Snuffed Out

It’s almost as though they’re doing it deliberately. Oracle and the Golden Gate Yacht Club, that is… I barely manage to get a blog up before they move another chess piece and change the dynamics of the game again. This is the third week on the trot that it’s happened, or maybe they just have their lawyers working on this stuff the same day that I post.

Anyway, barely had I typed the words… If there is a glimmer of light, it’s that the newly set-up Arbitration Panel will start to consider the case of Oracle’s second Challenge and court action… than the Golden Gate Yacht Club (GGYC) come up with a letter from their lawyers to the head of the aforementioned Arbitration Panel, Professor Henry Peter.

It’s not, shall we say, written in the language of someone who intends to arbitrate anything anytime soon. In fact, it claims that the processes set up for the arbitration in Alinghi’s Protocol, ‘violate the most basic principles of justice and independence common to all legitimate adjudicatory bodies and are an affront to the most basic sensibilities common to all law abiding people.’

Right. So see you all in court, then.

The basis of the GGYC’s view seems to be (and I’m no lawyer, you really should follow the link and make your own mind up) that Alinghi’s control of the Arbitration Panel means it’s nothing more than a ‘Kangaroo Court’ (GGYC’s words, not mine), that the referral of the case artificially sets Challenger of Record, Club Nautico Espanol de Vela (CNEV), against Alinghi, when they’re actually on the same side (rather than GGYC against the pair of them) and that the only court that has jurisdiction in this matter is the New York State Supreme Court.

Oh boy.

The only good thing I can say about it all is that at least these things are being rattled out with sufficient pace that the whole thing might be over soon and we can get back to the sailing.

My thanks to Rex Gilfillan for the heads up on the GGYC’s letter - in my latest learning-to-blog-lesson I’ve managed to change the Comments button so anyone can post (and not just those with Google passwords) – but if you want to send me some news, gossip or opinion directly, then click here. And now I’m going to go away and try and figure out how to put up a list of links. I may be some time...

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