I read with interest today the Grunter’s meager coverage of the Wolfeboro v Wright Pierce lawsuit.  Now I know the Grunter hasn’t been to Concord to cover this event, even though it’s probably the biggest lawsuit in Town history.  I know because I’ve been there every day and haven’t seen hide nor hair of the Grunter.

In usual fashion, the newspaper gets it’s news about the town by asking the town.  So what we get is the usual sugar coated spin.  I’m not saying the town has a good or bad case, but I will say that the representation in the Grunter is misleading.

The paper says that the town has won 8.5 out of 9 rulings by the trial judge.  What they don’t mention is:

• WP moved to eliminate a count of Breach of Warranty, and rather than object, the town withdrew the count.
• Same with a motion by WP to eliminate a count of Gross Negligence.
• WP moved to prohibit the town’s expert witness Phillip Forsley from testifying.  Rather than lose that, the town removed him from the witness list.
• The town did not seem to enter their two expert witness reports as exhibits, presumably because they do not have one of the authors, Mr. Forsley.

I suppose you can count the motions that actually get ruled on, and not mention the ones you avoid loosing by essentially doing what you would have done had you lost.

For such a great case, it seems curious to me that Wolfeboro and their experts were at the RIB site on Easter Sunday, after the first week of trial, taking pictures and developing more evidence to support their case.

The town may have a great case and may win big, but it does the citizens no good to have the Selectmen tout artificial statistics to convince everyone how great it’s going without being honest about some of the major setbacks as well.  Better to just say it will be a long hard trial and leave it at that.