Supremes' Court Keeps Me Hangin' On

As we await the Appeal Court's overdue judgment, maybe this is a good time to state the relevant facts. There is a comments section below, if anyone wishes to dispute (or add to) those facts.

2011: I buy the company which owns Athlone Town Stadium. It holds two charges: with Westmeath County Council for €507,895 and with the Minister for Sport for €2,800,000. The latter charge expires on 1-1-2022.

2012: I reach agreement with Athlone Town (Association) Football Club on its transformation to cooperative ownership and control.

For reasons as yet unexplained, the executive committee of Athlone Town (A)FC hands over complete control of the club to one non-member.

Athlone Town (A)FC decides it doesn't want to be a cooperative anymore, but it does want to keep the money I invested in the cooperative.

2013: Athlone Town (A)FC refuses to pay the rent.

2014: Athlone Town (A)FC refuses to pay the rent.

2015: Athlone Town (A)FC refuses to pay the rent and the FAI refuses to use its powers as regulator to make them pay.

Athlone Town (A)FC agrees to pay the rent if we sign a Deed of Trust. ATSL solicitor Martin Egan makes sure the trust contract is safe to sign. We sign it and also sign a new lease.

Athlone Town (A)FC refuses to pay the rent. ATSL runs out of money and can no longer pay the insurance.

2016: Athlone Town (A)FC refuses to pay the rent and the FAI refuses to make them pay. Former ATSL solicitor Martin Egan warns its directors that they will be facing the High Court if they don't sign another new lease with AT(A)FC.

Athlone Town (A)FC and/or companies associated with the club sign(s) contracts with Prè Season, a match-fixing and money laundering syndicate.

2017: The match-fixing creates a bit of a stir, probably the first time Athlone has made (minor) international headlines in the 95 years since the Free State took over Custume Barracks. The Gardaì don't investigate for reasons as yet unexplained and the matter is soon forgotten.

AT(A)FC refuses to pay the rent and the FAI refuses to make them pay.

John Delaney and the FAI make two attempts to take ownership of the stadium, first time for free and second time with a contract I consider too dodgy for signing.

Garda Dully takes proceedings against ATSL. There is no vote on the matter at a meeting of part of the club's executive committee (see below) or at the club's AGM (see below). There is a vote at the AGM on transferring the club's affairs to a new company Athlone Town AFC Ltd. which is three men - Garda Dully, John Hayden and Michael O'Connor. The members are not given any notice of the motion, nor are they given copies of the constitution of the company.

Donald Binchy is replaced as judge by Richard Humphreys.

The directors of ATSL are told that AT(A)FC is not a legal entity, therefore all its contracts with the club are invalid. We are however advised to accept the validity of the Deed of Trust in order to speed up the FAI's third attempt at taking ownership of the stadium, this time by paying for it in full.

2018: Counsel for ATSL decides to dispense with the services of its accountant Philip O'Farrell as a witness just before trial. Messrs. McCaul and Temple are also not used.

13 bank statements, a document of personal accounts prepared to assist the FAI in its purchase and a conspicuously innocent page of bank charges are planted with one of my affidavits. When I uncover them, they (see *34* in 'The Undisputed Truth?' - November 15th) are quickly re-exhibited with an unfiled affidavit, on the pretext of their being representative of my investment in our company. They are, in a fuzzy kind of way, and they are the only documents of any significance exhibited by our company. But all of the payments are included in the second to eight (pages 96 to 102) bank statements.

The affidavit of Damien Milton is not challenged. The affidavits of David Dully and John Hayden are effectively unchallenged. No mention is made of the contracts with Prè Season. Garda Dully's case is nonsense but it succeeds according to the laws of propaganda (repeating a few points over and over) and the property is transferred to Athlone Town AFC Ltd. What this means is that assuming the subsuming of the club into that company is legal (it isn't) and assuming that the two Athlone solicitors who were overheard by another solicitor (or more likely, the three solicitors who met) on April 16th 2018 had their information correct about the property being earmarked for development purposes, then the two directors of that company will decide how the take is distributed. The club members and Garda Dully can negotiate, but they will have no real say in the matter.

A new club called Athlone Town Athletic Football Club is introduced in the judgment. The only evidence of what it is will be Mr. McCaul's averment on December 4th 2019 that ''I've heard there was a -- I don't know if (it) has a football function''. In itself, this is inadmissible hearsay. But Mr. McCaul is Athlone's Mr. Football and also a former President of the FAI. Which gives his hearsay some heft. The post-proceedings appearance of the new 'club' is the most significant achievement in the carefully constructed pseudo-reality of the Plaintiff's case.

Garda Dully is allowed to sue our company for damages.

I file an affidavit exhibiting a vital document in respect of Garda Dully's claim for €121,445 of a VAT rebate, a Heads of Agreements (see *4* in 'The Undisputed Truth? - November 15th). The affidavit is struck out following an elaborate play between the counsels. Garda Dully is awarded his claim in full, €160,673 for the members of Athlone Town Athletic Football Club - which, if Mr. McCaul's hearsay is correct, is a pretty remarkable award to something other than a football club. He doesn't claim the €5,000 from O2 on Page 2 (95) of *34*, giving that page an extension of the innocence of Page 3 to offset the lucrative final five bank statements (€128,645 successfully netted).

Garda Dully is allowed to sue the three directors of ATSL for the €160,673. This gift is apparently based on the Mooreview Vs First Active judgment's awarding of costs against a director of the plaintiff (Mooreview). Our company has never sued anyone.

2019: An actual defence is mounted this time. Strong affidavits are put together for Cieran Temple, Philip O'Farrell, John Comber and Tom Burke (See 'Come and Get it' - November 11th and 'Hallelujah' & 'It Can't Get Better' - November 12th). Having been pressured into providing these, the lawyers have to come up with a new way of looking after Garda Dully's people. My unchallenged affidavit of November 18th 2019 (see 'The Creature from the Black Lagoon' - November 16th) details how they chose to railroad a 'settlement', which takes flight after all three new witnesses fail to turn up. Mr. McCaul agrees to the pre-settlement agreement, Mr. Temple agrees to the parts of it he was present for before being asked to leave and I agree to none of it. None of the three directors/shareholders is asked if he agrees with the 'settlement' itself.

€50,000 of our company's money is redirected by solicitors and court officials to the Plaintiff's solicitor.

The 'settlement' is in effect appealed, though the hearing takes place in the High Court before the usual judge. At one stage, a key witness finds himself being cross-examined by one close friend while another close friend judges his testimony. The resulting Eight Judgment is a masterpiece of confirmation bias, almost comically so, especially when it makes up its own facts.

2020: The appeal against the Eight Judgment takes place. Despite €120,000 being paid by our company for the appeal (€60,000 to cover Garda Dully's people, another €60,000 to cover Mr. McCaul's people), the Judgment is effectively unchallenged. The unchallenged affidavits of Messrs. Burke, Comber, O'Farrell, Temple and myself are ignored by the three judges and by the counsels for myself, Mr. Temple and our company. This seems to be a continuation of the process whereby Judge Humphreys could say (as in the succinct and logical paragraph 21 of his first judgment) ''Mr. Milton was not cross-examined on his affidavit, and therefore I accept his affidavit in full'' and then later ignore the unchallenged affidavits from our side. In minor mitigation, in his eight judgment he did use some quotes without context from my unchallenged November 18th 2019 affidavit which quotes he obviously felt would aid Garda Dully's cause. That is more than the three Appeal Court judges are likely to do, certainly more than Judge Costello did at the security for costs hearing in July. This memory holing of any evidence which is likely to damage the favoured side should be worrying for anyone with a passing interest in the justice system. Even a serial killer is likely (and entitled) to have his version of events considered by the judge and jury. I don't expect the average citizen to care less whether a field in Athlone is kept for sporting purposes or turned into apartments and housing. But none of us knows the day or hour when we might be summoned into a court of law. And contrary to what we automatically think when it happens to someone else, we might well be innocent. Which means that every citizen should have confidence that the system will give them a fair hearing. I am certain that criminal law is nowhere near as corrupt as civil law. That is a priori, as neutral eyes are more likely to scan a criminal case, and opportunities for unethical financial gain by the lawyers are much, much rarer on that side of the law anyway. Obviously, a civil case defendant is much less likely to go to jail. But that can change too, especially in a rigged case like ours where the designated client victim says 'Wait a minute, what's going on here?' I promise, in that case the threats of jail will come to the questioner/whistleblower. They may not be acted upon, for fear of publicity, but they will come. It is really no more subtle than Carry on Dick - appropriate considering the two prominent Richards in our case.

So ...... What Now?

It appears that the Appeal Court judges may have a problem, I say 'problem' based on my assumption that just like (it appears) everyone else in law they want us to lose. The problem in that case is that rejecting our appeal, lax as it was, is to say that five parties can be bound to the written agreement when a maximum of one of them was asked to approve it before it was announced to the court on May 23rd 2019. If the judges do this, then we will have an unanswerable challenge to come in the Supreme Court and they will have some explaining to do. Of course, we have had unanswerable cases before but we've also had counsels who insisted on only presenting the eminently answerable. The Supreme Court is different. A point of law is raised and the eight judges evaluate it on its merits.

In the meantime, what I said about a military dictatorship stands. I will accept the breaking up of the cooperative and the confiscation of the property as long as nobody pretends that any of it happened as part of a justice system. A military dictatorship meets its own costs, the target is not expected to deliver them. Therefore I expect the lawyers to do the same. As long as any of them holds a cent of my or our company's money, I will do everything I can to destroy the reputations of these guys as they destroyed mine and as they combined to deny me the right to restore it. And although I believe that barristers and all who work for them (solicitors, judges etc.) are above the law [Patrick Russell was already a known criminal when he was welcomed into the Law Library], if I can help to put any of them behind bars I certainly will do my best.

Merry Christmas Y'all