West Ham and London Stadium owners E20 were back in the court in August and September according to a court decision made in early October which has recently been published online.
Mr Justice Snowden in the High Court of Justice made his decision on 5th October after previous hearings 16-17 August, 11 and 13 September this year.
The latest legal challenge by West Ham involved the lack of disclosure or excessive redactions of documents and emails provided by E20 to West Ham’s legal team in advance of the capacity court case which starts on 19th November.
West Ham are already 6-0 up in legal disputes with the public stadium owners having won four expert determination legal contract points and two injunctions. The judge again found mostly for West Ham awarding them 50% of legal costs saying E20 was too late in their process to remove or amend redaction in their disclosure. E20 were left with their our legal costs on top on the amount they must pay West Ham.
It could argued that the Hammers are now 7-0 up and looking for that final goal in November to make it a 8-0 humiliation as they look to keep a clean sheet of legal cases against the London Stadium owners.
For the legal beagles among you the decision notice can be found at http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Ch/2018/2578.html
Besides the club being successful in all theses cases the thing I take from this is that the LLDC must be receiving appalling (or ignoring) legal advice. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde “to lose one case is unfortunate, to lose seven is careless!”
When the loser also picks up the costs as has been the case with all these cases the LLDC has lost it does beggar belief that they still want to go to court, the 60000 capacity for example seems like another guaranteed loser for them and Brady estimates that case will cost £4m to the loser, it will cost the stadium next to nothing to grant and anything it does cost will be more than catered for (pun intended) in food and drink sales. Hopefully Lyn Garner will see sense and scrap these cases before the bill mounts any higher, while they are at it consider increasing capacity to 66000.