The Hitch said:
You have a shockingly naive faith in the omniscience and omnipotence of the legal system
Judges don't become experts on a subject just by getting the case. They have been wrong millions of tines. Especially in professional sport where se have seen dozens of cases where people caught red handed got let off.
More importantly though, what you are doing is arguing from authority not merit. As in saying that the more senior person must be right and not the one with the most convincing argument. Which is strange in this case because the judge doesn't seem to have been any kind of authority on doping in the first place.
Ps do you actually think Christie was clean?
Let me try one more time to help with this. I back W&G's comments all the way because, as zebedee has been kind enough to agree as well, McVicar lost his case because he did not comply with the rules of procedure, so that his best evidence was not heard. It may have made all the difference to the outcome.
You can think what you like about rules of procedure and about authority in general, but they are a way that was devised to prevent (in this context) new evidence being sprung on the other side with inadequate notice and details. This is not Perry Mason territory.
The fact that the outcome was wrong, that Christie was later proved to be a doper, that McVicar was right all along is only something that can be known (in a legal sense) with hindsight.
As W&G indicated, McVicar had all the time in the world to get his ducks in a row and he failed to do so. It's not necessary to agree with how the court rules are framed to come to this simple conclusion.
If somebody says something about someone else that was damaging within the context of libel law and pleads justification as a defence because it was true but he fails to show it was true he will lose. Simple as that. McVicar failed. Every other argument about this is based on hindsight.
Should he have failed? Not if you look at matters while at the same time disregarding why he failed. Yes if you think he just failed to play the litigation game right.
Nobody has suggested judges or juries are infallible - patently they aren't. Patently they also often don't know the background to every situation - it is for the litigants to enlighten them. But if one finds oneself enmeshed with the law it is desirable to give oneself the best chance. McVicar didn't.
Zebedee produced the link to the Telegraph report. He says he does not disagree with Josha Rozenberg, the author. He would do well, then, to stop trying to confuse hindsight with the legal niceties.
And I wasn't best pleased to be called by him nitpicking, considering the extensive attention given to this by others since I last posted.