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Bell’s descendants appealed Balmanoukian’s decision and will appear at a hearing in May, the Halifax Chronicle Herald reported last week. In the request for an appeal, the estate’s lawyer Nicole LaFosse alleged Balmanoukian’s “personal opinions with respect to Mr. Alexander Graham Bell” were evidence of bias. To prove her point, LaFosse attached a letter from Bell’s great-grandson, the historian Edwin Grosvenor.

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“I just laughed,” Grosvenor, who has written two books on Bell, told the National Post. “It just seemed odd to me that a tax assessor would bring up an issue like that from the 1870s.”

In his letter, addressed directly to Balmanoukian, Grosvenor dismissed the “spurious claims” about Meucci. While Meucci filed his caveat before Bell’s patent, a U.S. judge found significant proof that Meucci’s invention didn’t actually work, Grosvenor noted.

“With all due respect, sir, I can tell you that no serious historian of early telecommunications takes the Meucci claims seriously,” he wrote. “We hope you will refrain from perpetrating the Meucci fiction.”

In an interview with the Post, Balmanoukian denied being in the Meucci camp.

“I don’t accept your premise that I’m in any particular camp or that I have any particular bias or you know, that I have any animus,” he said. “I reject that. But other than that, I’m not prepared to speak to a case that’s in front of the court.”

The Meucci question has even been the source of a minor fracas between the United States and Canada. In 2002, U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution recognizing Meuicci’s “work in the invention of the telephone.” The resolution cast Meucci as a “both extraordinary and tragic” figure who “never learned English well enough to navigate the complex American business community.” If he had been able to afford the $10 fee to renew his caveat, the resolution said, Bell would have never been issued his famous patent.