In a small victory for the free enterprise system, the New York State Court of Appeals today threw out four of six claims brought against former NYSE chief Richard “Dick” Grasso as relates to his compensation package. The claims were all filed by ex-New York Attorney General, ex-New York Governor and ex-Client Number 9, Eliot Spitzer. In dismissing the four claims the court ruled that the attorney general did not have the authorization to sue under the circumstances.
The ruckus began back in 2003, when it became public knowledge that Dick Grasso was granted a compensation package that totaled some $150 million to $190 million, depending upon whom you talked to. Outrage quickly spread amongst the fast track political crowd and Mr. Grasso must have seemed an easy target on which to pin the face of public greed versus the suffering of the huddled masses, and a well positioned public figure on which to place one’s foot while climbing the gubernatorial ladder. The fact that Dick Grasso was a classic American success story, himself once among those aforementioned masses, while Mr. Spitzer’s American experience was quite the opposite, did not appear to matter. Nor did it matter that the NYSE board of directors, hardly grade school flunkies, voted openly to pay Mr. Grasso the enormous sums. Populism works with the media and voters love to see the might fall.
Cheers for Mr. Grasso’s recent success and here’s to hoping his winning ways continue at the expense of overzealous prosecutors and soulless politicians.
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