It was bound to happen. We’ve exhausted our supply of wisecracks about the America’s Cup litigation, which we’ve covered, inexplicably, for a year now. (Our two most recent posts are here and here. But try though we might, we can’t seem to stop the courts from handing down rulings in this interminable battle. And since we’re in this deep (our last oceanic pun), we’re determined to see this thing through. So here’s an update based on the Thursday order from New York Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich, organized for your convenience in helpful bullet-point fashion.
• First: Alinghi, the defending champ, sponsored by the Swiss-based Societe Nautique de Geneve, promises to reveal on Thursday the Northern Hemisphere location for the February 2010 race. The race was originally scheduled for July 2008, but has been delayed endlessly as billionaires Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli have bickered over the date, location and even proper challenger for the title now held by Bertarelli’s Alinghi syndicate. (Earlier this year, in what we naively thought would be the last word in the litigation, the New York Court of Appeals found that Societe Nautique was wrong to accept a challenge from Club Nautico Espanol de Vela, a Spanish team. The court ordered the Swiss club to schedule a race with an American contender, the Golden Gate Yacht Club, which sponsors Ellison’s BMW-Oracle team.)
