The Fighting 29th

All about New York's 29th Congressional District

The whole Sanford Dickert/Eric Massa mess has ended with a whimper, 16 months after it emerged with a bang.

Long-time readers probably recall that Eric Massa fired his first campaign manager, Sanford Dickert, shortly after Dickert came to Corning to work on the campaign.  The firing resulted in the filing of two legal actions by Dickert, one with an arbitrator, and the other in NY court.  At the time, I wrote a long analysis of the case based on legal documents that Dickert had posted on a website he created devoted to the action.  That website is long gone, but Dickert continues to post updates on the case to his personal blog.

In January of 2007, Dickert posted the news that he and the Massa campaign had settled the first dispute over what he was owed by the campaign.  Dickert got a $40,000 settlement, even though he says that spent over $50,000 in lawyers' fees to litigate the matter.

In the latest post on the matter, Dickert released a settlement document where both parties affirm that the other is just absolutely swell.  This document apparently settles the libel suit filed by Dickert, and it signals the end of all the legal disputes between the two parties.

I've exchanged a number of emails with Dickert, who was trying to convince me to pull down the original story about the Dickert/Massa controversy.  I stand by that story, which is the result of carefully reading every word of the legal documents he provided.  I also stand by the conclusion I made there, which is that Massa made a rookie mistake by using a pretty thin employment agreement to back up a handshake with Dickert, but he did nothing illegal or immoral.  I think Dickert got the best possible outcome he could, and it's a pyrrhic victory at best.