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So many things we're indebted to Switzerland for: like Swiss watches, Swiss cheese, Swiss chocolate, Swiss steak, and Swiss Army knives. With a Zurich district court's acquittal of the 19 former Swissair executives and consultants today, though, it sounds like a whole new legal standard may well have been set. Call it the Swiss acquittal.
If I get this straight, the judge not only declared the accused not guilty of everything they were charged with — basically, mismanagement that led to the 2001 bankruptcy of the once-proud national airline — but he awarded them a total of $2.5 million.
I don't know if that's a first. But I do know that when I beat a $100 speeding ticket one time, I got not a nickel out of it for my troubles. Of course, that was in East Boston, not Ost Basel.
And imagine the consequences. With the way that some legal minds work, can't you pictures defense attorneys now filing a new kind of motion next time they think they have an airtight defense: not just to change venue, but to change it to Switzerland.
I'm part Swiss myself, and tend to give my ancestral homeland the benefit of the doubt. But this sounds like a Swiss miss to me.
And by the way, whatever happened to Swiss neutrality?
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