A Newport shop owner has been fined more than £1500 after being found guilty of assaulting a rival trader.
Paul Davies, owner of Celebrations card shop on High Street, and Alan Crank, the boss Sentiments gift store, clashed on July 6.
Telford Magistrates heard on Tuesday that Mr Crank had gone to Celebrations to tell Davies to stay away from his store.
But he had been in the shop just moments when Davies pushed him to the floor.
Davies then grabbed Mr Crank, aged 41, and forced him out of the door before holding him against the floor, to the amazement of the gathering crowd, for two to three minutes.
Davies, 50, pleaded not guilty and claimed self defence, saying Mr Crank had approached his shop “like a football hooligan”.
But magistrates said that his reaction had been over the top. Magistrate Mr Thomas said: “Aggression of this nature is simply unacceptable and in this case it was out of proportion.”
Davies was ordered to pay a £300 fine, £600 in compensation to Mr Crank, £620 in court costs and a £15 victim surcharge.
Mr Crank said he had approached Celebrations calmly to tell Davies to stay away from his store.
Davies had earlier entered Sentiments with a paper and pen and sarcastically asked staff to take a head count of customers entering his own store.
He said his staff were feeling uneasy about Sentiments employees monitoring activity at Celebrations by looking out of the window.
Mr Crank said: “I was very calm and certainly wasn’t expecting any trouble.
“Mr Davies ran towards me and he said ‘don’t come in her telling me what to do’.
“He pushed me on my shoulders and I fell to the ground. I managed to scramble to my feet but Mr Davies grabbed me again. The next thing I can remember is being outside the shop on the step with Mr Davies on top of me.
“I asked him to get off me but he just kept saying ‘I’m restraining you, aren’t I?’”
Mr Crank suffered bruising to the head. His waistcoat was torn in half and his shirt was also damaged.
Mr Crank was off work for six months with Post Traumatic Stress.
The court was shown the CCTV footage of the incident from inside Celebrations.
Davies, who lives in Wolverhampton, said Mr Crank had grabbed him by the neck.
He said: “I’ve never known such a man. He came in like a football hooligan. He was very authoritarian and pointing his finger. He went for my neck and a split second decision was taken that he had to go out of the shop.”
Magistrates decided that Mr Crank was too far away from Davies to have grabbed his neck and found Davies guilty.
An application for a restraining order was turned down.
By Sean Wozencroft