Be Careful What You Wish For (36 page)

In the second game my expectations of myself were very high, playing against a Liverpool team consisting of the likes of John Barnes, Jamie Redknapp, Bruce Grobbelaar, Jan Molby and Steve McManaman. Again I played very well if I do say so, nutmegging Steve McManaman and laying on the pass for Mark Bright to score again, in the vain hope of halting his endless comments about scoring the first-ever goal at the new Wembley.

Ridiculously, these were the two high spots in a footballing Sahara of a season. The real team finished on a high, rounding off the season with back-to-back wins and giving me a straw to cling onto for next season that maybe, despite my nagging feelings, Peter Taylor may well come good …

But most things based upon hope rather than substance rarely come up trumps. Besides, I had the small matter of a High Court trial with Iain Dowie, the commencement of filming of a major movie, a landmark birthday and a monumental event in my adult life, all about to happen over the summer of 2007.

13

DOWIE ON TRIAL

SINCE ISSUING THE
writ on Iain Dowie back in May 2006 my lawyers, together with a senior QC and a junior counsel, were preparing one of the most difficult court cases in English law to prove: fraudulent misrepresentation. The case was meticulously prepared over a year to ensure that when we arrived in court the case did more than get media attention, but delivered the appropriate verdict based on Iain Dowie’s conduct.

The court case took place in May 2007, almost a year to the day after he had left Palace and was served with the infamous writ in the press conference. It was scheduled to be an eight-day hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice at the Strand in London. The basis of our case was Dowie had told lies to get released from his contract, thus circumventing a £1 million compensation clause.

Before the trial had even begun, the legal costs had already exceeded £500,000. This was the financial risk I was prepared to take in being so resolute in my belief that Dowie should be held accountable for his deception. In the media, much was made of the fact that part of my motivation was my intense dislike of Charlton Athletic, their chairman and directors as a result of their
actions
in our fateful game against them in May 2005 when we were relegated from the Premier League. In point of fact, that was a peripheral motivation. Naturally it irritated me that Charlton had avoided paying compensation like every other club for a manager but my focus was always on Dowie and his actions.

The main players in this case were the well-respected Judge Tugendhat, my QC John Davies, an expert in his field who was supported by a junior QC Stuart Ritchie. On the other side were Iain Dowie and his counsel Michael McParland, a protégé of the famous trial lawyer George Carman. Also in attendance with Dowie were Charlton Athletic’s chairman Richard Murray, his chief executive Peter Varney and their legal representation. Quite why Charlton were there besides being possible witnesses for Dowie was beyond us all and quite why they needed legal representation again was a curiosity as the action was being brought against Dowie, not Charlton. But as the case unfolded those reasons became apparent.

The first day of the trial was a media circus with camera crews and press photographers swarming outside the High Court and journalists thronging the public gallery. It started with both parties presenting their legal arguments and then very quickly moved into certain areas of legalities. My lawyers had demanded the handing over of Dowie’s laptop he used at Palace and once we secured it we had to ask the judge to make a ruling that we could send his hard disk to a computer specialist to re-create everything that had ever been written and deleted. After much toing and froing we were given permission to send the computer’s hard drive to the experts and when it came back it made for some very interesting reading.

Once the legal complexities were argued through it was time for the witnesses to be called. Given the nature of this case, which
to
a large degree hinged on one person’s word against another, witness evidence was going to be crucial. What we were seeking to establish was the timeline in which Dowie effectively entered into managerial dialogue with Charlton Athletic and, as we were to discover, a number of other clubs. Given that our argument was based upon a fraud being perpetrated by Dowie whilst in the employment of Crystal Palace, which resulted in him being released from his contract, if it was established that Dowie had, in fact, no intention of leaving Palace to go back up north, but was in fact merely saying that to get released from his contract with the specific intention of going to Charlton Athletic, then the leap to find him guilty of fraudulent misrepresentation – alongside evidence from myself and others – was not going to be that great to make!

So with that in mind an unusual list of suspects appeared on the witness stand giving some interesting testimonies for a variety of different motivations.

My current manager Peter Taylor was the first witness called and he proceeded to describe events back in that May of 2006 when he was the manager of Hull City. He gave evidence that he was contacted by Charlton and invited to attend a meeting described as ‘having a cup of tea’. This of course meant that Charlton were speaking to Taylor without the permission of Hull, which contravened football’s rules and illustrated that although Charlton were not on trial here, they operated in a certain way.

James Price, a lawyer who represented the then manager of Preston Billy Davies, further supported Taylor’s testimony. Davies was first offered an informal meeting that became formal as Charlton were thinking about appointing Davies and eventually sought Preston’s permission to talk to him and agree compensation … perhaps compensation being the key word.

What we established was Charlton were speaking to a variety of
managers
about their availability and were doing it without first seeking the permission of the clubs these managers were employed by, which frankly I did not in the real world consider a major crime, but it flew in the face of how Charlton liked to portray themselves. As soon as we put Dowie on the stand we established fairly quickly that he had spoken to Charlton and a number of other clubs before we had even agreed to release him from his contract.

Peter Varney, the then chief executive of Charlton, took to the stand and went on to describe his version of events and claimed that Charlton acted with integrity and good faith! So far as he was concerned Charlton hadn’t contacted Dowie prior to his release from his contract. To be fair to Varney, my QC John Davies was pretty confident that he was telling the truth. It was more than likely Richard Murray was having discussions with various managerial parties and that may not have been within Varney’s line of vision.

My moment arrived and I took the stand in front of a packed gallery. I was to spend nearly two days being interrogated by Dowie’s counsel Michael McParland.

There was a marked difference between the two lead lawyers. McParland was a physically big man with a puffed-out chest. He had a barnstorming, theatrical quality to his questioning. John Davies, on the other hand, was a much smaller man, who reminded me of the actor Patrick Troughton who played the second Doctor Who. He had a more considered manner: when he made a point it was not a dramatic revelation preceded by a big drum roll. John had an air of confidence and substance and never really raised his voice, although he was quite sinister in his Rottweiler-like pursuit of the answers he demanded. It was no surprise to me when I learned that John Davies had wanted to be an actor in his early years at Cambridge and was part of the famous Cambridge Footlights.

There is in fact a large amount of theatre in the High Court, from the packed media gallery, the audience of friends and colleagues who come to watch to the bewigged lead lawyers in their black gowns; the protocol of the court standing and bowing every time the judge enters or leaves the courtroom to the conduct of the witnesses on the stand.

The court clerk, to my horror, was a bloody Millwall fan and even though I wasn’t on trial I had visions of me getting the chair if he had his way. He regularly came out to the non-smoking hallway as my QC John Davies and I hid cigarettes behind our backs with a plume of smoke appearing over our shoulders with a pile of cigarettes at our feet while we vehemently denying we were smoking.

McParland’s strategy when I got on the stand was to try to establish that I was a tyrannical boss, abusive to the point of unbearable, and had effectively hounded Dowie out of his job. He wanted me to admit to him that I had brought the case against Dowie maliciously, and that I was motivated by money. I was confident in myself and also had the added advantage that I knew I was telling the truth! But ringing in my ears was the advice of John Davies to not be clever or cocky or lose my temper, as this is exactly what his opposite number was attempting to achieve.

What McParland confronted me with was trial by newspaper articles. He attacked every aspect of my character by bringing up every controversial or outspoken remark I had ever made. As I had been manna from heaven for the newspapers he did have a lot of subject matter to point to. I had bundles of court files in the witness box and was constantly directed to a particular section where inevitably there would be a newspaper article where I had made some strident comment. He made a particular meal over the
Sunday Times
article from my time in the Premier League and poured
gravy
all over it. It got to the point in the questioning where before he had even finished a question I was asking what bundle he wanted me to go to and ‘Oh yes, another newspaper article, what did I have to say here?’ would be my cocky yet slightly exasperated comment.

It was like a joust with McParland. He wanted to grind me down so that he would get an outburst from me in a way that would advance his case. But, as John Davies told me during the breaks, my conduct had little to do with whether Dowie had lied to me or not, and I was to keep answering the questions without being clever or facetious. But my nature got the better of me.

After almost a day and a half of repetitive questions surrounding my character I was becoming very fidgety in the witness box. I was sitting on a bloody uncomfortable chair and had a dead bum. I let out a yawn, which McParland saw and asked if I was OK.

‘I am OK, thank you, just a little bored,’ was my unwise response.

‘Bored?’ he boomed. ‘How dare you be bored? You have a man on trial here facing conviction of fraud and you are bored?’

So I topped and tailed it. ‘I am not bored of the proceedings. I am frankly bored of you and your repetitive newspaper articles and character assassinations.’

This got a smirk from McParland and a glare from John Davies so I apologised to the judge for my comment and enquired, to the great amusement of the court gallery, if I could have a cushion if I was going to stay there much longer as my backside was asleep.

McParland continued with the newspaper articles and used one rather cleverly against me. He asked if I considered myself to be a Machiavellian character, a fact I immediately dismissed. He followed that up with: ‘If not in character, do you act in a Machiavellian way?’ and again I responded robustly that under no circumstances was I Machiavellian. Then he took me to a newspaper article where
in
my own words I described an action I had taken as being Machiavellian.

‘Hmm,’ I mused. ‘That’s not very helpful for me,’ I said ruefully. To which I got a grin from my interrogator.

The final exchange of note was around the financial position of both Crystal Palace and myself. He alleged that Palace and I were in severe financial difficulty. He based this on his assumption of how much money I had and Palace’s accounts over the last two years, and on both fronts he was very wide of the mark.

He said it was a matter of public record that I had stated I had spent £30 million-plus on Palace to date and went on to conclude that, given I was a 50 per cent shareholder in The PocketPhone Shop which had been sold for £75 million, I would have got £37.5 million, thus I had spent the bulk of my money. What he didn’t know was I had a completely different deal with my ex-partner in that business and I was bound by a confidentiality document of non-disclosure and I was not going to divulge that to him! He demanded the judge order me to disclose, at which point I spoke directly to Judge Tugendhat, saying that I was not prepared to breach that legal agreement even if it risked contempt of court. Despite McParland’s blustering the judge upheld my position and ordered that we move on.

McParland then attacked Palace’s financial position, saying that in the last filed accounts from 2005–06, turnover had dropped by £11 million from the previous year and the club was in dire financial trouble. He could not have got it more wrong. What he had neglected to understand from the balance sheet was that despite losing turnover, profits had gone up from £5.1 million to £11 million in those two years; ironically and incredibly helpfully in this instance these were the only two years in my tenure the club posted
anything
resembling a profit. He misunderstood the construction of a balance sheet: player transfers didn’t go to turnover, they went straight on the bottom line for accountancy purposes; in 2006 I had sold in excess of £12 million worth of players.

I painstakingly pointed this out to him and very quickly he wanted to close this subject. But I couldn’t resist labouring the point and asked would he like me to help him read a balance sheet, as I was concerned that his lack of understanding could jeopardise his client’s position. When I asked again, for the benefit of the mirth-filled courtroom, whether he was certain he didn’t want me to help him to comprehend the figures in front of him, he responded angrily: ‘Mr Jordan, I ask the questions not you!’ And once that exchange was over I was very shortly dismissed from the witness box.

Soon enough Iain Dowie was called but not before his brother Bob took to the stand in his defence and proceeded to contradict himself left right and centre. He had given two statements, one directly after Dowie had joined Charlton and he was in my employment, and an entirely different one some eight months later when he was not. My QC poked and prodded and got Bob to admit that the first statement, which was more favourable to us, was likely to be the more accurate. In effect, Bob had gone on the stand and had hindered rather than helped his brother’s case!