{"id":69632,"date":"2016-04-15T11:40:27","date_gmt":"2016-04-15T11:40:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=19ca45b3238879c8e5a1fbb44e884f4c"},"modified":"2016-04-15T11:40:27","modified_gmt":"2016-04-15T11:40:27","slug":"news-story-footballer-found-guilty-of-contempt-of-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=69632","title":{"rendered":"News story: Footballer found guilty of contempt of court"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"govspeak\">\n<p>Gary Burnett, 24, made the claim following an accident at a McDonald\u2019s drive-thru restaurant in Birkenhead, Merseyside, in October 2013. He claimed he had suffered injuries to his neck and back which left him unable to play for his team, Cheshire-based Northwich Victoria, for around four weeks.<\/p>\n<p>One tweet referring to an away match read, \u201cNice little trek to Kendal later for footy\u201d, was posted just a day after the incident. He also boasted about playing in and scoring in the FA Trophy less than three weeks after the accident.<\/p>\n<p>At a court hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice in London today, Burnett admitted being in contempt of court and was committed to prison for 4 months, suspended for 12 months.  <\/p>\n<p>He had already been ordered to pay costs of more than \u00a311,000 by Wigan County Court to insurer Aviva after it was ruled his claim was fundamentally dishonest in July 2015.<\/p>\n<p>Solicitor General Robert Buckland QC MP instigated contempt proceedings last year, and speaking after today\u2019s hearing he said:<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a serious case, highlighted by blatant dishonesty and a clear contempt by the offender. Burnett knowingly lied in order to benefit himself and the public interest demanded that proceedings be taken forward.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBurnett is now deservedly paying the penalty for his actions and I hope this sends a message to anyone tempted to try and do the same thing.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A semi-professional footballer who was caught tweeting about playing football 24 hours after making a dishonest insurance claim for whiplash today admitted contempt of court.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69632"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=69632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=69632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=69632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=69632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}