If Caisley and his legal advisors thought their case was water tight then they should have had the courage to believe that the court would have found in their favour. Financial might does not come into it. They knew they were wrong and tried to bluff with a poor hand and lost.

That's an extremely naive view of both the world of business and the legal system.

Principles and belief are all well and good, but they don't pay your legal bills and with any litigation (no matter how strong you believe your case to be) there's a chance you'll still lose. Had Bradford gone to court and lost, there's a very strong possibility that could have been the end of the club.

Had Leeds gone to court and lost, they would most likely have been left with some very large legal bills to settle but nothing that would have placed the long term future of the club in jeopardy.

Completely agree and even if Buderus does go i wouldn't bring in him when we have Mcshane and Hood.
If we are gonna reinfoce and improve our current squad then we need a New Centre ,BR and at least 1 Prop imo.

New centre and one good prop IMO. Hopefully new impact Br if we can get rid of Ali and Hauraki.

I do fear though that we are going to retain far too many of our OOC players

But being in the wrong over a signing (as Caisley clearly was) should not of itself put the very future of the club at serious risk. It takes a £3m plus lawsuit, and the ability - hardly concealed - to fund a legal action for as long and as much as it takes - against a club with no significant financial resources - to do that.

IMO justice can never be seen to be fairly done when one party can afford to spend - and take a big hit - far more than can the other.

Equally, only an idiot goes and pokes a big animal with a sharp stick without being in a position to defend oneself when the beast responds to the provocation.

Anyway, Gareth knows my take on all this and also why I believe the Bulls capitulated.

You know very little about business men.
That's a given in any case, so why defend when Leeds had a signed contract with Harris, that puts Caisley behind the 8 ball before he even starts. He knew the figures involved so why not negotiate from the start? He called GH's bluff that he wouldn't go to court and played poker with his club. He allowed his vanity to interfere with his business logic and if he believed he had the strongest hand he would have gone all the way.

Firstly, the costs of the legal action were exacerbated by the Bulls themselves. They drew it out, they took a preliminary objection to the High Court. To then pretend they're an unwilling victim in a high stakes legal poker game where they kept upping the ante gets them no sympathy from me.

Secondly, let's not paint a distorted picture here. This wasn't a large conglomerate taking man on the street to court. It was one Limited Company suing another Limited Company. One had more resources than the other, admittedly, but both had the resources to fund the case because they did so and the smaller company upped the ante with their approach within the litigation.

Thirdly, I do not for one minute believe the extent of the potential financial losses to the Bulls that were bandied about at the time as the justification for capitulating in an action that the had vehemently contested to that point. They lost the appetite, for reasons I understood. They had to sell their capitulation to their supporter base. They were not, for one minute, in danger of "going under" if they had lost the case. Just as they rumoured significant settlement hasn't put them under.

The Bulls could afford to spend when they took their preliminary objection. The Bulls could afford to spend when we were awaiting the outcome of the mainstream appeal. Suddenly, as a trial approached the Bulls couldn't afford to spend? Was it that or was it reality that they were wrong and thought they were going to lose?

As you will see, I do not accept you were in no position to defend yourself. You did defend yourself, vehemently for a number of years. You just raised the white flag as the fight neared the end.

And you know mine and you know it's not a sympathetic one. The Bulls were not at any stage of this process the poor little "victims" they have painted themselves as since the settlement. You weren't bullied. You provoked a fight, you didn't walk away from that fight, you threw plenty of punches but when you thought you might lose you threw in the towel.

So why did the Bulls fight, vehemently, for a number of years?

I recall a very smug FA on RA&B telling me when the "Mainstream" decision was published that it blew Leeds case against the Bulls out of the water. I interpreted the decision differently at the time. It appears the Bulls and Leeds did as well.

Do you really think that the Bulls would've handed over a six figure settlement (rumoured) if they thought they might win? I think the extent of the rumoured settlement showed the true belief both sides had in the strength of their case. And if the Bulls did pay us the rumoured settlement and are still in business why would a loss in court have put them under?

Wrong on several counts.

Caisley is a lawyer. He knows everything there is to know about the law. He needs no legal advisers. He knew that the restraints placed on Harris by Leeds amounted to an unenforceable restrictive covenant. He was right because he always is.

Not long after Mr Justice Gray showed Caisley in fact he DIDN'T know everything about the law, and in fact WASN'T right, Caisley departed. It was left to his successor to clear up the mess he left over this affair.

What Andy Gilder said then is spot on. Except he does not go far enought. Losing the case, even if for a notional damages award, would have been ruinous for the Bulls. Losing - on any conceivable terms - would have sent the club into financial oblivion. If you do not believe me, just read the accounts (if you have the necessary sklill). The same most definitely could not be said for Leeds (who already had Judge Gray's Decision behind them).

One day, it will come out why the Bulls (post-Caisley) legal advisors will have advised the board that they could not rely on the "Mainstream Developments" ruling, and therefore why they could not be sure of not losing and therefore had to act in accordance with their fiduciary and statutory responsibilities as directors. But today is not that day.



And I know a LOT about "business men". And you seemingly know little about the facts of the case. Which revolved around four "interlocking" (per Mr Justice Gray) contracts, and Caisley assuming that they amounted to an unfair restraint of trade whereas Judge Gray ruled it was a fair restraint of trade. Caisley made a judgment call and lost. Whether or not Caisley was aware of the existence of all the agreements before he signed Harris is, I suspect, pretty central to much of what subsequently happened. And, as I said, it was not Caisley who was left to defend the action brought by the richest club in the game with a determined and (IMO now, understandably) very angry owner.


And as for the diatribe from Gareth: Gareth, I have told you privately in the past why I believe the Bulls capitulated, how shocked I was to deduce that the Bulls' legal advisers had seemingly concluded that seeking to rely on Mainstream was unsafe, and you therefore know why I cannot say it on here. You are therefore able to present an argument safe in the knowledge that I cannot properly respond.

And, regardless of who was in the wrong, and who may or may not have acted recklessly in proceeding as they did (and you know who I blame, and I am hardly making much of a secret of it), I have told you privately why losing this action - and on the basis that would have meant an order for costs againt Bradford - WOULD have bankrupted the Bulls - unless someone could have been found to have injected whatever the legal costs and damages were. And if you care to take a look in the most recent published accounts, and maybe even do a bit of extrapolating, you - or at least someone who can read a set of accounts - would see quite clearly why.

As someone who knows a lot about business people and someone who knows about Companies you should also understand the corporate veil. Whilst it might suit those now in situ to lay the blame solely at his door it was not Chris Caisley personally who signed Harris, it was not Chris Caisley personally who ignored Hetherington and pushed for the RFL to register Harris, it was not Chris Caisley personally who defended the Leeds claim, it was not Chris Caisley personally who upped the anti with the failed preliminary issue, it was not Chris Caisley personally who strung the case out awaiting the Mainstream decision and it was not Chris Caisley personally who capitulated when his actions were about to be judged.

All of the above actions were by the limited company that owns and operates the Bradford Bulls.

I am able to read company searches without any assistance and what those searches reveal is that Mr Caisley might well have been a director of that company for some of those actions a certain Mr Peter Michael Quarmby Hood was a director throughout all of those actions and remains so. So, you swallow the line fed to you by Mr Hood if it suits but, unlike Caisley he was and remains a director throughout the whole sorry affair.

Moving the argument onto a different field Gareth?

I do indeed know a thing or two about boards, yes, having served on a number myself.

You are of course quite corerect in pointing out that Caisley was not the only director. He was, though, the only real executive director. And you will find few people with any knowledge of how things worked who would say anything other than Caisley (also easily the largest shareholder too) made the decisions. He was clearly - from all he said - the driver behind the Harris signing, and of course he provided legal expertise on the Board and was the one to whom the board would presumably defer on matters legal? He was, after all, senior partner in the law firm that was also the Bulls' legal advisors. Same way as you would expect them to defer to an accountant on matters financial. And, having met the guy and seen him in action and spoken with other partners in his firm, he commands a very powerful presence that it is not easy to argue against.

None of us know what exactly happened within the board over the duration of this affair. Hood has fed me personally no line whatsoever - I have never ever discussed it with him. I owe what I know to other sources of information, and what I deduce to my own powers of reasoning. That is why, for instance, you will find what I opine on this whole debacle does not in a number of areas accord at all with the public party line presented by the club. I thought better of you than to imply I was merely repeating the party line. Indeed, you know I am not.

One of the things I see is that Bulls lost the preliminary hearing in a judgment dated 20/7/05. That preliminary hearing was agreed to by ALL the parties, to establish, inter alia, whether the restrictive covenant was enforceable or not. I cannot see how you can blame the Bulls for "upping the ante" beyond seeking to defend themselves against a £3m-plus lawsuit by agreeing to the preliminary hearing? But anyway...up until the preliminary hearing, the legal advice to the board was - presumably -that the Bulls' case was strong, and that the court was likely to rule the restrictive covenant unenforceable. Had it not been, it is hard to conceive any board continuing to defend the action? The Bulls lawyers were the legal firm in which Caisley was senior partner. After the Bulls (and Harris, let us not forget - he was first-named defendant) saw they had lost the case, which then allowed Leeds to proceed with their full multi-million pound action, we none of us know what happened around the boardroom table. What we DO know is that on 20/12/05, 5 months later, Caisley announced he was resigning as Chairman and director.

We do not know the circumstances of his resignation, and the extent - if any - to which it was connected with the Harris case debacle. We do not know if he walked or was pushed. We can speculate, but as it stands that is all we can do. One line of speculation is that the board collectively took action - maybe in the light of the above. Whatever happened, the remaining board then had to bring the issue to a conclusion. I hardly need to spell out all the "what may have happened" scenarios? But there are of course multiple precedents for a board to change direction regarding a major issue once a key executive dominant board member has moved on. Especially if maybe that board sought more independent advice as a result?

Whether or not relevant to this case, there are plenty of examples of hindsight showing that maybe members of a board should perhaps have questioned the executive earlier or more thoroughly about a major issue that went wrong. I have personal experience of just that, regarding a plc board I served on. And, briefly, it went something like "so you have been assured verbally by the three most senior directors that [transaction] is valid and in order; do you accept those assurances?" My choices were to accept, or to effectively say they were liars (as it transpired at least one was) and have to resign - and both get blamed for the crisis I saw looming AND help exacerbate that crisis by the act of my resigning. Catch-22. I agreed to accept their word, but for the statement to be minuted. And then, when they subsequently declined to minute it, I did not resign. A weak decision I look back on with no pride or honour whatsoever. THAT is why I feel able to consider what may conceivably have been the realities of the situation, for real people in the real world. I've been there.

Whilst all parties will have no doubt agreed to have the legality of a restraint of trade tried as a preliminary issue it can only have been because the Bulls alleged it was an illegal restrain of trade in the first place.

Lawyers advise and act as agents of the company. The decision to defend the claim and the grounds of the defence will have been made by the Bulls, on the advice of their lawyers, but not by the lawyers.

Hood was, at all material times, a director and, therefore a party to all of the shenanigans. I admire the "spin" he put on the settlement and the complete lack of culpability on his part for the mess.

I think I've canvassed my view sufficiently now but I shall continue to offer the alternative view of the affair as the poor bulls being victims of a shady Caisley and a massive conglomerate battering them unjustly into submission. Of course, history should be written by the victors but GH and Leeds have, to their credit, maintained a dignified silence about the settlement.

As indeed have the Bulls. There has never been any public statement or other comment from the club or its officials reported in the media since the one and only announcement that there had been a settlement. Which is as you would expect, since the settlement agreement will assuredly have contained confidentiality provisions.

Comments from fans and others speculating are of course something separate.

And anyway, unto the victor the spoils. As ever.

In the personal example I described, I too was a director throughout the whole mess. Therefore, I too could not escape my share of responsibility - even though I only stayed a director because I felt that way led to less harm being done than had I resigned. And I was not also a shareholder, unlike the usual situation around club boardroom tables. Doubtless the reader can form his or her own views about your comments on continuing as a director - and one with less clout than most - during a period when there was a crisis to resolve.

You used the term "shady Caisley". I have seen him referred to as many things, from the Second Coming to the Antichrist; "shady" is not an epithet I have seen applied to him before though, nor is it one I would choose to apply.

Anyway, I too have canvassed my view sufficiently. Anyone bored and objective enough enough to want to act as jury can doubtless form their own views, but nothing will change the outcome of Harrisgate and all its various manifestations, the outcome of which for one club at least proved severe in the extreme.

Interesting, particularily the bit where he says "I'd like to. I'm playing again next year and one of my aims is to feature in that World Cup"... Reckon that the contractual situation at HQ might be a bit more developed than they are letting on?

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