A FORMER Scotland international footballer is set to argue that a judge who ruled he was a rapist erred on the law and in his treatment of critical evidence.
David Goodwillie, 28, and his ex-Dundee United teammate David Robertson, 30, were ordered to pay Denise Clair £100,000 damages after she sued them claiming they sexually assaulted and raped her.
Both men accepted that they had sex with her after a night out in Bathgate, in West Lothian, but maintained it was consensual.
Neither was prosecuted through the criminal courts but Ms Clair, 31, brought a civil action for damages at the Court of Session in Edinburgh against them.
Earlier this year Lord Armstrong said in a judgment that he found the evidence in support of her case to be “cogent, persuasive and compelling”.
He said that both players “took advantage of the pursuer when she was vulnerable through an excessive intake of alcohol and, because her cognitive functioning and decision-making processes were so impaired, was incapable of giving meaningful consent; and that they each raped her.”
Both men have appealed against the ruling and a two-day hearing for the legal challenge, in which it is claimed that the definition of consent applied by Lord Armstrong was erroneous, was set for November after a brief appearance before Lord Malcolm.
Laura Thomson, junior counsel for former Dundee United and Aberdeen striker Goodwillie, said transcripts of some of the evidence led before Lord Armstrong would be available to the appeal judges.
Ms Thomson said this included the testimony of Clifford Wilson who was an upstairs neighbour at the flat where the rape said to have taken place.
She said: “He said certain things consistent with consent or alternatively consistent with reasonable or honest belief in consent.”
Mr Wilson told the court he heard male and female voices from the downstairs flat talking and laughing. He also heard the woman saying not to handle her breasts so hard.
Lord Armstrong said that in his assessment Mr Wilson’s evidence was “sufficiently confused that little reliance ought to be placed on it”.
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