Titans score court ruling win in dispute - Sports News - Fanatics - the world's biggest events

Titans score court ruling win in dispute

By Wayne Heming 18/05/2010 07:37:25 PM Comments (0)

A construction company has vowed to fight on until it gets paid by the Gold Coast Titans despite the Queensland Supreme Court on Tuesday nullifying a ruling that the NRL club must pay it $3 million.

The Building and Construction Industry Payments Agency on Monday ruled the Titans owed developer Alex Simpson's Simcorp more than $3 million for work on their partly-built Centre of Excellence at Robina.

But the club took the matter to the Supreme Court in Brisbane.

Justice James Douglas on Tuesday ruled the decision from the independent adjudicator, appointed under the Building and Construction Industry Payments Act 2004, was an invalid claim.

Justice Douglas ordered a stay of proceedings in the Supreme Court by Simcorp until payments of court costs have been made to the Titans.

The Titans have accused Simcorp of owing the club more than $300,000.

Titans boss Michael Searle said the time had come for Simcorp to "pay his people".

"Today's Supreme Court decision vindicates the club and the position we have taken," Searle said on the Gold Coast on Tuesday.

"I think the time has come for him (Simpson) to pay his people and we move forward.

"We hope this brings the current matter to a head.

"But we are also prepared to move forward and if the matter continues, it continues.

"We will deal with it the way we have. We just tell the truth. We tell the truth and move forward."

However, Simpson told reporters on Tuesday that he would lodge a second claim with a building authority.

"To me, all this has done is bought the Titans four weeks because tomorrow we will just re-lodge our claim - we will eventually get paid," he said.

But Searle said the club was used to fighting for what it wanted.

"It took us six years to get a licence, we had to knock down every door, we had to scrap for years ... the players know we go about business and we do it the right way," he said.

"We won't be involved with cheap stunts and I think they appreciate the way we go about business so it doesn't appear to have affected them.

"The only losers out of this at the moment are probably the lost time our club's had to endure and the sub-contractors who still aren't paid."

Searle also denied the club was short of cash, however, he admitted the Titans had asked the NRL for financial help.

"We approached the NRL to assist us on a short term basis, that's not uncommon a number of clubs do it - it was just basically to give us some surety moving forward and some comfort," he said.

"Clearly the Centre of Excellence is a state-of-the-art project and we're excited about being in there sooner rather than later and we have accelerated that to a certain extent.

"Today makes it likely we'll be in there a little bit faster."

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