A March trial date has been set for a jury to hear a $1 billion claim against the Mets by a trustee recovering money for cheated investors of Wall Street swindler Bernard Madoff. A U.S. District Court judge set the March 5 trial date at a Friday hearing.
The judge heard arguments from both sides on a request by lawyers for Mets owner Fred Wilpon and other executives to toss out the lawsuit brought by trustee Irving Picard. The lawyers denied Picard’s claim the executives should’ve known $300 million they collected from Madoff represented phony profits. The judge says he’ll rule next month.
The judge may also be urging a settlement of the $1 Billion Dollar claim.
Picard and the Wilpons have been in mediation with former Gov. Mario Cuomo, who attended the hearing Friday and said the hearing might help both sides decide whether to settle or go to trial. “This was a very helpful exercise,” Cuomo said outside the courtroom.
I feel like the courts are just playing games indoors with these people. Meanwhile families and kids and a whole bunch of us are getting turned off on baseball. Some of us – able to remember past the year 2000 – long for the ‘good old days’ of sports.
Nowadays, the venue has changed and that broke the rule book and the bank book for a whole lot of teams. Maybe during those long rain delays, teams should run some of the old films of the good old days so we can show our kids what a ball game should be like.
I keep thinking of Mario Cuomo, who before he went to Law School played a bit of baseball, but got hurt. Now, he’s become a very important voice in this trial and has been at this for months. No one has more credibility in the worlds of politics and sports, but of course he can’t speak until the whole mess is finished and I can’t wait to see how it turns out.
So it all drags on and leaves a lot of us in limbo.
