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Hillsborough County Superior Court Judge Phillip Mangones handed down a 31-page ruling on the civil suit growing out of the phone-jamming scandal. NH Republicans had asked Mangones to dismiss the suit. |
Mangones dismissed 5 of 8 Democrats’ claims but said the case could go forward on these three claims:
- That the Republicans intentionally and repeatedly interfered with the use of their telephone systems, rendering them essentially useless, apparently over a not-insubstantial period of time on election day 2002.
- That there was a conspiracy to interfere with the telephones.
- That the interference may be viewed at trial as malicious, possibly making the Democrats eligible for enhanced compensatory damages.
Mangones neither accepted nor dismissed a Republican counterclaim: that Democrats had filed the suit with no legitimate basis, intending primarily to harm the Republican Party and/or Republican candidates during the November 2004 general election. Instead, the judge gave Republicans 30 days to make a case that Democrats abused the system.
Republicans (and the AP) spin this as a Republican victory: “most” counts were dismissed.
Democrats have a different point of view: that Republicans have spent thousands of dollars on lawyers to shut down the Democrats’ investigation, but despite those efforts the case keeps rolling forward. NH attorney Paul Twomey told John DiStaso that the Democrats filed their suit to uncover the truth about those responsible for the phone-jamming. Said Twomey, We can conduct the same discovery no matter how many counts there are.”