One of the privileges of having access to lots of money is that you can safely set aside all legal good sense and go for broke. The problem with the idea that the party might appeal a jury verdict from a jury they insisted on having against the judge’s better counsel is that it will likely have the judge confirm the first outcome.
So, are they just stalling? Having strung Mr Gormley along thus far (including putting him in the dock for four plus days), perhaps it’s to buy some time, to get the money together (it’s not apparent from their declared accounts just where it is coming from).
Or this is another episode of avoiding the inevitable for as long as possible?
As Dearbhail McDonald notes in the Irish Independent, it’s not going to be cheap:
SINN Fein is nursing losses of up to £500,000 (€615,000) after a jury found it had made defamatory and malicious remarks about a prominent businessman in Northern Ireland.
Even for Sinn Fein, and its much fabled hidden millions, that’s not the sort of cash you can get out from the ATM all in one go…
Mick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty
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