Craig Whyte has been ordered to pay out an additional £20,000 in legal expenses after losing another battle in a court case over money he owes to a roofing company.
Whyte, who has already been instructed to pay almost £90,000 to Glasgow-based company One Stop Roofing Supplies for unpaid bills, has to hand over the extra money after losing a hearing at the city's sheriff court yesterday.
One Stop Roofing, owned by Paul Martin, who is the part-time manager of Albion Rovers, won a case against Whyte's firm Tixway UK earlier this month. It also sought payment of its legal expenses – including instructing counsel in the case.
Whyte's solicitors agreed to pay basic expenses, but not the fees for counsel. However, Sheriff Nigel Ross yesterday found in favour of One Stop Roofing.
The company's lawyer, Richard Barrie, told the court that counsel was required to defend the firm's reputation in light of the media attention the case attracted.
He said: "Mr Whyte's position was that the pursuers were trying to embarrass him into payment because, in his words, he was a 'public figure'.
"He described the owners of the firm as 'opportunists' and as far as he was concerned, they were lying about the circumstances of the arrangement that the parties entered into.
"The two directors of the company have worked hard over the last 20 years to build their business up and in the event that they lost this case, the media coverage would have been adverse to the company and the two directors. The cost to the pursuer's reputation would have been considerable."
Solicitor Carolyn Morgan, representing Tixway, argued the case was simple enough to be dealt with by solicitors, but Sheriff Ross refused to accept this.
Mr Barrie requested that he sanction payment for senior or junior counsel and the sheriff granted a payment for junior counsel.
Sheriff Ross said: "In my view, given that the reputation of the pursuer was at stake, it was entirely reasonable to take steps to protect that reputation in the light of great media interest. In the event of a loss in this case, the reputation of the pursuer would have been seriously damaged."
The Herald understands that if the sheriff had granted standard expenses, Whyte would only have had to pay £10,000. Instead, he now has to pay an estimated total of around £110,000 to the firm.
During the original hearing over unpaid bills amassed prior to his takeover at Ibrox, Sheriff Ross criticised Whyte for giving "wholly unreliable" evidence in court.
Whyte denied he owed the money, claiming his agreement with the company was only to secure materials to repair his 15th-century home, Castle Grant, near Granton-on-Spey, Speyside.
However, One Stop sent around 600 to 800 invoices to Whyte and claimed that £86,127 remained outstanding.
Sheriff Ross concluded: "I reject the evidence of Mr Whyte as wholly unreliable."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article