Former Dundee United footballers David Goodwillie and David Robertson have lost an appeal against a civil ruling that they raped a woman and she was entitled to £100,000 damages.
Ex-Scotland striker Goodwillie and former United and St Johnstone midfielder David Robertson had brought a legal challenge against Lord Armstrong’s finding in favour of Denise Clair but it was unanimously rejected by three appeal judges today.
Miss Clair, 30, had claimed in a civil action that she was a victim of sexual assault and rape by the men at a flat in Armadale, in West Lothian, after she had gone for a night out on January 1 in 2011 in nearby Bathgate.
Both Goodwillie, 28, and Robertson, 31, had accepted that they had sexual intercourse but maintained that it was consensual. A full police investigation was carried out into the incident but no criminal prosecution took place.
Following Lord Armstrong’s ruling lawyers acting for ex-Dundee United, Blackburn Rovers, Aberdeen and Plymouth Argyle player Goodwillie and former Cowdenbeath footballer Robertson originally put forward five grounds of appeal.
But only two of the grounds were advanced at a hearing before the Lord Justice Clerk, Lady Dorrian, sitting with Lady Clark of Calton and Lord Malcolm, at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
But Lady Dorrian ruled: “It was a feature of both these grounds of appeal that they did not specify what the consequence of these alleged errors of assessment were said to be, or in what way they were said to impact on the Lord Ordinary’s approach to the evidence generally, undermine his findings in fact or vitiate his conclusions.”
She said the appeal failed to demonstrate the pair had acted in accordance with “the modern law of consent (that) requires that an individual has the capacity to give free agreement.”
