ACQUITTAL IN TV LABOR BEEF
Jury’s not guilty verdict called a win for ‘people’s right to protest’
The sweeping acquittal yesterday of four Teamsters in the controversial “Top Chef” extortion trial was a victory for the “people’s right to protest,” a victorious union defense lawyer exulted.
“The right to demonstrate can be defined in many different ways. The key here is that the jury recognized that everyone, including organized labor, has that right,” said Oscar Cruz Jr., attorney for Local 25 Teamster Daniel Redmond.
“What we don’t want to be chilled is people’s right to protest,” Cruz said. “That’s really what the issue is.”
The jury’s eight notguilty verdicts on charges of conspiracy to extort and attempted extortion brought to a dramatic end a high-profile case featuring a cast drawn from Hollywood and the Bay State union ranks.
Local 25 members Redmond, John Fidler, Robert Cafarelli and Michael Ross — who had faced up to 20 years — gasped on hearing the not guilty verdicts from the jury of nine women and three men who deliberated for four days. The Teamsters later hugged, slapping one another and their lawyers on the back.
Fidler, 52, who was accused of threatening to smash the “pretty face” of the nonunion reality show’s host Padma Lakshmi, flashed a thumbs-up as he left U.S. District Court in South Boston, telling reporters he was “relieved” by the verdicts.
Shortly afterward, a Facebook group called “SUPPORT THE TEAMSTER 4” posted a photo of Fidler smiling and holding a small cake with “Not Guilty” written in red icing, framed by red frosting roses.
Acting U.S. Attorney William Weinreb’s team was more somber.
“We are disappointed in today’s verdict. The government believed, and continues to believe, that the conduct in this case crossed the line and constituted a violation of federal law,” Weinreb said in a statement.
“The defendants’ conduct was an affront to all of the hard-working and lawabiding members of organized labor,” he said.
The Teamsters were accused of threatening the “Top Chef” cast and crew filming at the Steel & Rye restaurant in Milton on June 10, 2014, with physical violence, economic harm and vandalism in hopes of frightening the Bravo cooking competition into hiring them for jobs already filled by nonunion production assistants.
Cruz opined that the prosecutors “focused a little too much on the picket-line conduct. These are emotional situations. People are fighting for their livelihoods and this is the type of conduct that sometimes takes place.”
The case hinged on a 44-year-old U.S. Supreme Court decision that forbids charging union members with anti-racketeering Hobbs Act extortion if their behavior, however abhorrent, is in the pursuit of a legitimate labor objective.
U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock had told the trial teams the exception to the Supreme Court’s 1973 decision is “narrow” and the jurors were facing “a very complex area of law” in their deliberations.
Cafarelli’s attorney, Carmine Lepore, said he believes the jury gave the Teamsters the benefit of the doubt because the government failed to prove the men were illegally fighting for unwanted, unneeded and superfluous jobs.
The trial cast a critical light on City Hall’s relationship with labor. Witnesses testified Kenneth Brissette, Mayor Martin J. Walsh’s tourism and entertainment chief, withheld permits for “Top Chef” to film its 12th season in Boston in a failed bid to persuade producers to hire the Teamsters.
Brissette, who is slated to be tried on extortion charges early next year along with another City Hall aide, Timothy Sullivan, is accused of threatening to withhold permits for the Boston Calling festival in September 2014 unless organizers hired union workers.