The latest move...30-01-2008
Justice Cahn made it clear last week that Monday’s submissions were to be the final filing on the matter of the invalidity of the GGYC certificate, however yesterday the American club launched a flurry of last minute correspondence abandoning their position on the “keel yacht” / multi-hull issue.
Lucien Masmejan, lead counsel for SNG, describes the content of the letter and gives his views on their motivation for writing it.
Can you identify the main points of the latest letter from GGYC to Justice Cahn?
LM: The long letter finally concedes that the GGYC does not intend to race with a “keel yacht” and therefore completely abandons their arguments of Wednesday last week that purported to demonstrate that a multi-hull vessel could be a “keel yacht”. This is a complete change of strategy that has for aim to salvage their defective certificate.
Can you also outline the content of the SNG response?
LM: We have highlighted that since the GGYC has finally confirmed they would not race a “keel yacht” but a multi hull, they should be deemed to have withdrawn their challenge, which is in any case invalid.
Wasn’t the SNG’s submission on the 28 January, supposed to be the final word on this matter?
LM: That was certainly the intention of Justice Cahn. It seems the GGYC is making a last attempt to clarify its ambiguous and contradictory certificate.
It seems that the GGYC are shifting their arguments from a “keel yacht” being a multi-hull to insisting that they have supplied all the details required by the Deed of Gift for a challenge. Why this shift at this late stage?
LM: It seems the GGYC has realised that its certificate is unclear under the Deed of Gift, particularly since it voluntarily added the reference to a ”keel yacht”. The Deed of Gift plainly requires a crystal clear certificate from the challenger, the one they have submitted is far from clear. In completely abandoning its position of last week at the hearing and shifting its opinion, the GGYC has implicitly accepted that our argument is strong and their certificate unclear.
