Saturday, December 17, 2005

Seven Days

This order was signed by the Judge in this case yesterday, December 16, 2005:


THIS MATTER coming before the Court on Ms. Neva Li’s (“Ms. Li”) request for costs and fees pursuant to this Court’s Orders of September 1, 2005, and October 26, 2005, the Court having reviewed the Bill of Costs and Supporting Affidavit, and being fully advised in the premises, Now Therefore:
IT IS HEREBY ORDERED that attorneys’ fees and costs in the total amount of $13,822.92 are awarded and are to be made payable to Ms. Li and sent to Foster Zack & Lowe, P.C. within seven days of the date of this Order.



Friday, December 23, 2005. Pay up or we're back in Court for the third or fourth time on Contempt. Next comes a Show Cause hearing on failure to provided all documents as ordered (despite two trips to the office to copy) and a myriad of other issues, which I will detail here in the next few days.

Meanwhile, our responses to their appeals can be found here:

1.
Amendment to Appeals Brief - mine
2.
Brief in Support of my Motion to Affirm the Judgement
3.
Motion to affirm - a sort of request for permission type document.

And then, there is the
following letter to their new attorneys in response to their "response" to my defamation/slander lawsuit. Interestingly enough, their response includes a countersuit on Mr. Perricone's behalf, which apparently the members are supposed to pay the attorney's fees for.

Dear Joni and Brett:

I have reviewed the above document in preparation of an Answer. I thought it would be better and more of a professional courtesy to send you this letter before I move for an immediate Motion for Summary Disposition. My Motion for Summary Disposition at this point would be based on the defects in the pleading that relate to the defamation Count I - Business Defamation of MCRGO and Count II [sic] – Personal Defamation as to Defendant/Counter Plaintiff Perricone. Pleadings that allege defamation must be specific. In other words, the pleading is defective if it does not contain the defamatory words specifically - verbatim. The elements of defamation must be specifically plead including the allegations of the defamatory words and the connections between the parties (Pierson v Ahern, 2005 WL 1685103) (Mich App, Jul 19, 2005) (NL. 260661) Hightower and Hightower, Inc. v Community Living Services 2004 WL 2452008( Mich App, Nov 02, 2004) (NO 248882) Rouch v Enquirer and News of Battle Creek Michigan 440 Mich 238, 487 NW 2d 205, 20 Media L.Rep. 2265 (Mich Jul 15, 1992) (NL. 89799). The defamatory statement must be specifically verbatim without exception. My notes indicate that I have somewhere around the 28th of December to provide an Answer. As a Christmas present I would like to give you the opportunity to correct the defects in your pleading. Provide me an amended pleading with the specific verbatim allegations no later than December 20, 2005. If you do not wish to amend your pleading, I will move for Summary Disposition on those 2 counts for lack of specificity and include a Motion for Summary Disposition on tortuous interference before my Answer.

The second issue in this letter concerns the private affirmative claim for Mr. Perricone, individually. Mr. Perricone cannot bring his own private claims that are paid for by MCRGO. The question is whether the Board of Directors is paying for an affirmative action that only Mr. Perricone stands to benefit from. If this is the case, it is well beyond the authorization of the Articles of Incorporation and well beyond the indemnification as set out in the Bylaws. Please provide us a copy of the Board resolution passed, adopted and approved consistent with the Articles of Incorporation and the Bylaws of MCRGO (not the Ops Committee) where the Board authorized the payment of attorney fees advance, (which is not indemnification) of individual Board members and where they authorized payment of attorney fees for an independent, individual affirmative action on behalf of Mr. Perricone. If you wish, I can send a discovery request Monday morning and get the documents.

Finally, as to the first Li v MCRGO litigation, we are in the process of finishing the inventory of the documents that we copied at MCRGO. I will be sending that to you in a couple of days with an Affidavit as to what we received as well as a request for MCRGO to provide what is still lacking consistent with all the Orders. At that point we can see what we can do to get the rest of the information in the next week or two.

Thank you for your attention to these matters. Looking forward to hearing from you.

I look forward to hearing from them as well.

Now, I am off to the meeting where they will "announce" the new Board members. Considering the endless character assassination that the Chairman of the Board and Mr. Perricone have engaged in for the last two years, and the fact that they control the vote count process, I hardly expect to be successful in my bid but I will be attending the meeting.