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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Local Seven-Up distributor sold

From staff and wire reports The Spokesman-Review

The Seven-Up distributor serving the Spokane and Coeur d’Alene markets has been sold for an undisclosed amount to a Los Angeles company.

The Spokane company, Weinstein Beverage Co., does business locally as Seven-Up Bottling Co. of Spokane. It has about 75 employees, who have been offered jobs by the new owner, said Ivan Jenkins, general manager of Seven-Up Bottling.

The deal closed on Dec. 15.

The buyer is Seven-Up/RC Bottling Co. of Southern California.

Seven-Up Bottling Co. of Spokane distributes Seven-Up, Dr. Pepper, A&W and Snapple brands. It no longer bottles soft drinks, Jenkins said.

A separate Weinstein Beverage operation based in Wenatchee wasn’t included in the purchase, he said.

Jenkins said Seven-Up Bottling has operated in Spokane for more than 60 years, under four different owners. Most recently, the company was owned by Pat and Susan Weinstein, who will continue to own the Wenatchee operation.

Gag request denied in Enron case

Houston A judge Friday refused to muzzle out-of-court statements related to the fraud and conspiracy case against Enron Corp. founder Kenneth Lay and former chief executive Jeffrey Skilling after Lay’s speech Tuesday lambasting government tactics in pursuing him.

U.S. District Judge Sim Lake denied prosecutors’ request for a gag order at a hearing Friday that was scheduled before Lay spoke Tuesday to Houston business and academic leaders. Lay, Skilling and former top Enron accountant Richard Causey are scheduled for trial Jan. 17.

Lake himself brought up the possibility of a gag order last month in anticipation of heavy publicity stemming from the blockbuster trial to emerge from the Justice Department’s nearly 4-year-old investigation of Enron’s 2001 collapse.

But the judge decided against a gag order for the second time this month, saying Friday that Lay’s speech was “a drop in the bucket” among news stories, books and movies spawned by the Enron scandal. Prosecutors had supported it, but the defense teams didn’t.

AOL drops talks with Microsoft

Washington Time Warner Inc. is negotiating exclusively with Google Inc. to broaden a lucrative advertising partnership with Time Warner’s America Online unit, abruptly ending negotiations early Friday with Microsoft Corp., officials close to the negotiations said.

Shutting out Microsoft sets the stage for a high-profile agreement between two titans of the Internet. Among other terms of a deal expected to be announced as early as next week, Google will highlight Time Warner Web properties as sponsored links and AOL will continue to provide Google’s search engine to its own subscribers.

Officials described the negotiations on condition of anonymity, because no agreement has yet been formalized.

AOL is effectively Google’s biggest customer. It accounted for about $420 million, or about 10 percent, of Google’s revenue during the first nine months of this year, according to regulatory filings.

Most of the $420 million came from the ads Google distributes on AOL’s Web site. The two companies first began working together in 2002 when Google wrestled away AOL from another online advertising network currently owned by Yahoo Inc.

Microsoft, which increasingly views Google as a fierce online rival, has been negotiating with Time Warner since January but did not propose any cash investment in AOL, officials said.

Investor groups sue Diebold

Cleveland

Two groups of investors are suing Diebold Inc., claiming that misleading comments about the company’s electronic voting machine business artificially inflated share prices.

The lawsuits filed this week in U.S. District Court in Cleveland claim Diebold was “unable to assure the quality and working order of its voting machine products,” which are being scrutinized by election officials in several states.

The plaintiffs claim that the company tried to conceal the problems from investors and that Diebold lacked the internal controls necessary to accurately monitor its financial performance.

Both lawsuits seek class-action status.