Spinning Sizemore

So the cool kids over at NW Republican are gleefully clapping their hands together at Piccolo's Stretch Armstrong-ian effort to spin a victory for Sizemore:

Bill Sizemore just won his personal appeal and no longer owes the union thugs any money. (No surprise to NWR readers).

The judgement was reversed and the unions actually OWE Bill Sizemore almost $20,000 when you include interest.
We told NWR readers here last summer that Bill Sizemore was on the verge of winning his appeal. We were then vindicated in October and posted here that Sizemore did indeed win his appeal.

Uh...here is the AP story on the ruling. If this is a victory, Sizemore's triumphs are really sucky.

Sizemore lost his jury trial in 2003 which left his organizations liable for $2.5 million and a guilty verdict of racketeering. In the spring of 2004 Multnomah County Judge Jerome LaBarre ticked off a laundry list of criminal misconduct by Sizemore.

Sizemore appealed the verdict as well as LaBarre's findings and in October, he lost. The Court of Appeals made it clear that this is about Sizemore's abuse of the system.

In one area of the appeal, Sizemore could claim a pyrrhic victory. The court found that his intentional falsification of C&E reports wasn't technically a violation of the law. So in other words, nobody thought anyone would so flagrantly piss all over the process that they hadn't created a statute that Sizemore could violate. But they said he still owed the money.

On Wednesday, the Court of Appeals affirmed that Sizemore's organizations still owes the $2.5 million. The case now goes back to the trial court to issue a new judgment consistent with the Court of Appeals’ decision.

At that time the trial court will enter the new judgment which includes both the full $2.5 million judgment against Sizemore's organization and for damages that the jury awarded under the first count of the complaint in the amount totalling roughly $300,000. Both organizations will continue to be liable for the attorney fees incurred by Oregon Education Association and American Federation of Teachers in an amount of almost $1 million. And then of course, there's interest piling up on these judgements as well.

The big excitement for NWRepublican blog appears to be the notion that Sizemore isn't personally liable for the judgements. Except that isn't really the case. Since the falsifying C&Es statute wasn't broad enough to cover what Sizemore did, the Court of Appeals set aside the personal liablity on that particular offense. The other numerous claims against Sizemore personally weren't addressed.

I don't know why any Republican would want to associate themselves with Sizemore, much less defend him. His actions have been and continue to be reprehensible. Nobody can spin it fast enough to fix that.