Bosses at Rangers Football Club are embroiled in the latest round of a long-running High Court battle with Sports Direct boss Mike Ashley centred on merchandise sales.
Lawyers representing a company in the Sports Direct Group say Rangers’ bosses are in breach of obligations under a deal relating to replica kit.
They say SDI Retail Services are having to bring “serial court proceedings”.
Rangers bosses dispute claims made against them.
A judge began to oversee the latest in a series of hearings at the High Court in London on Monday.
Judge Lionel Persey is due to finish analysing evidence later this week.
Mr Ashley, who also owns Newcastle United, was not at the hearing.
Rangers lost a round of the fight in October.
Another judge ruled that Rangers had breached the terms of an agreement made with SDI.
Mr Justice Teare concluded that bosses at Rangers had made a new agreement with another firm without giving SDI a chance to match that firm’s offer.
SDI bosses have subsequently made further complaints about Rangers not complying with commercial obligations.
Barrister Sa’ad Hossain QC, who is leading SDI’s legal team, outlined the history of the dispute to Judge Persey and listed five sets of proceedings.
READ MORE: Rangers lose latest round of High Court merchandise fight with Mike Ashley
He said another company was continuing to sell replica kit, contrary to a deal.
“SDI is having to compel Rangers to comply with its obligations through serial court proceedings,” he said.
“Rangers seems unwilling to do so voluntarily.”
Ben Quiney QC, who leads Rangers’ legal team, said “key battlegrounds” revolved around disagreement over the definition of certain commercial “activities”.
He said a main dispute centred on the meaning of “distributing”.
Mr Quiney told the judge: “SDI have put their case too wide and it doesn’t make sense.”
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 hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel