Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal News Blogs -> Lawbeat

Legal News

: Lawbeat

Yachting and lawyers in a confusing mix

By Mark Obbie

Usually when I get frustrated about lawsuit stories, it's because a beat reporter from another field -- say entertainment, fashion, business, or sports -- writes about litigation without clearly or accurately explaining what's going on. Here we have a sporting dispute mired in litigation, with an incomplete story that happens to have been written by one of the Times' best legal writers. Go figure. Jonathan Glater lands on Sunday's front page with a tale concerning a battle between two billionaires over sailing's America's Cup. The story has it all -- ego, machismo, big bucks, and fast boats. All, that is, except coherent storytelling about what exactly they're fighting over, and why. We're told that the battle pits Larry Ellison against Ernesto Bertarelli; that the fight is now before New York's highest court; that it concerns a "deed of gift" that created the competition and is now blocking Ellison from competing; and that Ellison calls the rules unfair. But what's that have to do with Bertarelli, his supposed nemesis? And how did Ellison get frozen out of the competition? It's all left unexplained in a story that focuses exclusively on the spectacle of a fight without telling us why there's a fight.

Full post as published by Lawbeat on August 31, 2008 (boomark / email).