Schultz to Seattle: I Never Loved You Anyway

"Cheers! I'm gonna miss you!," by Seattlest Flickr contributor S x 2

Call us 'jaded', but Seattlest has come to expect corrupt politicians and scheming corporate shills to do their dirty work on Friday afternoons. It's just the way they work. Somewhere out there in public relations land, there must exist a playbook extolling the virtues of arson and manslaughter, as long as it's done on the last day of the week.

So last night, when we heard news that Howard Schultz had dropped his lawsuit against the owners of the Sonics, we had to chuckle to ourselves knowingly. Yep, right on schedule. You see, we never believed he actually wanted the Sonics back in the first place. This summer, Schultz was engaged in the fight of his corporate life, as activist investors began buying up shares of BuckDonalds stock. A few months ago, Schultz was in serious risk of losing his company. And while the idea of having some time off is appealing to most of us, Schultz was faced with padding around Laurelhurst as the most hated man in Seattle.

So Schultz went into action. On the corporate front, he pre-empted a hositle takeover by a) blowing out the company's cash register (think Clover and Pike Place Roast and Vivanno) and b) entering the company into a number of business agreements which may likely result in making Starbucks a great place to get tacos and curly fries in the very near future. (That's transformation!) The result? The hostile investors (called 'sharks' in the finance world) sold off their shares and the company now sits poised as a hollow shell of what once was a glorious icon of American consumption.

On the personal front, as the City v Sonics lawsuit drew to a close this summer, and it increasingly looked like the city would not prevail, Schultz dialed up his lawyers who found some flimsy legal grounds to sue the current Sonic owners for breach of contract or something similar. News-Tribune columnist Dave Boling today speculated on KJR-AM that Schultz could have even gone so far as to "pay off his law professors" who opined at the time that Schultz's case against the Sonics was a very winnable case. In fact, the Schultz case was dealt a number of legal blows in court over the past few weeks, and yesterday Schultz had seen enough.

After weathering a very stormy summer, Howard Schultz walks away unscathed. He has his beloved-though-irreparably-weakened company and he can go to dinner parties without getting shouted down, Brooklyn-style. Howard Schultz won. And we lost.

We think Boling put it best earlier today on KJR-AM:

It's disingenuous. It's lame. It's disgusting. And in the end, Howard Schultz sold the city of Seattle down the river."