Charges droppped against satellite football licensee
A licensee's solicitor has hit out at Sky and the FA Premier League for waiting until the "eleventh hour" to drop charges against his client for showing foreign satellite football.
Paul Dixon, of Molesworths, Bright and Clegg was unhappy after Media Protection Services (MPS), the company employed to prosecute on behalf of Sky and the FAPL, withdrew charges against Catherine Kerss just days before she was due to go to trial this week.
Kerss, license of the Wheatsheaf in Chester-le-Street, was being prosecuted for showing the Tottenham Hotspur v Wigan Athletic match on February 19 this year.
She was due in court this week but found out last week that charges had been dropped.
The prosecution hasn't just fallen away and if she continues to show it she will be prosecutedDan Johnson, FAPL spokesman.
Dixon told the Morning Advertiser: "Whilst we are delighted yet another industrious and upstanding licensee has seen prosecutions against her discontinued, we are bitterly disappointed that MPS ignored our request months ago to discontinue all outstanding prosecutions and left it until the eleventh hour to drop the charges against Catherine. This has caused her unnecessary distress."
However, FAPL spokesman Dan Johnson defended the decision, saying if Kerss was to continue showing foreign satellite football she would be prosecuted again - using a different section of the law.
He told the Morning Advertiser: "It is an old case and we have heeded the view of the courts in recent judgements - on the subjective and objective dishonestly of the licensees involved.
"However, the prosecution hasn't just fallen away and if she continues to show it she will be prosecuted using a section of the law we think negates the subjective, objective dishonesty defence."
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