An update on the ongoing problems with the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners (MCRGO), of which I am a member and a Director.
I will be putting an entire history of these lawsuits on this site at this location over the next two weeks. I want to clarify some of the issues right here and now, though, and allow members and past members to see some of what is going on. Perhaps this will even serve to enlighten some of the current Board members because, frankly, I believe they are being lied to and I know they have not been given access to many of the legal documents. Unfortunately, ignorance is not an exemption to responsibility when one sits on the Board of a Corporation.
All of the documents I have scanned or received in electronic format are available in this directory. Unfortunately, I believe some Board members may be badly surprised about what they read there and I know members will.
Here's how this evolved.
We went to the Show Cause/Stay hearing on August 29, 2005 and went in front of the Judge. Once again, he threw out their inept crap and found for what was legal and right. He put them on notice that they must face civil contempt fines for refusal to provide the records. I am told that some members of the BoD claim to other members of the BoD that they have given me all of the records. Please see:
A transcript from the Show Cause hearing where their attorney openly admits that they have not given them to me and then goes on to claim they do not exist. Unfortunately, State law requires they exist so they may have quite the conundrum going there.
Of note as well might be my analysis of the documents provided under the order to date:
Missing documents.
I am also told that Board members are being told that I will/have waived the contempt fines. I would have been willing to do so, and in fact, offered to do so had we been able to reach the expected settlement on 9-12-05 referenced here:
Attempted settlement letter.
That meeting has been canceled and we are now operating under the impression that those several weeks of wait time were a bad faith attempt to stall yet again complying with the Court's order. We have terminated negotiations and informed the MCRGO attorney that we will be at the office on Monday to get the required documents. If we do not, we will be seeing Judge Giddings again that day. There is no sense wasting a day off work and the travel, etc. I really do hope that their attorney is making the entire Board aware of the possibilities that follow from here. It is not just a matter of throwing money that belongs to them. This is member money from a C-4 corporation that was entrusted to the Board.
Before we ever left Court the day that MCRGO was found to be in Contempt of the order, and over the next few days, our attorney, working with Fleming and a Representative of the Board, Gary Huggins, got to the point in negotiations, that we had a settlement meeting lined up for the 12th. Part of their offer included Mr. Perricone's contract not being renewed, since his actions have obviously been extremely detrimental to the corporation. We were assured that the BoD no longer supported him as a whole, and that on the 12th, we were going to be able to hammer out some kind of an agreement to drop the defamation suit, that Mr. Perricone would no longer be in the picture and that as soon as we finished with this settlement meeting, we would all go over to the office and finish the day by getting the other orders' requirements fulfilled.
Apparently, Tuesday, September 6, 2005, in what appears to be a carefully engineered meeting, without all of the Board present and certainly not unanimously (or Dale Shantz - rumored to be an outgoing Board member - would have been trumpeting that), they decided they didn't wish to settle and were going to go the full drag it through the Courts another couple of years route.
They sent that email, I got it, I called our attorney and informed him of my wishes, he called Mr. Fleming, who said he'd only found out about a few minutes before our attorney called. I suspect6 he is disappointed that the possible settlement that he and Mr. Huggins worked so hard for is in the toilet, but then life is full of disappointments.
Now, we will ask the Judge to look at the members' interests in this. MCRGO members have the right to ask that MCRGO funds for the C-4 not be used to support defense of lawsuits against the Board members personally, which is what the defamation and slander suit is. We'd also like the Court to look at the members' interests when it comes to members of the Board deliberately flaunting the law and a Contempt order. If he decides that they have allowed a personal or ego-driven issue to influence decisions they should have made in the best interests of the members, he could terminate their use of MCRGO funds for the defense of this suit.
I have been told some things in confidence that appear to sound as though all they are really looking for is to get past the election cycle so I "lose" my bid for Directorship, ad then they'll give me everything they have. This appears to me to be a very personal issue rather than the so-called protection of MCRGO member privacy.
Please be aware that I have never asked for anything that I am not legally entitled to as a member of the MIchigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners. If you are a member who would like to see how the organization is being run and where the money is going, you, too may request all of the same documents I have. As this page evolves over the next two weeks, you will be able to see the communcations I have exchanged with the corporation, the Executive Director, and the Board in my attempts to get them to comply with state law. I have explained to them that we, as an organization, are in grave danger of being shut down by the State for failing to meet our responsiblities in reproting and records keeping, not to mention the financial burden of continuing this lawsuit. Complying with the law is a simple thing to do. Why any non-profit would seek to hide its financial and legal dealings from its own membership, even to the point of being held in Contempt of Court, heavily fined and spending tens of thousands of dollars attempting to keep those records hidden, is beyond me as a member, as a Director and as a Candidate for the Board of Directors in the upcoming election cycle.
Any MCRGO member (or ex-member who was still a member when I filed this suit in February of 2004) interested in supporting the termination of the use of membership monies being used to support contravention of the law or the defamation/slander lawsuit can contact me and join in as a plaintiff or even just in providing an affidavit that they do not support monies being used in support of these suits. The only cost to any of them would be ten dollars maximum for having a notary sign an affidavit my attorney is preparing. I am the only person who has a signed contract for attorney fees and that will continue in force no matter how many people join this suit or provide affidavits.
Please contact me at this email if you are an individual interested in joining in this fight to return MCRGO to a member driven organization fighting for firearms rights in Michigan, rather than a sad, ego driven Board directed group that appears to be interested only in hiding its financial records and operations from members legally entitled to that information.
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