Andy Carroll And The FA Disciplinary Appeal Procedures

Introduction

West Ham United's Andy Carroll was sent off by referee Howard Webb in the 59th minute against Swansea City on 1st February after appearing to swing an arm at Swansea's defender Chico Flores. This blog briefly explains the novel avenue that West Ham took to appeal against the red card and the three game ban once the initial FA panel had dismissed West Ham's case.

The Challenge

West Ham challenged the wrongful dismissal charge before the FA's Independent Regulatory Commission (IRC). A three-man IRC rejected the claim of wrongful dismissal by a margin of 2-1, ruling that no "obvious error" had been made by Howard Webb. FA Disciplinary Procedures regulation A5 (I) states that there are no further grounds for appeal. As such, the only other option available to West Ham was to be found in the FA Rule K1 (d) arbitration provision. The rule is set out as follows:

"Rule K1(a) shall not operate to provide an appeal against the decision of a Regulatory Commission or an Appeal Board under the Rules and shall operate only as the forum and procedure for a challenge to the validity of such decision under English law on the grounds of ultra vires (including error of law), irrationality or procedural unfairness, with the Tribunal exercising a supervisory jurisdiction."

As such the arbitration that West Ham brought could only determine whether as West Ham believed there was an error of law (the IRC had applied the wrong test) and procedural unfairness (the IRC had not held an oral hearing).

It is important to stress that the arbitration:

could not examine the merits of the initial IRC majority decision and as such was not a 'full merits' appeal; and that took place on the Friday before the Saturday West Ham game against Aston Villa was to decide whether to suspend the three match ban until a final decision of the full Arbitration Tribunal could be made (i.e. this was an interim application). The test that the sole Arbitrator (Nicholas Stewart QC) used to decide whether to suspend the three match ban was whether the club had any serious prospect of success before the full three man Tribunal i.e. if there was no serious prospect of persuading the full arbitration that the initial IRC decision was invalid, then the single Arbitrator would dismiss West Ham's application.

The Decision

The single Arbitrator decided that there was no serious prospect of persuading the full Tribunal that the initial decision was invalid. In rejecting West Ham's grounds...