picture-12Nasser Kazeminy’s attorney threatened to go to court to prove defamation after a Texas judge on Friday halted a lawsuit alleging his client funneled $100,000 to then-U.S. Sen. Norm Coleman.

As anticipated, Judge Michael Gomez of the Harris County District Court in Houston put a stop to the case that ex-CEO Paul McKim filed against his former firm, Deep Marine Technology, and Kazeminy, the Minnesota businessman who controls it.

Public attention to the lawsuit centered on the charges concerning Coleman, but he wasn’t named as a defendant. Indeed, McKim devoted only three of the lawsuit’s 30-plus pages to his allegation that Kazeminy had Deep Marine send $75,000 (and ask for $25,000 more to be sent) to the Hays Companies, the St. Paul insurance firm where Coleman’s wife Laurie works.

Both McKim and Kazeminy wanted the suit, filed a week and a half before Election Day 2008, to end. Gomez ruled that McKim no longer had legal standing as a minority stockholder to bring the case — the very order that McKim’s lawyer requested at a hearing on Monday.

But despite the judge’s stated reason for the suit’s demise, Coleman saw vindication in the lawsuit’s end and suggested villainy in its timing. The former senator told the St. Paul Pioneer Press, “I’m not surprised — the election is over and the lawsuit goes away. There was never anything to this.”

Kazeminy lawyer Robert Weinstine, in comments about retaliating against the plaintiff, told the Associated Press: “I don’t think we’re going to be in any position to give Paul McKim a free pass here.”

Does that mean Kazeminy, Coleman or Hays will sue to show that McKim’s charges and former Deep Marine CFO B. J. Thomas’ sworn testimony were lies?

Or with the lawsuit, will their protests simply … go away?