Both the Eagle and the Record carried articles recently on the Curnin versus Egremont lawsuit. The articles make it sound like the fight is still on. I beg to differ. The fight's over, but the taxpayers are still being hit with the cost of the Curnins bulldog-like tenacity.



The federal judicial system has three levels of courts. The District Court is the trial level court; the Curnins lost there. The loser can appeal to a court of appeals, in this case the First Circuit Court of Appeals, which basically covers New England; the Curnins lost there too. The loser there can appeal to the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court rejects the vast majority of appeals, that is, the Supreme Court just lets the Court of Appeals ruling stand.



The Curnins could try to appeal to the Supreme Court, but that appeal would probably be rejected. So they're trying the only other last ditch course open to them, namely an attempt to get all the judges on the First Circuit to rehear the appeal already decided against them. You see, the Courts of Appeals have lots of judges, but normally only three of them are assigned to decide a particular case. That's what happened in the Curnins case. But it's very difficult to convince the judges that a matter is so important that more than three judges ought to decide it, especially if the judges don't see some pretty serious error in what the three judges did. My money is on the judges rejecting the Curnins attempt to get all the judges to rehear their case. And after that, if I were the lawyer, I certainly wouldn't recommend an appeal to the Supreme Court, because it's very expensive, takes a long time and is very likely to fail.



But all of this fruitless activity takes a lot of time for the town's lawyers, and guess who's paying for them? If you think it's the town's insurance company, you don't understand experience rated insurance. Come on, Curnins, give up.