As reported by Eric Williams in his Tacomam News tribune blog, Nickels deposed.
As part of ongoing discovery in the suit involving the Sonics and the city of Seattle over terms of the KeyArena lease, an April 2nd transcript of Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels being deposed was released by attorneys for the Sonics on Monday.During the deposition, asked if he believed a solution to keep the Sonics in town was more likely to occur if the Sonics were forced to stay until 2010, Nickels said absolutely. Nickels deposed
Absolutely!
Well, duh!
Waddya' think we're doing here?
Linked to the story is part of the Nickels deposition, see answers from Nickels to tough questions on pages 6 through 9, more interesting to the stat based community is the PBC's projected operating estimates for the years 2008 through 2010 on page 28 of 31.
The question is: why are they pushing this?
Answer: They had their butts handed to them over requesting a financial buyout dollar figure if/when they lose in June.
Again, Eric Williams:
In a filing on Monday attorney’s for the Sonics stated they would withdraw a request for the judge to decide a specific number for the team to buy its way out of the lease if it delayed the June 16th trial. Tacoma News Tribune.
Hey, no head scratching, it was just 5 days ago there was a thread on this, New Thread, Jury Duty, or just duty? Well, now they are taking a giant step back from that bold move to broaden the scope of the trial from Specific Performance, to financial settlement if/when (come on, it's when) Clay Bennett loses.
Here is a link to the temporary owner of the Sonics court filing that included references of the Nickels deposition, a 180 with a twist, from the Tacoma News Tribune.
They want to still argue a financial settlement when they lose, that the City doesn't have to have a jury, that the city has discussed some finances with people, blah, blah, blah, widening the scope of the trial beyond Specific Performance, blah, blah, blah.
The first sentence of their conclusion is the only thing that is going on here (page 7 of eight ), "Again, the PBC unequivocally withdraws its Motion if granting it would require any delay of the trial June 16."
They go on to a bunch of other BS trying to still file, but not file, if we get our way then that's great, if we don't we would like to pretend that we didn't file the motion that we clearly didn't think through.
The City's counter to this should be short and sweet, in fact they could just refile the majority of the the response from the PBC's initial proposal to widen the scope to include financial damages.