Jury retires in Lineker case

The jury in Liverpool soccer star Harry Kewell's High Court libel action against TV pundit Gary Lineker today retired to consider its verdict.

Australian international Kewell, 26, has asked for substantial damages over the Match Of The Day anchorman's July 2003 column in the Sunday Telegraph about his transfer from Leeds.

He claims Lineker, sports editor Jon Ryan and Telegraph Group Ltd accused him of being a fool and implied he was guilty of dishonourable conduct.

Summing up the six-day case, Mr Justice Eady, in London, said that if the jury reached the stage of assessing damages, the sum would not be to punish the defendants but to compensate Kewell.

He added that the financial means of the parties were "quite irrelevant".

The judge said that in libel cases, the courts now worked to an "absolute maximum of £200,000" and that figure was reserved for the most serious instances in which people had been wrongly accused of murder or child abuse.

Senting the panel of six men and six women out at 1.20pm, he said that they were under no pressure of time.

"If you do not reach a conclusion today, you will come back tomorrow morning and carry on your deliberations."

Kewell's counsel, Andrew Monson, has said the article claimed he cunningly circumvented transfer rules, naively and stupidly allowed personal manager Bernie Mandic to manipulate him to his financial detriment, and discredited himself by taking part in a financially dubious transfer.

Kewell joined Liverpool for a total five-year package of £13.5 million plus a £2.4 million loyalty bonus, payable over three years.

Leeds had wanted £7 million but Liverpool offered £5 million - with £2 million of that going to Mandic's company, Max Sport, as payment for work it had done for Leeds in Australia.

The defendants deny libel and plead fair comment.

They say that the article was not critical of Kewell but of the transfer system and agents like Bernie Mandic.