A HIGH-PROFILE Rangers fan is embroiled in a legal battle with Mike Ashley's Sports Direct after he attempted to launch a shareholder campaign to call for a review of its agreements over club merchandising and end the company's use of zero-hours contracts.
Mark Dingwall, co-founder of the Rangers Supporters Trust and editor of the Follow Follow fanzine, bought a Sports Direct share so he could request the register of shareholders and lobby them over his concerns.
He says Sports Direct responded by making an application to the Companies Court in London to refuse the request and any future request "whether made by Mark Dingwall or any other person" to inspect or have a copy of the register "where the only purpose given for the request is to enable members to be contacted, without identifying the subject matter and purpose of such contact".
Mr Dingwall placed details of the Sports Direct legal action online and stated the Sports Direct had also applied for him to pay the costs of the hearing set for 11.30am on April 14.
Mr Dingwall has now gone to Rangers fans to help him with the costs.
In a letter to Cameron Olsen, the company secretary of Sports Direct and Rangers Retail, Mr Dingwall said he wanted to "canvass my fellow shareholders as to whether they would be willing to support resolutions to end the use of zero-hours contracts and to review the terms of the retail agreements with Rangers International Football Club plc to ensure that these generate sales revenue that benefits shareholders rather than the current agreements which whilst appearing to be favourable are generating low sales volumes due to the level of hostility amongst the public to what are viewed as unfair terms."
Mr Ashley's Sports Direct now owns Rangers Retail and has ownership over many of the club's precious trademarks.
Mr Dingwall said he was contemplating engaging a lawyer to fight the case.
He said: "By moving to strike out my request; and specifically to set the precedent that neither I nor any other shareholder can in the future obtain a copy of the register; Sports Direct are seeking to remove one vital right whereby shareholders can seek to enforce their rights by lobbying other investors in the company."
Last month it emerged that Sports Direct was facing a claim for millions of pounds from nearly 300 workers who were left out of a multi-million bonus scheme because they were on zero-hours contracts.
Up to 90 per cent of the workforce of 20,000 at Sports Direct are estimated to be on zero-hours contracts, which do not come with sick pay, holidays and do not guarantee a set number of hours a week.
Sports Direct declined to comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article