Ken Bates under fire over ‘£4m personal vendetta’

Melvyn Levi launched the attack on Leeds’s chairman and owner after winning a case for harassment and securing a gagging order against Mr Bates, who declined to respond to the comments.

Handing down judgment in the case at Leeds County Court yesterday, Judge Mark Gosnell ordered Mr Bates should pay £10,000 in compensation and pay 30 per cent of Mr Levi and his wife’s legal bill.

His judgment also criticised Mr Bates’s performance in the witness box during the four-day hearing in April, describing his lack of concern for the Levis as “chilling”.

It added: “At times he seemed more concerned with belittling and criticising Mr Myerson (Mr Levi’s barrister) than giving convincing evidence to the court.”

The harassment case was the latest episode in a long-running dispute stemming from Mr Bates’s takeover of the club in 2005 from the Yorkshire Consortium, of which Mr Levi was a member. In 2009, Mr Levi won £50,000 in libel damages plus costs after Mr Bates called him a “shyster” and published his home address in match day programme notes.

Mr Bates has been trying to force repayment of £190,400 the club was owed at the time of the takeover by a company called Admatch, run by Mr Levi’s friend Robert Weston, who lived in Jersey. Mr Bates claims Mr Levi helped Mr Weston to retain the £190,400 and has been pursuing the debt, initially through the courts in Jersey, for more than six years.

The claims, which have now moved to the English courts, are denied.

When Leeds United unsuccessfully tried to serve legal papers on Mr Levi at his home just before Christmas 2010, the club’s match-day programme and radio station – Yorkshire Radio – were used to publicise attempts to track him down.

Mr Levi and his wife Carole claimed they suffered stress as a result of Mr Levi being likened to a criminal on the run. They also claimed comments made by Mr Bates in his match day programme notes amounted to speculation over the state of their marriage.

An announcement on Yorkshire Radio said: “Leeds United are currently searching for the whereabouts of Melvyn Levi to serve him some papers in relation to a High Court action in Jersey.

“Now, if you’ve seen the former Leeds United director, you’re being asked to get in touch with Yorkshire Radio and let us know where and when you saw him.”

Mr Bates’s programme notes of January 1 2011, entitled “Onwards and Upwards”, said: “As I write, we have not served Mr Levi with his writ as his wife said he was away until New Year which makes me speculate as to why they split for the festive season.”

The judge upheld Mr Levi’s harassment claim but not Mrs Levi’s, although he stressed she had been a credible witness who had become “collateral damage in the war between Mr Bates and her husband”.

He said Mr Bates’s actions had been motivated by a “personal grudge” against Mr Levi and he was satisfied a two-year injunction banning him from discussing Mr Levi’s private life in public was necessary to quell the risk of further harassment. Mr Bates is allowed to mention the commercial dispute between the two as well as other non-private matters.

Explaining why he was granting the injunction, the judge said: “I cannot think of a better reason than the delving into Mr Levi’s private life in what is a commercial dispute between Mr Levi and Mr Bates which I hope will be resolved by someone else on another day.”

Speaking afterwards, Mr Levi said: “I have been fighting him for six and a half years now and it’s long enough. I believe, and I’ve been through it with my lawyers, that Mr Bates or Leeds United or anybody else together have spent coming up to £4m in trying to fight two old age pensioners and that’s what we are.”

Commenting on the costs, he added: “It’ll come no doubt out of Leeds United and the consequences of that is that players won’t be bought probably.

“I do know if Mr Bates didn’t bother with these actions there would be more money to go into buying players at the club and not have this ridiculous situation where I’m in court every two years with a row with Mr Bates.”

In a statement, Leeds United said: “It has been our position throughout that this case could and should have been resolved without getting to Court. From the outset efforts were made by the club to settle the case without substantial costs being incurred.

“Mrs Levi’s claim for damages and an injunction failed in its entirety, whilst Mr Levi was awarded a sum of money which he had been offered months previously. The substantial reductions in the costs claimed by Mr Levi reflect the fact that his claim failed in a number of respects.

“Whilst the Court has granted permission to appeal, the Club will take time to consider its options.”