Autosport story here - comments on the story are interesting, particularly as there are regularly anti-Horner comments made on stories on that site.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Richard C
Was he cleared? You will easily find plenty of headlines written that say something like "Horner cleared of wrongdoing". But that is not what the statement from Red Bull says. It says "the grievance has been dismissed". While we might say this is semantics, I think it would be naive to say the wording of that statement was not purposeful and frankly a bit vague.
You could apply any of the following statements and not be at odds with the Red Bull press release...
* No wrongdoings whatsoever, so no reason to fire Horner
* Some questionable or borderline behavior but they decided not to fire Horner
* Inappropriate behavior found but a private settlement was reached with all parties and Horner remains employed.
(There is a fourth option in which there were issues and Red Bull are just closing it down incorrectly and playing chicken with the claimant to do something, but I think that is doubtful)
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Yes, he has been cleared. The wording that the "grievance has been dismissed" is unequivocal and is both definite and strong in regard to statements made about legal matters.
The statement from RB doesn't support options 2, 3 or 4 in the scenarios that you offer above. If those scenarios did exist, the statement wouldn't be as unequivocal and for example, the reference to making it clear that the complainant has a right of appeal means that option 3 isn't correct.
Quite simply, someone made a complaint, it was investigated thoroughly (including interviews with 3rd parties) and dismissed - meaning that the investigation has found no evidence to support the complaint.
Interesting to see on the Autosport article linked above that a number of comments claim that the Dutch "journalist" who claimed to know all, claimed to have texts is now back-peddling - hard.