Friend of WFMT?
Is Tom Geoghegan a friend of WFMT? Sure he is. He’s also a friend of jobless steelworkers and dissident Teamsters and the other uphill causes to which his law practice is devoted. He’s a classy guy who unwinds with classical music. We should all have such a friend.
We asked Geoghegan for precedents that cut his way. “The Teamsters Union has sued Teamsters for a Democratic Union for using their name. They lost,” Geoghegan told us. “CETA is acting just like them.”
Two months ago, Circuit Court Judge Albert Green tossed out a suit that the Friends of WFMT had filed to rescue their cultural jewel from the predators’ jaws. The Friends had accused CETA of committing fraud upon the public and mismanaging a charitable trust.
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As for the fraud claim, Green found no demonstration of injury.
CETA, it seemed to us, was on a roll.
Geoghegan tells us that the attorney general’s office has offered to mediate this hapless dispute, which would be fine with the Friends. Mediation presumes some attainable middle ground, and from Geoghegan’s perspective, that exists: it’s an arrangement in which CETA retains formal authority over WFMT but yields control to an independent community-based board “exclusively devoted to WFMT.”
