Not A Gift After All

And so, Bono gets his trousers back. And his hat, thank goodness, with winter coming and his head needing to be kept warm. He'll make good use of the green sweatshirt as well, now that the North wind does blow.

Wouldn't you know that Mr. Justice Michael Peart would prefer Bono's evidence over Lola Cashman's insistence that the aforementioned items were gifts? It was her evidence that lacked "credibility, plausibility or probability" while himself was as honest as St. Patrick. Not to attack the woman, now, but the judge went on to smooth out the rough edges of his judgment by stating that Ms. Cashman was not being deliberately dishonest. Not at all. She developed her belief in the gifting over time and had come to incorporate this mistaken belief in her heart. Self-deluded, she went on to present inconsistent evidence in court. So she's not a bad person, just confused.

You see, Lola recalled things that she says happened, but Bono didn't recall those things happening that way at all. Since she was the one being sued, it was up to her to prove that what she said was right, but in the midst of a 'he said, she said', how can you prove anything?

Her evidence became even more dodgy after someone noticed that The Edge was wearing Converse Hi-tops before Ms. Cashman came on the scene. She said that she was the one to get him to don this distinctive apparel, being the fashion and marketing guru that she is, but one photo proved otherwise. With that, the judge decided that she was given to exaggeration, and every word of her testimony became suspect.

Maybe the judge might have believed her story about Bono giving her the hat if she had not also been seen with a U2 video monitor in her flat back in 1991. That's where the consistency in evidence came in, apparently, since Mr. Justice Peart had an eyebrow raised when she explained how the piece of equipment came to be in her possession.

The items in question were on the verge of being auctioned off, at a time when Lola Cashman was in need of some ready cash. It would appear that sales of her book about the Joshua Tree Tour did not sell well enough to bring in the royalty payments that she might have hoped for, and now she's lost a court case. If she didn't have enough money before, she'll definitely have even less once she gets assessed court courts and legal fees.

The moral of the story is, beware of Dubhs bearing gifts. Always get a receipt.