SF Weekly gets it all wrong

Pub date December 3, 2010
WriterTim Redmond
SectionPolitics Blog

This is a few days late, but still worth noting. After the Supreme Court ruled in our favor and shot down SF’s Weekly’s final appeal in our predatory pricing lawsuit, the Weekly’s Andy Van De Voorde launched another of his notorious screeds aimed at dismissing all of the proven, factual assertions in our case. Fron day one, Van De Voorde’s been wrong about everything — he said the case was stupid and would be quickly dismissed, he said we’d lost at trial, he said we’d lose on appeal … and every step of the way, he’s been proven wrong. Now he’s going after the judges:


Brugmann certainly has been treated like royalty by the city’s elected judges, who function as the legal arm of the local Democratic machine.


But as Bob Egelko, the Chron’s widely respected court reporter, noted in a remarkable blog post, Van De Voorde is simply factually wrong:


The judge who presided over the trial in San Francisco Superior Court, and more than doubled the jury’s damage award against the Weekly, was Marla Miller — appointed by Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. The appeals court justice who wrote the ruling upholding the verdict was Robert Dondero — first appointed to the bench by Republican Gov. Pete Wilson, and named to the appeals court by Schwarzenegger. And of the six Supreme Court justices who voted to deny a hearing on the Weekly’s appeal, five were appointed by Republican governors.


I can go even further. The first judge who handled the case, Richard Kramer — who refused to dismiss the suit and tossed most of the Weekly’s pre-trial motions out the door — was appointed by a Republican (Pete Wilson). Of the three judges on the Appeals panel, two — Dondero and James Marchiano — were appointed by Republicans. And while the third justice, Sandra Margulies, was elevated to the appelate bench by Gray Davis, her first judicial appointment to the Superior Court came from a Republican, George Deukmejian.


So there really weren’t any elected Democratic judges in the mix. (And the judges certainly aren’t part of any political machine; the entire local bench, including every single judge, Democrat, Republican or Independent, supported the re-election of Judge Richard Ulmer in November, while the Democratic Party, and the Bay Guardian, supported challenger Michael Nava.)


Sorry, Andy — as has been the case from day one, the facts speak louder than your ranting. The Guardian won this case on the evidence and the legal merits, all the way along.