Guinness Four lose new fight

Former Guinness chief executive Ernest Saunders today found that his "11-year march to justice" led nowhere when the Appeal Court dismissed his attempt to clear his name.

Now the so-called Guinness Four are left with an estimated £1.25 million legal bill, although their lawyers are still hoping to take the case to the House of Lords. The four - Saunders, businessman Gerald Ronson, financier Jack Lyons and stockbroker Anthony Parnes - claim that their 1990 trial, which ended with jail sentences, had been unfair.

They had been accused of playing a leading part in an illegal scheme to boost the value of Guinness shares in the runup to the company's £2.6 billion takeover of Distillers in 1986. Since then they have fought remorselessly for what one defence lawyer described as "a march to justice".

In their appeal this month their lawyers had argued that the four had been robbed of their "right to silence" by being compelled by law to answer questions from Department of Trade inspectors, which were used against them in the criminal trial.

Since their convictions at Southwark Crown Court the European Court of Human Rights has ruled that their trial had been unfair and the European Convention on Human Rights has been incorporated into English law.

But today three Appeal Court judges, headed by Lord Justice Rose, said that the House of Lords had ruled that the human rights legislation could not be applied retrospectively in this case.

On a separate issue, the judges also dismissed claims that the foreman of the jury had been offered a bribe which was known to the police but had been kept secret from the trial judge.

Had their appeal succeeded, the Guinness Four would have been in line for tens of millions of pounds in compensation. Instead they face a huge legal bill with the judges ordering that "in principle" the four must pay the Crown's costs on top of their estimated £1 million defence bill.

The Guinness trial ended with Saunders being jailed for five years for false accounting, theft and conspiracy. His sentence was halved on appeal and he was released after serving only 10 months when the Appeal Court accepted doctors' advice that he was suffering from pre-senile dementia.

Now a company consultant, he said that that diagnosis was mistaken.

How they live now