This morning's Standard-Examiner reports that Salt Lake City attorney Brian Barnard has been clipped with $10,000 in sanctions, for his role as counsel for several dozen plainiff's in last year's lawsuit, which challenged the performance of Mayor Matthew Godfrey, City Attorney Gary Williams and City Recorder Cindi Mansell under the provisions of Ogden City Code Section 1-8-1, et seq. This is in addition to the $15,000 in sanctions already imposed earlier by trial court judge Parley Baldwin against the individual plaintiffs.
With all due due respect to Judge Baldwin, we've always contended that his summary judgment of dismissal in this matter was premature and unwarranted, inasmuch as it deprived the plaintiffs in this matter their day in court. There existed substantive factual issues which were never resolved by the trial court, such as those listed by gentle reader Do What Is Right in a WCF comment on October 4, 2007:
Mayor Matthew Godfrey could settle the lawsuit in one day if he would turn over his financial records to the City Recorder to audit as the lawsuit requests.As we've said before, we believe the above inaccuracies and discrepancies on the part of mayoral candidate Godfrey ought to have triggered the production of records and documents sought by the plaintiffs in their lawsuit.
The first financial statement he filed showed around $80,000.00 left from current donations of $100,000.00.
He failed to list $38,000.00 from his last campaign as being on hand or having been spent. He just can't ignore $38,000.00 although that is what he has done.
He also can't ignore the fact that R&O contributed $10,000.00 to his campaign instead of the $2,500.00 he lists as being received.
This is $45,000.00 more that he has to account for than he listed on his candidate's report the first time around.
For those of you into math, that is over 50% more than he listed on the first signed financial report he filed.
That figure does not include any funds collected by PEOPLE TO ELECT MAYOR MATTHEW GODFREY of an unknown amount which he filed no report on at all.
So how come people on this blog don't care about an accounting of funds which there will not be if the Littrell suit is dropped.
I say it needs to be heard out. Voters have a right to know the truth.
It's been our continuing belief that the plaintiffs would prevail on appeal, if they were willing to devote the necessary effort and resources to overturning Judge Baldwin's decision, notwithstanding the inadequacies of Attorney Barnard's pleadings. Hopefully the matter will be resolved more favorably, now that Attorney Barnard has had his own feet put to the fire.
And what say our gentle readers about this?
