@Gardenista He or the defense paid $20K PER WEEK to stay in the private hotel/wedding venue IIRC. Sickening.
Look, I don't want to simp for the defense but I've seen this come up a few times and there seems to be an implication that they chose this wedding venue because the defense attorneys were living the high-life and whooping it up in the off-hours, and I doubt that's true.
I assume they had a large team on-site--more than just the people we saw in court. Considering how many media folks were in town for the trial, it would have been difficult to find a local hotel that could house the entire team. Plus, I'm sure room rates were at a premium during that time so it was likely more cost-effective to use the venue, especially since they wouldn't need to separately rent conference space. I'm not sure in this case, but sometimes these sorts of arrangements also include meals, which can otherwise be another $50+/per day/per person. They also wouldn't have to pack up everything over the weekend and vacate their rooms.
In another life time I occasionally had to deal with large teams at off-site locations and you'd be shocked at how expensive hotel arrangements can get. The people responsible for booking client engagements often sought out-of-the-box solutions like this one to contain costs.
Edit: Okay, I checked out
this article about the defense accommodations:
- The $20K rate includes a chef to cook meals.
- The state wanted to stay there too, but they called after the defense team did.
- The state ended up at the Hamptons Inn paying $300/night for 16 people. If everyone got their own room, that's $24K/week in hotel costs alone, not including meals and office space.
- The defense team had to vacate the venue at the end of February, so they had to find new digs since the trial went on so long.