Final Protective Fire

Friday, September 13, 2002

 

Recently, a California jury found against the family company that California gubernatorial candidate Bill Simon was involved with in a complicated case involving a partnership to purchase a small telephone company. The campaign of Governor Gray Davis - despite the beam in his eye - attempted to use this case to smear Bill Simon. Recently, a court overturned that verdict and the case can be found here. I've been reading over this memorandum of the court's decision, having heard no details of the case before, and I'm struck by how dishonest it was to attack Bill Simon on this case. The core of the case is about how Bill Simon's family and its partners were defrauded themselves.

Reading the memorandum, one finds that the judgement against the Simon family company was overturned by the judge for insufficiency of evidence to support the verdict. This is a rather difficult standard to meet and gives a strong indication that the jury was out of control. Hopefully, this reversal will get as much attention from the media as the initial judgement and Simon's campaign can get back on track on the real issues for California - that of Gray Davis' corruption and ineptness.

Robin 7:43 PM