Cornwall, NY – A judge in Goshen, NY, declared a mistrial in the case of Cornwall blogger Tom Sheppard, abruptly ending the trial of a libel suit filed against Sheppard by former Cornwall supervisor Jim Sollami.
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Sollami asked for the mistrial after his lawyer, Peter Gleason, suffered a flare-up of a recurring back condition and couldn’t come to court. The trial began last week, before state Supreme Court Justice Lawrence Horowitz. Sheppard’s lawyer asked Horowitz to dismiss the suit outright because of the delay.
Horowitz refused. But he questioned why no other member of Gleason’s four-lawyer firm could stand in for him. Horowitz also ordered Sollami to cover Sheppard’s legal fees, ordering a hearing May 30 to determine how much Sollami owes Sheppard.
It drew national attention in legal circles because blogging is such a new phenomenon that few libel claims against bloggers have been decided by juries. [Record]