On May 1, 2009, St. Olaf College's attorneys filed the College's Statement of Case [PDF, 6 pages, 448 KB] in the matter of the SaveWCAL Petition to Redress Breach of Trust now in front of the Minnesota State Court of Appeals.
The function of a Statement of Case to the Court of Appeals is to present a description of the case — not an argument on the legal issues nor an attack on the motives of the opposing party. However, St. Olaf College's attorneys have chosen to do both.
St. Olaf continues to try to deny any existence of a trust, even though they themselves originally claimed the existence of that very same trust when they first filed their Petition to the Rice County District Court in December 2006!
St. Olaf has never explained why — just seven days later – it suddenly changed its mind and submitted an Amended Petition that completely removed all references to WCAL as a charitable trust. (The reason? SaveWCAL's Memorandum to the court, obviously.) Yet, while claiming that no trust existed, they continued with the court action — and the expense — to try to claim millions of dollars still left in the trust's endowment!
Most attorneys realize that there are a few terms that should be avoided when presenting a case — for example, absolute terms such as "always" and "never". However, the St. Olaf attorneys do just that when they write:
"[SaveWCAL] has pursued this series of actions to harass St. Olaf, a respected institution of higher education which has always acted properly…"
Furthermore, he writes:
"St. Olaf's conduct regarding the sale of its radio station and its conduct subsequent to the sale have been exemplary."
The conduct of St. Olaf and Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) is described in the order issued by Rice County District Court Judge Bernard Borene on February 26, 2009. The Minnesota Court of Appeals will now make an independent judgment of the application of the law to that conduct.
It's interesting that St. Olaf claims that a transcript of the previous proceeding before Judge Borene is necessary to review the issues on appeal. This is unusual because transcripts are only necessary when there have been evidentiary hearings in the case. There have been none in this case. The one hearing held in this case was limited to the oral arguments of the attorneys on the legal issues.
We also note that St. Olaf College says that "Respondent Minnesota Public Radio has ordered the transcript" of the proceeding. SaveWCAL has verified with the Court Reporter that a complete transcript was ordered by one of the parties to the case in December 2008. SaveWCAL did not order a complete transcript, so it is likely that either St. Olaf College or Minnesota Public Radio ordered one. Furthermore, the transcript was completed and filed with the court way back on December 30, 2008 January 15, 2009.
St. Olaf's attorneys continue to try to portray SaveWCAL as "few individuals who are disappointed over St. Olaf's sale of a radio station" to MPR. This completely ignores the fact that the number of beneficiaries has no relevance. It doesn't matter if there is just one beneficiary or a million. A breach of trust is a breach of trust. Period.
We are waiting to receive Minnesota Public Radio's statement as well as any statement the Minnesota Attorney General may choose to submit.
