the courts of the land. In the light of that, I find idiotic and comical one poster's assertion yesterday that the discussion on recourse to the courts that had developed throughout the day could be based on "simply bad information". My comments were based on, and quoted freely from, the Act of Parliament that's relevant to the situation, which is as sound a source of information as could be cited.
The Arbitration Act 1996 was conceived and drafted, and now operates, to enshrine the principle that parties who've agreed to arbitrate any dispute that arises between them (as City and the PL in effect have) should receive an outcome determined by that arbitration process. The general legal position is that they shouldn't then get a second chance to go to court, when they've already agreed with one another to exclude that method of resolving disputes. Only in rare and exceptional circumstances does the Act allow a departure from that principle.
This is simply a matter of fact and I disagree that a better way to explain the right to appeal would be to say that there IS a right of appeal in certain, unlikely circumstances. The difference is certainly nuanced but nonetheless IMO significant and the way I've described it deliberately reflects the way that a court would approach the issue. People may want reassurance in this situation but they if they expect me to frame things in a way I'm unhappy with just to make others on this board feel better, then they're going to be disappointed.
Ironically, I started out in the discussion yesterday thinking that I was providing reassurance in that posters were saying that the final PL ruling could blatantly shaft us and we had no chance of an appeal to the courts. I think in certain circumstances we could have, and I hoped that might provide a degree of comfort to posters by saying so. But it's extremely difficult to prevail in those circumstances and I'd be doing no one any favours by failing to stress that.
In addition, I'm cautious because I've been posting on City message boards since discovering the original Blue View back in 1996, half a lifetime ago, and have long since discovered that a small proportion (but a surprisingly large number in absolute terms) of internet users are utter cunts. I've received unwarranted personal abuse in the past when people have claimed that postings crafted in the most optimistic way possible misled them despite my including all necessary caveats. I prefer not to have this happen again if I can avoid it.
Now, as it happens, I'm relatively sanguine about our prospects based solely on the little information that's so far in the public domain. As I've already said more than once, I think that the provisions of the Arbitration Act 1996 do afford us sufficient rights to keep a PL panel relatively honest given that they know that we'll be making every possible use of each opportunity to go to the High Court that any errors or bias on their own part may allow us.
If people want other grounds for optimism, they can find them in the discussions of a need for a particularly "cogent" standard of evidence given the nature of the allegations and of a need for the PL to prove fraud or concealment so that the general limitation period stipulated by the Limitation Act 1980 wouldn't apply. There's been considerable discussion of these points further back in this thread. I appreciate that non-lawyers may not remember the salient reasoning, but the search function should enable anyone who's interested to find the relevant posts.
However, ultimately we know very little about the charges against us. The whole process is so far being conducted in such a way that it's easy for hostile media outlets and venal commercial rivals to smear us without the club being able to defend itself in the court of public opinion or City fans being able to reassure ourselves as to the prospects for the overall proceedings. I don't see we have any real alternative but to suck that up, unfortunately.
