Final arguments will continue — and probably will end — Thursday afternoon in the trial in Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz’s lawsuit to be declared eligible to run for state attorney general.
The four hours of final arguments made Tuesday in the week-old trial are already among the longest in Connecticut history for a civil case, experts say.
The final area of argument, scheduled Thursday at 2 p.m., is about whether Bysiewicz has established a need for Judge Michael Sheldon to even make a ruling about her eligibility. This question — about the question of what lawyers call the “ripeness” of the issue for a ruling — has been mentioned on and off for weeks. But Thursday will bring it to the forefront.
In search of a ruling to validate her candidacy, Bysiewicz has sued her own office and the Democratic Party that she wants to nominate her for attorney general at its May 21-22 convention. But now the state Republican Party, which has intervened in the case to challenge her legal qualifications, will argue that with the convention still a month off the whole question is speculative.
They say that she has not been denied the right to get on the ballot, and thus she has not been aggrieved legally — and, by extention from that, they say that has no real issue to sue over.
“Fear and speculation do not equate to jurisdiction,” lawyer Eliot Gersten said in a memorandum filed in advance of Thursday’s arguments. He wrote that Bysiewiecz, the plaintiff, has “failed to present any evidence from any member of the Democratic Party that there was a question or uncertainty as to her legal right to be a candidate for Attorney General.”
He added: “Indeed, the plaintiff offered no evidence, other than her baseless ‘fears,’ that someone, anyone, with the authority to do so, acted or even intended to act to stop her from having her name placed on the ballot in the state Democratic Convention. Indeed, the plaintiff’s own trial testimony supports an opposite conclusion. If there is any doubt, it resides as a matter of her concern within her mind.”
“Unfortunately, the plaintiff’s fear or speculation is not sufficient to invoke the legal remedy of a declaratory judgment,” Gersten wrote.
Bysiewicz’s lawyers have made assertions to the contrary — that the threat to her ability to run is very real — and they are expected to that again in court Thursday.