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1 UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
1 SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK
2 ------------------------------x
2
3 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, New York, N.Y.
3
4 v. 90 Civ. 5722 (RMB)
4
5 DISTRICT COUNCIL, et al.,
5
6 Defendants.
6
7 ------------------------------x
7
8
8 July 18, 2013
9 10:45 a.m.
9
1010 Before:
11
11 HON. RICHARD M. BERMAN,
12
12 District Judge
13
13
14 APPEARANCES
14
15 PREET BHARARA
15 United States Attorney for the
16 Southern District of New York
16 BY: BEN TORRANCE
17 Assistant United States Attorney
17
18 PETRILLO KLEIN & BOXER, LLP
18 Attorneys for Petitioner Michael Bilello
19 BY: GUY PETRILLO
19 DAN GOLDMAN
20
20 FITZMAURICE & WALSH, LLP
21 Attorneys for Review Officer
21 BY: DENNIS WALSH
22 and
22 MINTZ LEVIN
23 BY: BRIDGET ROHDE
2425
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1 (In open court)
2 THE COURT: So the purpose of today's proceeding is to
3 have a brief oral argument, I believe counsel requested, with
4 respect to this matter involving Mr. Michael Bilello. So I am
5 happy to hear briefly from each side. You don't really need to
6 repeat a lot of what is in your briefs. I have the briefs, or
7 your written submissions. But if you want to touch on some
8 high points, that is fine.
9 MR. PETRILLO: Understood. Thank you, Judge. Guy
10 Petrillo and Dan Goldman for petitioner Michael Bilello.
11 Keeping in mind your instruction, Judge, I thought I
12 would start out simply by trying to bring some perspective to
13 specification five underlying the veto. As the court will
14 remember, the allegation in that specification is of a false
15 statement made on March 22, 2013. We have set forth in our
16 papers -- I know you will read them or have read them -- that
17 the evidentiary basis to establish a false statement is
18 deficient. We have also set forth in our papers that there was
19 no motive established by any of the allegations for the20 so-called false statement. I am not going to repeat all of
21 that, but I think what I should do is try to put into focus
22 what that allegation amounts to.
23 On March 22, Mr. Bilello received an unexpected
24 telephone call from a suspended union member who had been asked
25 to work for the Javits Center and was told a tale of woe by
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1 this suspended member -- out of work for a year, behind in my
2 dues, I'm borrowing from my annuity plan but they have cut the
3 check today. I won't get it until Monday, but I am going to
4 pay all of my back dues.
5 THE COURT: This was a Friday.
6 MR. PETRILLO: On a Friday.
7 THE COURT: This statement was made a Friday.
8 MR. PETRILLO: On a Friday. It was in the morning.
9 That call was brief. Then this suspended member says, may I
10 hand the phone to the business rep, who is standing here.
11 Mr. Bilello says, OK, and he speaks for, let's call it a minute
12 at most to that business rep. It is the content of that
13 discussion which has given rise to this specification. I want
14 to put that aside the content of that and I will come back to
15 it.
16 The decision that Mr. Bilello authorized in that phone
17 call, and there is no dispute about this, was to go ahead and
18 let the suspended member work as he was requested to do by
19 Javits and pay on Monday. As we have set forth in the brief,20 that was the appropriate decision. That was the human
21 decision. That was the lawful decision. The law doesn't allow
22 closed shops. The law doesn't allow the fiduciary duty of a
23 union to be ignored vis-a-vis its members.
24 Members who are behind in their dues are entitled to
25 notice of the precise amounts by which they are behind and a
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1 reasonable opportunity to come current. That is black letter
2 law. I am not a labor lawyer, and it doesn't seem to be even
3 remotely in dispute from what I have seen under the Taylor law
4 or under the NLRA, neither of which is addressed by the RO
5 except in the most cursory and inapposite way.
6 So the decision is correct. The business rep, because
7 he's been told -- he acted in good faith -- he has been told to
8 apply this policy at Javits not to let anybody work unless they
9 are up to date, reports the conversation, as he should have.
10 That leads the RO to ask questions. The business
11 representative, concerned that he has taken this instruction
12 from Mr. Bilello --
13 THE COURT: Right. This is after the call.
14 MR. PETRILLO: After the fact, after the call.
15 THE COURT: The same day.
16 MR. PETRILLO: The same day.
17 -- almost immediately reports up the chain on his end
18 to his business rep supervisor. Mr. Bilello is informed of
19 that. This is all in the papers. Mr. Bilello says, fine, run20 it up the chain, as is appropriate for a mature and experienced
21 executive to say.
22 THE COURT: OK.
23 MR. PETRILLO: That sets in motion an investigation,
24 which takes place on that day and includes an interview of
25 Mr. Bilello by the RO and the RO's investigators.
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1 THE COURT: The same Friday.
2 MR. PETRILLO: The same Friday. On that very same day
3 Mr. Bilello provides a statement in which, according to the
4 RO -- this is using the facts presented by the RO -- he says it
5 was within my authority to authorize the suspended member to
6 work. I made the decision. And on top of that, because it
7 goes to motive, before this interview Mr. Bilello has walked
8 over to a vice president, an executive officer at the District
9 Council, Mr. Cavanaugh, and he asked him what is our policy on
10 these matters and he's told the policy is to encourage work,
11 not to prevent members from working but to allow them to pay
12 dues in a reasonable way.
13 What the RO finds to be an issue is that in the course
14 of that interview Mr. Bilello says, I understood the business
15 rep to be saying in our very brief, one-minute call or less,
16 which the interview report says Mr. Bilello described as a
17 conversation he only basically remembers, I understood him to
18 be saying, boss, should we do what we have done for some
19 others.20 THE COURT: Right.
21 MR. PETRILLO: It is that phrase or that content which
22 is focused on.
23 So the perspective I want to bring to this is the
24 following. If you agree with me that the decision made was
25 correct, if it was lawful -- and it was -- and appropriate and
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1 reasonable, which being investigated at that time is the
2 precise microconsiderations that Mr. Bilello had in his mind
3 when he made a proper decision. That is the level of --
4 THE COURT: I get it.
5 MR. PETRILLO: Secondly, immediately before
6 interviewing Mr. Bilello the question on the table is, what was
7 your authority to make that decision. And he maintains, my
8 client, in that interview, I have the authority as the
9 executive treasurer/secretary and I made the decision. He is
10 not distancing himself from the decision and he is not worried
11 that he made the wrong decision. He's already had it confirmed
12 by Mr. Cavanaugh. And notably, he remembers that previously he
13 was put in the position where he had to authorize a settlement
14 in a case that very much presented the same or similar facts
15 and where a member had claimed he had been barred from working
16 without being given notice and an opportunity to pay his dues.
17 THE COURT: And when was that?
18 MR. PETRILLO: The precise date of it, almost a year
19 to the date earlier.20 So what I am suggesting is that if the RO walking into
21 that interview had been properly informed as to the law and had
22 been properly aware of the fiduciary duty and responsibility as
23 set forth in the law, I want you to try to imagine whether he
24 would have focused on one of these microdetails that took place
25 in less than a minute and determined that on that basis he
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1 would veto an executive elected by the delegate body who had
2 made the right decision. I submit to you that is 99.5 to .5
3 that he would not have. We all know what would have happened.
4 THE COURT: Right.
5 MR. PETRILLO: Secondly, no investigative purpose to
6 the so-called contradictory statement.
7 THE COURT: So we are now only talking about spec 5.
8 MR. PETRILLO: That is all I am doing.
9 THE COURT: You want that to sort of inform the
10 decision with respect to the other four specifications as well,
11 or what?
12 MR. PETRILLO: I will spend one minute on the other
13 four.
14 THE COURT: I would like to move it along. I get it.
15 MR. PETRILLO: You get it.
16 THE COURT: I have read the papers. I know the
17 issues.
18 MR. PETRILLO: May I just say one last thing on it?
19 THE COURT: Sure.20 MR. PETRILLO: One of the key aspects of review under
21 the Administrative Procedure Act is proportionality, and I
22 would submit to the court that the decision to remove an
23 elected EST based on this extraordinarily microdiscrepancy,
24 alleged discrepancy, is so far outside of the scale of
25 disproportionality as to be arbitrary and capricious.
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1 On the issue of whether he was properly interfering,
2 as it is claimed in specification four, in the Javits Center
3 episode -- specification two; thank you, Mr. Goldman -- he
4 wasn't improperly interfering. He was properly ensuring that
5 the law be followed and that reason be applied to a situation
6 that was presented on March 22nd. That specification is
7 totally contrary to law and I ask the court to, if you have any
8 doubt about the law, call the outside counsel to the District
9 Council and to have him present to you, and I don't know what
10 he would say but I don't see any ambiguity in the law.
11 The other three specifications, two about the bylaws.
12 It is alleged that Mr. Bilello did not read the minutes in full
13 to the executive body of the District Council of the benefit
14 funds. As we say in our papers, and I don't think it is
15 disputed, he did summarize what he thought were the salient
16 developments at those trustee's meetings to his executive
17 committee. He didn't realize that under the bylaws he was
18 supposed to in more detail review the minutes.
19 Suffice it to say, nobody caught that issue until --20 and even after a full-blown, chief compliance officer, IG
21 review of compliance with the bylaws, the issue was still not
22 caught. It is what I would call a procedural flaw. As soon as
23 it was pointed out, it was corrected. It caused no prejudice
24 whatsoever. To veto on that basis is to require that the
25 elected officials not be men but super men, make no mistakes.
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1 The section of the bylaws that is used as a basis for
2 veto in addition to that relates to the allocation of rate
3 increases under union agreements and there, very similarly, not
4 only does nobody notice it -- and what is the "it," that the
5 two executive officers are allocating the rate increases to the
6 benefit fund, to the welfare fund -- not only does nobody
7 notice that that historical practice has now been superseded by
8 a new bylaw provision which requires the delegate body to
9 approve such allocations, but in June of 2012 the RO, in his
10 fourth interim report, explains to the executive officers how
11 they should go about allocating those rate increases. So he is
12 not on it either. We are not blaming him. This is a very big,
13 complicated organization. Mistakes happen.
14 As soon as the mistake is pointed out, the delegate
15 body needs to review these allocations, it is put before the
16 delegate body, and they support it overwhelmingly nun pro tunc.
17 No prejudice. Again, Mr. Bilello admits he is not superman.
18 He is doing the best he can every day.
19 Lastly, the cross-training program. I am going to20 spend literally a minute on it. The order very wisely
21 incorporated a provision for mediating disputes between the RO
22 and the District Council about priorities. Section 5(h), and
23 this is on -- give me one moment -- on page 15 of our brief,
24 says that with respect to any recommendations the review
25 officer makes under this paragraph, and indeed this
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1 cross-training program, the details of which I won't burden you
2 with at the moment -- they are all in the papers -- falls
3 within this 5(h). Type of recommendation. If he makes such a
4 recommendation and the District Council does not consent to
5 implementation of the review officer's recommendation as
6 required by the prior sentence, the review officer may petition
7 the court to require the District Council to implement the
8 changes the review officer deems appropriate and the government
9 and the District Council will be given notice and an
10 opportunity to be heard regarding such petition.
11 The circumstances here are the RO believes it to be a
12 high priority that a cross-training program of business reps be
13 undertaken. Putting aside any policy differences that may
14 exist as to whether that is a good idea or a bad idea, the EC,
15 executive committee, under Mr. Bilello begins to implement just
16 that program. In the view of the RO, they are not doing it
17 wholeheartedly and they are not doing it fast enough and they
18 are not really showing commitment to the program that the RO
19 wants. We dispute those facts, but that is to the side for the20 moment.
21 There is a procedure here when there is a dispute over
22 priorities and it wasn't followed. Our client is entitled at
23 least to the protections of the order. The response to that is
24 it doesn't matter. We can veto based on our power to veto.
25 The order has to be interpreted according to its terms. We
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1 can't write out of it terms that we decide, on the RO's side,
2 not to follow somewhat arbitrarily. So with all respect to the
3 RO and his position, I don't see any logical or reasonable
4 basis to uphold that specification given that these procedural
5 protections were not provided.
6 THE COURT: So what is your and Mr. Bilello's take on
7 all of this? So you start with specification number five,
8 which some might say would be the least significant
9 specification, so to speak, if you were to grade these things
10 and work backwards to I think what may be more significant, but
11 whatever. People could argue about that. So what is
12 Mr. Bilello and your take. Is he being persecuted? The RO, is
13 he just being irrational, is he being arbitrary, and why do you
14 think that is all happening? Do you think the RO expects, you
15 said your client to be superman? Is this a superman case?
16 What is going on here?
17 MR. PETRILLO: Judge, I understand the question. I
18 would like to present my personal views. I don't know if it is
19 appropriate.20 THE COURT: It is not personal views. We are here in
21 court.
22 MR. PETRILLO: OK.
23 THE COURT: Is there a just conclusion that he wants
24 superman and that is not legal, that is arbitrary and
25 capricious? Is that the point?
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1 MR. PETRILLO: No, it is not the point. I think what
2 comes out of specifications, which respectfully have absolutely
3 no merit in this matter to me, is they are clearly an agenda to
4 remove Mr. Bilello. There is no question about that. I am not
5 quite clear on why someone who has worked so vigorously against
6 the mob, for union democracy and for members' interests day
7 after day, sometimes 12 and 15 hours a day is somehow an enemy
8 of the RO or the government. It makes no sense to me. I'm
9 thinking it is a personality conflict or maybe something that
10 just got blown out of proportion as a result of human frailty.
11 I don't know.
12 To tell you the truth, because we are here in court
13 and because these specifications are so obviously deficient, it
14 almost doesn't matter to me because the important thing is that
15 Mr. Bilello understands that if returned to office there will
16 be no grudges, there will be no payback, there will be
17 professional, mature, business-like attention to the issues of
18 the union that matter, just as he has been paying that kind of
19 attention throughout his career. So I would implore the court20 to take a close look at this. Something has gone off the
21 tracks.
22 THE COURT: OK.
23 MR. WALSH: May it please the court, my name is Dennis
24 Walsh. I am the review officer in this matter. I have
25 listened closely to the arguments of able counsel. I think
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1 what we have is a finely engineered but rather overwrought post
2 hoc explanation for Mr. Bilello's very uncareful and reckless
3 behavior.
4 On March 22, 2013, he asserted authority that he did
5 not have, having taken a phone call of a former member of the
6 carpenters' union who had not paid his local union dues in
7 almost one year. He prevailed upon Mr. Bilello with a story
8 about wanting to pay those dues with money he was about to
9 receive the following week.
10 Mr. Bilello put the business agent who was on site at
11 the Javits Center on the telephone and became not the EST of
12 the carpenters' union but the boss of the carpenters' union.
13 He told a business agent, attempting to do his job, attempting
14 to enforce the policy of the District Council, which had been
15 in place since at least 2001 when the operative collective
16 bargaining agreement was first put in place, that this fellow
17 was OK to work.
18 Mr. Mucaria, the business agent, immediately upon his
19 return to the District Council was so unnerved by the edict20 from Mr. Bilello that he reported it to his supervisors. To
21 me, it reflected that the compliance initiatives that have been
22 implemented at the District Council have taken hold, that a
23 business agent was so unnerved by this single inexplicable
24 intervention of the executive secretary/treasurer that he felt
25 he needed to make an immediate record of it.
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1 The investigation that my staff did was meticulous.
2 We interviewed the business agent, his supervisors, the
3 director of operations, Mr. Bilello, Mr. Blackwood, who was the
4 man at the Javits Center who called Mr. Bilello, and the
5 steward and the assistant steward, Diadado and Litterer, at the
6 Javits Center.
7 We have the facts. We presented the facts in
8 meticulous detail, that it was Mr. Bilello's idea to let
9 Blackwood work, not for any high-minded notion about the Taylor
10 law or his duty of fair representation, of which I am well
11 aware and have been for many years, but because he was the boss
12 of the union and he wanted to intervene on Blackwood's behalf.
13 It unnerved the business rep. It was at odds with the
14 compliance initiatives which had been implemented at the
15 Council, and it was antithetic to the goal of the stipulation
16 and order, which is to eradicate -- not to tolerate, not to
17 coddle, not to rationalize -- to eradicate corruption and
18 racketeering from the affairs of the union.
19 When Mr. Bilello was interviewed by me and my staff,20 he immediately attempted to shift blame, thinking there was
21 something dangerous about to happen to him, to Mucaria. I
22 asked him: Are you saying it is Mucaria's idea, and he backed
23 off. But the words had left his mouth.
24 He repeated that story in a sworn declaration that I
25 requested of him on April 26th, when we had a conference with
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1 Mr. Bilello and Mr. Petrillo. I believe that that affidavit is
2 false. I believe the record shows that that affidavit is
3 false. I believe the statement that he made to me on the
4 afternoon of March 22nd is false. He did not cooperate with my
5 investigation by making that statement.
6 He was served with a notice of possible action on
7 March 26, 2013. It spelled out in the standard detail that we
8 provided in every one of these situations what his rights were
9 to participate in making the record, asking him to submit
10 documents, any statements of fact, any memoranda of law. He
11 did not do it. That was his choice.
12 THE COURT: I get it.
13 MR. WALSH: The record was closed by April 29th. He
14 is now asking the court to completely upend the law that is
15 applied in matters like this, the procedural law, and the law
16 of this case by conducting de novo a minitrial here in the
17 district court.
18 His affidavit, his 12-page affidavit, is not properly
19 before the court. Whatever strategic reasoning Mr. Bilello and20 counsel may have applied in deciding not to supplement the
21 record is not of concern to anyone standing or sitting here
22 today.
23 THE COURT: How about the other specifications? By
24 the way, do you ascribe any priority or order to them, some
25 more serious than others?
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1 MR. WALSH: I think, without hesitation, that the
2 notion that a member of this union and the top fiduciary of
3 this union can willfully lie in an investigation conducted by
4 an appointee of the district court is appalling. I assign
5 great significance to that specification.
6 When Mr. Petrillo says Mr. Bilello is not superman, it
7 is revealed he is not even a careful man. One of the questions
8 which we asked all of the candidates for EST was whether they
9 were familiar with the bylaws that had been implemented in
10 August of 2011 and there were people who I did not approve to
11 run for office because they could not say that they were
12 familiar with those bylaws.
13 In Section 21, the question of the allocation of those
14 payments to the welfare fund, what Mr. Petrillo talks about in
15 that interim report was my strong recommendation that the
16 welfare fund needed money, that the costs were excessive and
17 any bit of income was a good thing. The document that
18 Mr. Bilello, Mr. Cavanaugh signed and submitted to the benefit
19 funds in June of 2012 was never submitted to me for review. I20 could indeed have made the argument that they failed to follow
21 the stipulation and order by giving me prior notice, and the
22 entire framework of the stipulation and order is based, with
23 respect to the District Council, on the giving of prior notice.
24 There are too many moving parts.
25 I was not given notice of that unilateral application
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1 of asserted authority by Mr. Bilello. If I had been given
2 notice of it, perhaps the outcome would have been different.
3 But as we pointed out in the papers, I am not counsel to the
4 District Council, I am not an advisor, and I am certainly not
5 there to tell them to watch out for every pothole that they may
6 be about to drive over in their daily affairs.
7 The fact is that over $900,000 was allotted to the
8 welfare fund, which was not money that the welfare fund had to
9 give back should the nun pro tunc vote have gone the other way.
10 And if the delegates had decided they wanted that money as
11 income, the chances are they would not have gotten it back.
12 There was no obligation for the welfare fund to return that
13 money.
14 With respect to the reading of the minutes of the
15 funds, it is easy to characterize that as a minor matter, but
16 it is not a minor matter. The executive committee of the
17 District Council needs to be informed about the affairs of the
18 benefit funds because this union is in a struggle. The
19 District Council is out front trying to organize non-union20 companies, trying to organize non-union workers. They need to
21 be apprised of the urgent problems confronting the benefit
22 funds, as this court knows and as we have discussed on many
23 occasions the problems confronting the benefits funds.
24 I attended many of those executive committee meetings
25 where it was apparently much more important that correspondents
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1 from the Boy Scouts and various district councils and local
2 unions seeking to fill tables at dinner dances be read to those
3 trustees, to those executive committee members, and I think the
4 priorities were all wrong in that regard.
5 It is easy to characterize each one of these
6 specifications in a certain way. The reality is that the
7 careful EST, the careful fiduciary consults with counsel. The
8 general counsel for the District Council has an office right
9 next to the EST. He is available basically five days a week
10 and certainly 24 hours a day by telephone. If Mr. Bilello had
11 been inclined to consult him, perhaps we would not be here
12 today.
13 THE COURT: Hold on a second. I see counsel for the
14 government is here. Did you have a point of view?
15 MR. TORRANCE: No, your Honor. We really have nothing
16 to add except our support for the Review Officer. The only one
17 minor point I might make, the court suggested that
18 specification five might be considered the least important. We
19 would respectfully disagree with that. The core purpose of the20 stipulation and order of 2010 is to place the
21 corruption-plagued union under effective review by a
22 court-appointed officer. If that court-appointed officer can't
23 count on truthful statements in all its investigations, we take
24 that extremely seriously. Thank you, your Honor.
25 THE COURT: You get the last word.
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1 MR. PETRILLO: Very briefly. There is reference to a
2 policy at the Javits. It hasn't been produced. Even their
3 affiant says the so-called policy has only been in force for
4 the last six months. If that is the policy, it is not in
5 accordance with law. And after this episode on March 22nd,
6 since we are going outside the record here as many of the
7 comments just made did, Mr. Bilello instructed counsel to put
8 together a program so the business representatives would act in
9 accordance with law. So the idea that he didn't see the
10 significance of this on March 22nd is completely belied by his
11 immediate reference to counsel of the entire issue so that
12 counsel could train --
13 THE COURT: I don't think he is saying he didn't see
14 the significance of it. I think counsel is saying it was quite
15 significant and he made the determination.
16 MR. PETRILLO: And he made the proper determination.
17 THE COURT: You said that before.
18 MR. PETRILLO: OK. Secondly, extensive interviews,
19 but didn't interview the one person who Mr. Bilello relied on20 as an executive officer to tell him what the policy was.
21 Mr. Cavanaugh. Why is that interview missing from this
22 extensive -- it is missing for a reason.
23 THE COURT: What is the reason it is missing?
24 MR. PETRILLO: Because it would support Mr. Bilello.
25 THE COURT: You think it was purposely omitted?
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1 MR. PETRILLO: Correct. That is the hallmark of
2 arbitrary and capricious decision making.
3 Specification 21, just to quote the RO on what he
4 said. This has to do with the allocation of rate increases.
5 It is on page 10 of our brief. There is no question from the
6 content of this extensive quote that his understanding was the
7 same as Mr. Bilello's, that the executives officers would
8 determine where the allocation should be made. And quite apart
9 from that, the delegate body agrees and voted in favor of --
10 THE COURT: After the fact.
11 MR. PETRILLO: They did, but they had been consulting
12 with delegates as they made their decision. There is really no
13 dispute that the welfare funds are underfunded and need more
14 money. He made a mistake. It is clear he made a mistake. He
15 is acknowledging the mistake, and then he corrected it.
16 THE COURT: That is the point. He did something
17 incorrect.
18 MR. PETRILLO: With no intention.
19 THE COURT: What do you mean with no intention? He20 purposely did what he did.
21 MR. PETRILLO: He didn't intend to violate any
22 provision of any bylaw.
23 THE COURT: He didn't know of any bylaw provision that
24 he might be violating.
25 MR. PETRILLO: Correct, because the practice for years
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1 had been to do it the way --
2 THE COURT: Wait.
3 MR. PETRILLO: We stipulated that he did not know that
4 he was violating that bylaw, number one, and, number two --
5 THE COURT: No, you are stipulating I think that he
6 didn't know what the bylaws said.
7 MR. PETRILLO: He knows what some of them said.
8 THE COURT: It is not a trick question. You can't
9 phrase it the way you want to phrase it if it is not accurate.
10 MR. PETRILLO: I think the accuracy is he knew a bunch
11 of the bylaw provisions but not all of them.
12 THE COURT: He didn't know this one.
13 MR. PETRILLO: Correct. We are stipulating. I agree.
14 I would ask the court, lastly, to look at the highly
15 detailed reports of what was said that are set forth in our
16 brief. I think the notion of reaching the conclusion that
17 anyone said anything false on this record is a wild stretch and
18 I think given your experience over the years that will be clear
19 to you.20 THE COURT: OK. I got it.
21 MR. PETRILLO: Thank you.
22 MR. WALSH: Judge, I just want to remind everyone that
23 Michael Cavanaugh, who is certainly not in a position of
24 authority on what the District Council's policy is, did in fact
25 write a letter, which we appended as Exhibit 14 to our last
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1 report, where he set forth the policy that I have asserted was
2 in place at the Javits Center. The idea that there is some
3 sort of malicious agenda going on here I find objectionable and
4 personally insulting.
5 THE COURT: Counsel, I have heard enough. I have a
6 full record here. Your oral argument is very helpful and I
7 think I can make a decision.
8 Thanks very much.
9 MR. PETRILLO: Thank you.
10 THE COURT: I will get to it as soon as I can.
11 (Adjourned)
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