Today's court events, starting with a rejected motion for mistrial

The Globe and Mail's Paul Waldie has just reported that Gus Newman, head counsel representing defendant Jack Boultbee, filed a motion asking for a mistrial, which was denied by Amy St. Eve. Csr. Newman objected to a line of questioning by another defense counsel, Michael Schachter, in his cross-examination of Fred Creasey. Csr. Schacter is representing Peter Atkinson. There's also a report from the Canadian Press, which seems to have been written by Romina Maurino and was webbed by the Toronto Star, which discloses that the motion was rejected "swiftly" by Judge St. Eve.

[An updated report by Ms. Maurino has been webbed by CBC.ca. It contains excerpts of a 2003 E-mail, written by Peter Atkinson, that was read in court today by Csr. Schachter. It notes that the videotaped testimony of Torys lawyer Darren Sukonick has yet to be played in court.

[A second update, also written by Ms. Maurino, mentions that Mr. Creasey was questioned under redirect by Julie Ruder: "Creasey said he asked former Hollinger International top legal executive Mark Kipnis for documents detailing the basis of the non-compete agreements for one of the deals, but didn't receive any documentation showing the audit committee had approved the payments." It also mentions that the Csr. Sukonick videotape should be played tomorrow.]

Mr. Waldie was also interviewed on BNN at about 1:50 PM ET. He said that Csr. Newman had asked for a separate trial while making the mistrial motion. Judge St. Eve promised to rein in Csr. Schachter's questions if any had the tendency to make Mr. Atkinson look guilty in such a way that would necessitate Mr. Atkinson taking the stand to refute. The trial is still revolving around the non-compete agreements, a "fundamental" part of the prosecution's allegations, according to Mr. Waldie. He speculated that Peter Atkinson's lawyer might try to distance his client from the others "in order to make him look less guilty" over the next few weeks.

Mark Steyn has weighed in by noting that the defense team isn't the only assertive objector in the room. He detects a certain pattern, of the prosecutors protecting the Hollinger Int'l audit committee that was headed up by former Gov. James R. Thompson, in the prosecution's objections. (It is a further part of a committee that...)

Reuters has posted a write-up, by James B. Kelleher, on the cross-examination of Mr. Creasey today, entitled "Witness In Black Trial Hammered On Disclosures." It reports that Mr. Creasey admitted, while being cross-examined by Csr. Schachter, that the shareholders were informed of the payments "'to individual officers" and were "'told what was paid to Conrad Black (and other executives)...'" It does specify, though, that the issue at hand was$600,000 worth of payments to "Black and three associates," not all of the non-compete payments that form the core of the allegations against the defendants. This report has also been webbed by Chicago Business.

There's a report from Bloomberg out too, by Andrew Harris and Thom Weidlich, which opens with some perspective on that 2003 E-mail written by Peter Atkinson: "An e-mail from Atkinson, a former vice president, to a company lawyer may support defense claims that he tried to avoid wrongdoing. It also helps prosecutors, showing he suspected the so-called noncompete payments were wrong." The report also mentions that the videotaped testimony of Csr. Sukonick has been pushed back, to tomorrow at the earliest. [The most recent update, of the same report, includes redirect pertaining to delayed disclosure of the non-compete payments, which were not put in until the 2001 Hollinger Int'l annual report; it was published in May 2002.]


You may be amused to know that the AP report on today's events in the trial has been webbed by Pravda; it's also been webbed by the Houston Chronicle. A different write-up has been put on Stuff.co.nz.


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From the New Zealand Herald, an old story, with at least two new paragraphs at the end of it, about how Canadians in the media are beginning to warm to Conrad Black.

And finally, although the timing of this item is probably coincidental, a Reuters story about CEO compensation, which is still a'rising as of 2006. Gordon Paris actually wasn't one of those CEOs; in 2006, he had to take a pay cut, to 900 thousand a year from 2 million/year. (Pay data gotten from this mock-ridden post from "Minor Tweaks.") He left the job as of November 15th, about a month before the Sun-Times Media Group (SVN - NYSE) suspended its dividend.