The four men convicted in the 1990 Guinness fraud trial have won a court ruling which could lead to an appeal to the House of Lords ion Britain.
The Court of Appeal, which rejected their case last December, refused leave to appeal to the Law Lords. But it has certified that the case raised a point of law of general public importance on which a further challenge might be founded.
Lawyers for the "Guinness Four" - Ernest Saunders, Gerald Ronson, Jack Lyons and Anthony Parnes - will now take the certified point to a committee of three Law Lords and ask for permission to appeal.
The four are relying on a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights made many years after their trial.
The ECHR held that they did not get a fair hearing in 1990 because, contrary to Article 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights, they had been deprived of their right to silence and compelled by law to provide information to Department of Trade and Industry inspectors which was then used as primary evidence against them.
But attempts by defence lawyers to use that ruling in last year's appeal were blocked by a House of Lords decision that UK human rights laws were not retrospective.
The four are challenging their convictions on charges relating to an illegal share support operation in the run-up to Guinness's £2.6 billion sterling takeover of Distillers in 1986.7
PA