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West Ham co-owner sues BBC

Most of the football business news these days seem to be about legal actions or the possibility of them.

David Sullivan, the West Ham United co-owner, is suing the BBC for £150 million ($197.8m) over a Panorama documentary in which he was accused of sexual misconduct.  Sullivan is seeking damages after issuing a High Court defamation claim over the programme, ‘Predator: The Billionaire Football Boss’, which aired on June 8.

The documentary, made by the BBC with The Times, featured allegations made by seven women about Sullivan’s conduct during the 1980s and 1990s.  Sullivan has denied any wrongdoing.

As well as £150m in damages, Sullivan is seeking a court order requiring the removal of the show from BBC platforms and preventing further publication of the allegations — in line with section 13 of the United Kingdom’s 2013 Defamation Act.

The BBC declined to comment when asked by The Athletic. 

In Sullivan’s claim, which has been seen by The Athletic, he contends that the BBC acted with “reckless indifference to the truth, deliberately choosing to remain wilfully blind” to a number of factors relating to the complaints.

He added that the broadcaster “presented this cluster of seven accounts not as disputed, uncorroborated historical grievances dating back several decades, but as conclusive proof of an unbroken, thirty-year course of criminal sexual exploitation and predatory conduct”.

The 77-year-old businessman said the documentary’s airing “caused immediate and severe commercial alienation, banking disruption, and quantifiable financial destruction (to his) extensive commercial property, private equity, and corporate investment portfolios” and that the BBC published the show despite “possessing actual and constructive notice of the acute, medically verified distress and psychiatric vulnerabilities engaging the claimant and his family”.

The former West Ham joint-chair resigned his post in June in response to claims “concerning my personal life” that he said were “factually incorrect”.  A club statement on the same day confirmed his departure as director of WH Holding Limited and West Ham United Football Club after they said they were made aware of “the impending publication of serious historic allegations”.

 


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