On December 30, the Minnesota Independent published a story by Chris Stellar titled "Party on: In view of ‘innocent parties,’ court blocks bid to unplug The Current".
The article starts out:
Fans of Minnesota Public Radio’s The Current — including even toddlers at the station’s Rock the Cradle events — helped convince a state appeals court that the deal that created the station in 2004 should stand despite a legal challenge.
This not correct. Fans of The Current (or MPR) were not party at all to the action before the Court. More on that below.
Furthermore, the court was not convinced that the "deal that created the station…should stand". The court simply determined that since, in its opinion, SaveWCAL did not file a court action in time, the deal will stand. (There is a big difference between a court decided something "should" be or "will" be.)
The article correctly reports on the limit of the Appeals Court decision
[SaveWCAL's case was filed] was within the six-year statute of limitations. But the appeals court found that reversing the deal now would harm “innocent parties” — the kiddies at The Current’s family events included.
which notes the strange fact that the Appeals Court took parties into consideration who are not party to the action.
The article goes on to say
In recounting the dispute, the court included facts that appear to support SaveWCAL’s arguments, such as that MPR and St. Olaf were “co-conspirators in the breach of a charitable trust” and that the sale broke faith with decades of donations by listener-members of WCAL.
