Monday, May 09, 2011

Missing

I mentioned last week that the Friends of the Barnes were good enough to provide a link to the Foundation's brief seeking dismissal of their latest challenge to the move.  But what I didn't notice is that they didn't provide a link to the whole brief: a reader alerted me to the fact that the copy of the brief they linked to omits several pages, including the part where the Barnes argues for recovery of its attorneys' fees.  If you follow the link, you'll see it jumps from p. 43 to p. 49; the missing pages include the following:

"Case law has established for more than a decade that persons and organizations in the same position as these petitioners have no standing to bring an action of this type.  Indeed, many of these very same petitioners have been denied standing by this Court in previous stages of this litigation or other litigation involving The Foundation, some of them more than once.  These petitions were brought in total disregard of this established law, as well as in the face of a public record that refutes the petitioners' core contention that they seek to bring 'new evidence' to the Court's attention.  In particular, as set forth in detail above, the 'new evidence' involving the Attorney General's position regarding The Foundation's 2002 Petition, the Attorney General's and Governor's role in persuading Lincoln to withdraw its opposition to the 2002 Petition, and the facts surrounding the Capital budget issue, have been well-known and widely reported for years.  There was simply no basis and no justification for bringing these arbitrary and vexatious petitions. ... This is particularly egregious in that many of these petitioners ... have been through this before and know full well that they have no standing to raise these issues and that these issues have been fully litigated.  ...  It is well past the point where these serial litigations and others similarly situated should accept that they lack standing to interfere in The Foundation's affairs" (internal citations omitted).