Cappello wants sanctions against prosecution

BY ERIC LINDBERG
DAILY SOUND STAFF WRITER

News-Press attorney Barry Cappello asked for sanctions yesterday against Teamsters officials for failing to supply subpoenaed materials during the current federal labor hearing into allegedly illegal firings at the Santa Barbara News-Press.
Cappello (pictured) charged that union attorney Ira Gottlieb and lead union organizer Marty Keegan withheld an e-mail written by Tom Schultz and addressed to Gottlieb, Keegan and about 25 union supporters.
Gottlieb said he did not produce that e-mail because it was no longer on his computer when he gathered materials pursuant to Cappello’s subpoena.

“The union did not withhold anything,” Gottlieb said. “...It was gone from my computer and Mr. Keegan’s by the time we were subpoenaed.”
Cappello said the e-mail, in which Schultz described an attempt to deliver a letter to News-Press owner and copublisher Wendy McCaw, as a “key piece of evidence.”
“We consider this a very serious matter,” Cappello said, also requesting a hearing into the issue and whether sanctions against the prosecution applied.
Judge William Kocol disagreed with Cappello’s characterization of the document, saying, “The content of the e-mail in the context of the case is not a critical piece of evidence.”
However, Judge Kocol agreed to allow Cappello to question Keegan under oath as to why he did not provide the e-mail to the defense and directed the attorneys to schedule a time during the trial to hold such a hearing.
The e-mail in question discusses an attempt by a group of newsroom employees to deliver a letter to McCaw in August 2006. In the message, Schultz wrote, “Peeps, we rocked the house, crossed their wires and got ‘em unglued,” a description Cappello said contradicts earlier testimony by Schultz and others that the affair was quiet and professional.
Cappello said the e-mail bolsters his argument that the delivery attempt was loud, disruptive and not protected union activity. He said he has about six other e-mails that Keegan and Gottlieb did not turn over, adding that he believes they will tell him those were also “mysteriously deleted.”
Cappello also castigated federal attorneys for not being thorough enough in their search for documents related to the hearing, explaining that he received the e-mails from former News-Press copy editor and travel editor Al Bonowitz, who is named in the NLRB complaint.
Judge Kocol said that he sees no evidence so far that suggests the prosecution did not act with due diligence in producing subpoenaed documents.