A state judge has thrown out a lawsuit filed by Republican Party operatives in Monroe County that sought to keep 37 Democratic candidates from appearing on the Working Families Party line in upcoming primary and general elections. The Republicans had alleged that the Working Families Party failed to properly authenticate nominating petitions for candidates it was seeking to cross-endorse. Their case, filed in state Supreme Court in early April, mirrored those of 13 others filed by Republicans in counties across the state. Eventually, all 14 cases were combined and assigned to State Supreme Court Justice Scott Delconte of Oswego County, who dismissed each of them on technical grounds.
Co. v. Sullivan, which eventually morphed into a media license to lie about public figures, in dramatic contrast to the situation that had obtained historically in the U.S, and still does in every other Common Law country.
It’s still not widely realized that defendants in libel actions brought by “public figures” in the U.S. now habitually make no effort to defend the truth of what they’ve said. They simply hide behind the enormous fault standard of
Sullivan, viz. that they lacked actual knowledge of falsity or reckless disregard of the truth.
American politics are often said to be becoming more extreme and polarized. I argued last year that one reason for this, since
April 30
th marks a special day for some. For those of you who are aware, I have covered the case of TransPerfect in Delaware for years now, and to this day, it remains the longest-running case in the Delaware Chancery Court. The story is a bizarre tale of what seemed to be a simple corporate break up between two owners, but in essence, has become an example of government overreach, lackluster oversight of the courts and brazen abuse of power to enrich friends of the various insiders within the Delaware system.
So why is today, April 30
th special? The employees and leadership of the world’s largest translation, language services and e-discovery companies, TransPerfect Global, with 6500 employees in over 100 offices, including the Israeli division called, Milim near Tel Aviv, are celebrating the last day of Delaware’s Chancellor Andre Bouchard’s time on the bench. He resigned with more than five years left on his term. He didn’t talk about his reasons, but court offi