Team Seacats

The New York Supreme Court held the hearing of appeal from SNG yesterday and we should hear a ruling pretty soon. The motion by SNG (Alinghi) is to, basically, appeal everything Justice Cahn has had to say about the case; whether CNEV was a valid challenger, the definition of the challenging yacht (regarding the words “keel yacht” in the challenge), and lastly the date of the event.

According to Cory E. Friedman, who is providing some great commentary on the specifics over at Sailing Scuttlebutt, there was a great deal of pressure placed on SNG’s lawyer, Barry Ostrager, by the Appellate Panel. As Mr. Friedman puts it, “…the bench, which was not just hot, but red hot, lit into him from the start.” The questions came fast and furious of Mr. Ostrager and he was not given much time to respond. By contrast, the representation for GGYC, Jim Kearney, had it easy as the questions came with little pressure and plenty of time to respond.

So what does all this mean? 80% of the time the Appellate panel upholds the previous judgements. Their questioning certainly wasn’t very kind to the SNG position and they did inquire of both sides why arbitration failed (which, in my opinion, really hurts the case of SNG since they refused arbitration on several occasions). It’s very likely we’ll see all of the decisions upheld with perhaps an exception to the date issue. GGYC made an argument that the date of the event should be sooner and the Panel does have the option of modifying the ruling. Mr. Friedman believes that there is a small chance that the date of the event may be moved up 6 weeks to May 1, 2009 and that we should have a ruling sometime later this month.