Manchester City’s guilty verdict in their legal battle with the Premier League was the big news of yesterday, and the case was argued by two teams of heavyweight barristers whose track records stretch well beyond football.
Leading the City team was David Pannick KC, one of the foremost barristers of his generation and long renowned for representing the rich and powerful. His previous clients include Queen Elizabeth II, Boris Johnson and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, along with more than one billionaire sheikh. Pannick charges £5,000 an hour — not quite Erling Haaland’s £500,000 a week, but hardly modest. In 2019 he charged £407,250 for defending Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber al-Thani, a former Qatari prime minister, in a case involving a two-day trial that the crossbench peer did not attend.
Alongside Pannick on City’s side was Paul Harris KC, a leading sport and commercial silk who also led the club’s successful appeal before the court of arbitration for sport (Cas) against Uefa’s Champions League ban for alleged breaches of financial fair play rules. He is said to have been a trusted adviser to City for more than 20 years.
The Premier League’s team was headed by Adam Lewis KC, widely regarded as the country’s preeminent sports barrister and co-author of the leading textbook in the field. His significant cases include acting for Chelsea at Cas when the club successfully halved a two-transfer-window ban imposed by Fifa, and representing Premiership Rugby at an independent tribunal where the champions Saracens were found to have breached salary cap regulations.
Andrew Hunter KC was also on the Premier League brief, with a CV that takes in rugby’s “bloodgate” scandal and Formula One’s spygate affair, when McLaren were fined $100m — then £50m — and docked all their points in the constructors’ championship after being found in possession of documents belonging to Ferrari.
The third member of the league’s legal team, Jason Pobjoy KC, represented the Premier League alongside Lewis in the case that saw Everton docked points for breaching financial rules. Pobjoy argued that Everton’s “unreasonable conduct in the proceedings unnecessarily and significantly increased” costs for the league, which sought to recover £4.9m in lawyers’ fees; Everton countered that the costs were “eye-watering” and were ultimately ordered to pay only £1.7m. Pobjoy has also represented the Football Association, but is best known for his civil liberties, public and human rights law work, including substantial pro bono cases.
Away from the legal arguments, there is no Premier League action on today’s schedule, with the focus instead on 10 Nations League fixtures and two WSL games.