07 August 2006

Appeal technicalities

Will The News of the World appeal the decision in the Sheridan case? The Scotsman thinks so:
"THE next battle in the Tommy Sheridan libel saga kicked off yesterday when the News of the World printed the grounds upon which it would base its appeal against Friday's judgment.
But experts warned that the case was unlikely to come to court for at least a year and would be a tough one to prove. Any appeal is a painstakingly slow process.
The Sunday tabloid will have to enrol a motion for a new trial at the Court of Session, the formal process to lodge an appeal.
Within a month it will be expected to lodge written grounds of appeal, which will transfer the case to the Inner House of the Court of Session.
Three judges chosen from the Inner House, Scotland's eight most senior judges, will then be assigned the case and a date chosen for a hearing.
But Roddy Dunlop, an advocate at the Scottish bar specialising in defamation, said the case would take at least a year because both the court diary and the diary of Michael Jones, QC, who is likely to represent the News of the World, were so busy.
Mr Dunlop said the paper would have to prove the decision of the jury was perverse by proving their own evidence was so reliable. "The grounds of appeal they are going for is that only a perverse jury could have found in favour of Mr Sheridan: ie the verdict was contrary to the evidence."

On the other hand, a legal expert in The Herald thinks not:
"Tommy Sheridan has wiped the floor with the News of the World. Its subsequent show of bravado and talk of appeal is just the petulance of a child who has had its toy confiscated. It has no appeal – the jury's verdict based on its view of the evidence heard will stand. Let's have no more talk of further court proceedings. It's over. The Fat Lady has sung – official."

It is unclear if the expert thinks that an appeal will not succeed or that it will not take place.

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