Friends of the Barnes Back in Court Thursday

The Merion-based Friends of the Barnes group, which has been challenging the Barnes Foundation's move to Center City, returns to Montgomery County Orphans’ Court for a hearing Thursday morning before Judge Stanley Ott.

This time, the matter is the financial sanctions against the group sought by the Barnes Foundation.

The hearing is scheduled for 9:30 a.m. As usual, the Friends of the Barnes will be represented by attorney Samuel C. Stretton, Esquire, who filed the Friends’ February 2011 petition, which brought what it called new evidence from the documentary “The Art of the Steal,” and “appeared to have acted improperly in the case and had a conflict not revealed in earlier Court hearings.”  

(Stretton argued that the conflict on the part of the Attorney General made it impossible for that office to adequately represent the public interest, a scenario that would permit a third party to be granted legal standing under the Private Attorney General Theory.)

the request to reopen his 2004 decision, which permitted the move to Center City, and the Friends to pay court the Barnes' courts costs and lawyers' fees, totaling more than $60,000.

"This is well-trod ground, and we must reach the same conclusion as we did in 2008," Ott ruled.

Later last fall, the Barnes Foundation submitted bills seeking reimbursement. In response, the Friends’ attorney, Samuel C. Stretton, requested Thursday’s evidentiary hearing, challenging the “reasonableness and or necessity of the fees and costs.” 

“My trust in the judicial system is shaken badly. ... There was never discovery, depositions under oath, etc.—the things that make a trial adversarial and fair,” said Walter Herman, a longtime member of the Friends, at the time.

Stretton filed objections, "showing that there is no legal basis for Sanctions against his clients and stating that the fees and expenses of over $63,000 billed by the Barnes’ attorneys are 'extraordinarily excessive.'”