Media Roundup: Fair Range

Only one story on the Conrad Black trial was webbed overnight, and it's by Mary Vallis. She describes the defense's motion to have David Radler's testimony circumscribed, in order to eliminate all "speculation and surmise" from it. Since the trial is coming down to his word against the defendants', the motion argued, "it would be unfair to allow Radler to offer speculation and surmise on so central, and possibly determinative, an issue in the case."

(This motion is going to be a tricky one to follow; only a lawyer with relevant learning/experience will be able to make sense of the decision process for it. Non-lawyers like me have to wait for the outcome. According to Part II of the evidentiary proffer in this case, conspiracy-related charges do allow testimony, from witnesses who have turned state's evidence, that would normally be struck out of the record as hearsay in a more straightforward criminal trial. The precedents cited in it are almost all recent, suggesting strongly that the prosecution has this extra latitude only in RICO cases, of which this trial is one: see count 15. As a result, the defense can't really object to hearsay testimony from Mr. Radler per se, so a motion to limit has to use words like "speculation" and "surmise" to add bounds on the testimony of a witness, like Mr. Radler, who's brought in to "roll." If you're interested, the evidentiary proffer can be found on this page; if you don't mind downloading a 2-meg PDF file straight from this blog, it can be gotten through this direct link.)

There's one report that's been webbed later. The Tines Online has Tom Bower's take on Mr. Radler's upcoming testimony. His article contains, near the bottom of it, one of the expected items that Mr. Radler will disclose under direct examination: Hollinger Int'l's lawyer was ordered to put Hollinger Inc., Conrad Black and David Radler himself into the non-compete agreements, which would explain how the other payees got in there.

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Sensationalistic this may be, but I couldn't resist passing it along: Paris Hiltion's going to Club Fed for 45 days, pending the inevitable appeal. Probation violation, as she and we now know, is a far more straightforward part of criminal law. She tried pulling herself out of it through claiming: "when an officer who stopped her in January made her sign a document stating her licence was suspended, she thought he was mistaken and did not actually look at the document." No, she wasn't bold enough to use the word 'skim'...that she wasn't.

But her maw was bold enough to put this statement into media circulation: "'What do you think? This is pathetic and disgusting, a waste of taxpayer money with all this nonsense. This is a joke.'" No word about any bootleg video version of her opinion being circulated.

(And you wonder why the horsier set tend to pack their daughters away into Swiss boarding schools whose SOP is somewhere between Camp Nightfreeze and a military barracks? Of course, had the Hiltons decided on this option, their daughter Paris wouldn't have been in the right mindframe to provide a "good example" to Lindsay Lohan.)

[Mark Steyn has drawn a comparison between Ms. Hilton's legal troubles and the testimony of the audit committee, in which he states that "The Hilton defence was straight from the Hollinger Audit Committee playbook: she’d signed the document without paying attention, and had no idea that’s what it said." But she, not being a "celebdirector," has had no luck with it so far...]


Also on the not-quite-related list, a story about a pending takeover of Reuters by Thomson Corp., included for this reason: if you thought that there was something askew in the 10-vote shares of Hollinger Int'l held by Hollinger Inc., this CBC report on the Thomson takeover reveals that one particular share, the Founder Share, of Reuters can veto any takeover bid. Its monicker is the "golden share," and it's administered by a board of 15 trustees.

Finally, adding to the scandal beat, one of the anecdotes in a tell-all article webbed in This Is London, by "by ex-rent boy lover" Jeff Chevalier, features he meeting Conrad Black at a party. That story's about three-quarters of the way down. [It's been summarized in the Ottawa Citizen, with this quote, from Mr. Chevalier about Conrad Black, highlighted near the end: "'Conrad spoke of his innocence like a broken record ... They were all laughing and making snide comments about him behind his back.'" About a third of the way down, the summary relates Mr. Chevalier's Conrad Black anecdote in full.]