Delay is requested for appeal deadline in Bridgeport case.

Connecticut's top lawyer, Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, yesterday asked a federal court to put off the deadline for appeal in the Bridgeport bankruptcy case.

Mr. Blumenthal filed papers with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Bridgeport asking that the deadline for a notice of appeal be shifted from Aug. 2 to Aug. 21, a spokeswoman said.

The attorney general said he was requesting a later deadline to avoid complicating the case with several appeals rather than a single one.

"Both sides, the city and the state, have indicated that they will appeal any adverse rulings," Mr. Blumenthal said. "My thought was that all the rulings shoudl be appealed together, rather than on a piecemeal basis."

As of the current Aug. 2 deadline, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Alan H. W. Shiff may still have not ruled on several points in the case.

Mr. Blumenthal has vowed to contest at least the July 22 ruling by Judge Shiff saying that state law permitted Bridgeport to use Chapter 9 of the federal Bankruptcy Code. He wants to wait for the judge's rulings on three other points, and he will appeal decisions on all four of the questions if they are not in line with the state's point of view that Bridgeport's bankruptcy filing is illegitimate.

The attorney general raised those points last month in motions for dismissal of the city's bankruptcy petition. The remaining points involve the facts of the case, rather than the legal questions of whether Bridgeport was "authorized" to file.

The two sides have until today to submit written arguments that would figure into the judge's ruling on the remaining three points.

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