PART ONE: As the wait continues for the judgment on one of the most explosive cases of the year, EG looks at how the seven-month battle between Christian and Nick Candy and Mark Holyoake has unfurled.
In the first of a four-part series, we detail a timeline of Holyoake’s £100m claim against the Candy brothers in the high court.
February 8: The trial starts
“This is not an entirely usual dispute,” Holyoake’s lawyer Roger Stewart QC told the court. “Each side makes serious and grave allegations against the other.”
February 10: Mark Holyoake takes the witness stand
On his first day giving evidence, Holyoake began to flesh out his allegations. His experience of the Candys was like “dealing with the devil”, he said.
February 16: Holyoake challenges Christian Candy to take a polygraph test
A week into giving evidence on the witness stand, Holyoake broke the court’s third wall by shouting at Candy and challenging him to a £1m bet. “I’ve taken a polygraph test,” he said. “They crossed the line,” he added, pointing towards the Candy brothers’ side of the courtroom.
“Come on Chris, take a polygraph test, and I’ll give a million pounds to charity… But they won’t because their tactic is to deny and deny.”
February 28: Emma Holyoake takes the stand
In one of the most dramatic days of the trial, Mark Holyoake’s wife Emma (pictured above with Holyoake) gave evidence and told the court the story through her eyes. In her evidence she said she believed Christian Candy would “use any tactics he deems necessary to bring menace and destruction into our lives” and was “hell-bent on destroying Mark and us as a family”.
She said she was made to fear for the lives of herself, her husband and their children and her family. “It was like a bad movie,” she said.
1 March: Christian Candy takes the stand
Candy spent more than a week on the witness stand. He was questioned about the loan, his business relationship with his brother, his tax affairs and many other things. He denied wrongdoing and said Holyoake’s allegations where “unpleasant and misleading”.
9 March: The ghost of murdered spy Alexander Litvinenko is raised
In one of the strangest cross-examinations of the trial, Steven Smith, a Candy business associate who was at the time head of tax and corporate finance at CPC, was questioned about his links to murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.
At the time of the 2006 murder, Smith was a director of Risk, a private detective agency that had paid both Litvinenko and his alleged killer Andrei Lugovoy. More to the point, he denied that he was aware Christian Candy had been looking into employing “illegitimate debt collectors” to coerce Holyoake into paying.
10 March: Nick Candy takes the stand
Candy’s times on the witness stand didn’t disappoint. He told the court that reacquainting himself with his former university friend was “the worst mistake” of his life. He denied treating staff and people who work for him badly, saying that people who do “end up in the high court being sued”, and also said that because of the trial, wherever he goes, there will be a “slight smell”.
He denied all the allegations made against him.
4 April: Closing arguments begin
“The organisation of Christian and Nick Candy’s business is rotten from tip to toe,” Holyoake’s lawyer tells the court.
5 April: Candys’ lawyer strikes back
Tim Lord QC, for the Candys, doesn’t pull any punches in his response. Holyoake has an “Alice in Wonderland approach to commercial life” and considers contracts to be “the start of a negotiation”, he said. “He is the sort of person who, if Mr Holyoake wants your money, you are his friend, but if you want it back, you are a villain.”
Mr Justice Nugee said both sides “appear to lie when it suits their commercial interests”.
7 April: Trial ends
Mr Justice Nugee reserves judgment and begins the lengthy process of preparing his written decision. Four months on, the legal year has ended, and now a ruling may not be given until October.
SEE ALSO:
■ Part 1: Combat by trial, the story so far
■ Part 2: Finding the truth in the lies
