Thursday's Derailment

Today's interview with Paul Waldie on BNN (1:55 PM ET) had him reporting on a serious bobble made by a defense counsel. The defense lawyer for Jack Boutlbee, Gus Newman, didn't fare that well during his turn at cross-examination. Several times, he couldn't find the right documents to show Mr. Burt, and mixed up some of the ones he had. He opened up a line of questioning that was irrelevant. In doing all these things, he made Richard Burt, in Mr. Waldie's estimation, look more credible than ever.

The Toronto Star has a report by Romina Maurino out, which carries no mention of any maladroitness on Csr. Newman's part. "Gus Newman, a lawyer for Jack Boultbee, took former Hollinger director Richard Burt through a number of audit committee and board of director meetings...asking him to confirm that disputed payments [attached to the sale to CanWest] to Black and the others had in fact been approved.

"Burt agreed the CanWest payments had been approved at half a dozen occasions."

Bloomberg's report, written by Joe Schneider and Andrew Harris, starts off with a surprise: "Former Hollinger International Inc. director Richard Burt testified he knew noncompete fees were paid to Conrad Black, contradicting his previous testimony and supporting defense claims the board knew of the payments." The payment in question, as the report relays, was the non-compete associated with a sale of Hollinger, Inc. properties to Osprey Media. The contemporaneous report from Reuters does not mention that contradiction, but does call attention to memory lapses on the part of Mr. Burt, at the end of it.

Edward Genson concentrated on knocking down the part of Mr. Burt's earlier testimony that said Conrad Black and David Radler were a tight-knit team, according to Ms. Romino's more recent report, webbed by 1130 News. While being cross-examined by Csr. Genson, Mr. Burt stipulated: "'My sense is that Conrad, as the chairman and CEO, had a general understanding of what was going on in the company, but he wasn't directly involved,...'" Mr. Burt also conceded that he didn't know how tight-knit the two were outside of meetings, and that he didn't know about the geographical-separation-of-responsibilities custom that both Mr. Black and Mr. Radler had followed while running Hollinger Int'l.

(I have this suspicion that it was Gus Newman who got Richard Burt contradicting himself.)

The updated version of the same report also details Csr. Genson's attempt to rebut Mr. Burt's testimony, made under direct examination, that the 60th birthday party for Mrs. Black was merely personal. "The guests, Genson said, were 'all people involved in the media,' including broadcasters Barbara Walters and Charlie Rose and Michael Bloomberg... Real estate magnate Donald Trump was also in attendance, but Hollinger was in the middle of negotiating a deal to sell the Sun-Times building in downtown Chicago to the Trump organization,... 'You have, over the years, engaged in business over dinner (or) cocktails - that's not unusual in the world that you live in,' Genson told Burt."
----------

Slate has an updated compendium of three articles on the Conrad Black trial. The first was posted on Tuesday March 20th, the second was posted Friday, March 23rd, and the third has been posted today. Their author, Scott Jacobs, concludes near the end of today's piece: "What's becoming clear is that the big names with whom Black stocked his board of directors knew nothing about the newspaper business. Most of the board members participated by telephone in key management meetings. Some were absent at critical board meetings. "

Also, Mark Steyn has a post about the cross-examination of Mr. Burt. He says that the chore is more difficult with an A-list witness, as "you need to expose them as frauds and dissemblers." In the end, though, he concurs with Paul Waldie's opinion of Csr. Newman's performance.

Finally, the Toronto Star reports that Sun-Times Media Group, formerly Hollinger Int'l, has settled a tax dispute with the Canada Revenue Agency, formerly known as Revenue Canada.