Former Cleveland Bridge boss takes the stand

Cleveland Bridge's former boss accused Multiplex of spending more time trying to destroy its Wembley steel subcontractor than building the stadium in a fierce exchange in the High Court yesterday.

Former CBUK chief executive Roddy Grant told the court that if Multiplex had spent more time actually working on the project the stadium could have been finished by now.

He said: "If Multiplex had spent more time on getting this job built, the stadium would have had a very good chance of being built on time. Instead, they spent most of the time trying to screw their main subcontractor and put us into liquidation."

Cleveland Bridge alleges that Multiplex operated an "Armaggeddon Plan" to place extreme financial pressure on CBUK once it had lifted Wembley's signature arch, in order to get the steel firm off the site. Multiplex denies the claims, and instead alleges that CBUK planned to extract itself from a loss-making contract by claiming Multiplex had breached its deal with the firm.

In the final day of evidence before the two sides begin summing up their cases, Grant denied allegations by Multiplex counsel Roger Stewart that CBUK had planned to allege repudiatory breach of contract as a fallback position if it could not agree a suitable deal with Multiplex.

Grant said: "There was no fallback position. The three months cost reimbursable period [in 2004] was going to give us enough time to get things sorted out so we could execute the contract in the way it was negotiated."

Grant also denied accusations that he had deliberately avoided meeting Multiplex representatives as the dispute between the firms came to a head in July 2004 in order to strengthen CBUK's case for claiming breach of contract.

Grant said: "That is an outrageous suggestion. I was pissed off with him [Matt Stagg]. I was pissed off he didn't answer my emails, pissed off he didn't answer my phone calls and pissed off he hit me with a £14 million bill."

Grant added: "This was not a contractual dispute arising out of real issues, it was an attempt to have a go at CBUK and, you have to imagine, to put us into adjudication."

Cleveland Bridge's Don Underwood, who was the last witness to be called yesterday, issued a last minute appeal to the judge to take into account CBUK's claim that it had been committed to its work on Wembley. He said: "All the guys that worked for Cleveland on the site wanted to complete this job. They were very proud of the arch, and that hasn't come over in this trial at all."

The trial continues.