LUS Wins In Court on Bond Issue

Wonderful!

According to postings in both the Advertiser and the Advocate LUS won the initial round in its latest legal fight to implement what we voted for last July 16th. From the Advocate:

District Judge Ed Rubin ruled Monday that Lafayette Utilities System has complied with the law and an appeals court ruling in its latest attempt to issue bonds to fund its telecommunications business.

The ruling came during a hearing that took less than 30 minutes before Rubin, who cut through a series of procedural arguments and went straight to the issue.

Attorneys for both sides spent as much time packing and unpacking boxes full of documents and charts than they did making arguments.

Apparently the judge cut back the class-action suit lawyers complaints to the one which claimed that LUS hadn’t met the 3rd ciruit’s standards and tossed all the others as complaints that shouldn’t even has been brought before him before deciding emphatically in favor of LUS and Lafayette.

With multiple appeals over the lawsuit’s handling already in place and with an appeal of today’s ruling a certainty we’re not out of the woods yet. But this is subtantial progress and even with the anticipated appeals the basic issues of this lawsuit should be settled by mid-August at the latest.

I certainly hope that those boxes of legal documents with charts, graphs and the “twenty seven eight-by-ten colour glossy pictures with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one” cost the plantiffs and their lawyers a bunch of money and wasn’t just boxes full of stuff from the BellSouth warehouse. They are angling for a little extortion here and a big win on a long shot gamble. They really ought to have something to lose besides the respect of their community and their legal colleagues.

For those keeping track of how much the obstructionism of the plantiffs and these lawyers is costing the people of city be advised that the Feds appear ready to raise the prime rate yet again. These people’s greed and subservience to outside corporate interests is costing the people of Lafayette real money.