[As of today (October 20, 2009), there has been no word on whether Chisholm has or will secure a new attorney (unless the Suggestion of Bankruptcy filing counts as a new appearance?) and no decision as yet regarding the default of the Chisholm LLCs.]
You wrote on August 7, 2009 at 5:08pm: Today's Chisholm court news: ... And I should mention too, we are coming down to the wire for the deadline for Johnny Chisholm to find a new lawyer. The judge gave him 30 days from July 17, which is August 16; however, I notice that is a Sunday. Meaning for practical purposes the last day for a new attorney to make an appearance on his behalf would be Friday August 14...one week from today.
A corporation, however, being that it is a legal entitiy and not a real person, by definition cannot represent itself pro se. Thus if no new attorney shows up by next Friday, come the following Monday August 17 the plaintiffs will be able to Motion for Default against Johnny's OMW corporations...and will automatically win vs. them, just as PRG recently did in it's state court action.
Stay tuned...
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You wrote on August 17, 2009 at 5:18pm: Well, no new filings by the defense last week, and thru today...meaning unless I missed something (which is possible), as of this moment Johnny Chisholm is officially acting pro se in these lawsuits (ie, as his own attorney).
The plaintiff's filed their monthly attorney time records with the court today (28.4 hrs on the Bardfield case, 12 in the DeForest case), with copies being sent this month not to former Chisholm attorney Bruce Fehr, but to Johnny Chisholm and Bobby Warner, "pro se."
It appears to me that the defense has simply given up. At this point, the LLC's holding the rights to OMW are now vulnerable to default judgments...which will, for all intents and purposes, destroy those entities. We'll just have to wait and see what happens next...
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You wrote on August 18, 2009 at 5:42pm:
***BREAKING NEWS***
The plaintiffs' in the Bardfield and Deforest filed Motions for Default against Chisholm's OMW companies. Reason being, as I noted over a week ago, the lack of legal representation for his corporate defendants by the 30 day deadline imposed by the judge for him to procure.
I've posted screen shots of the Motion for Default in the Bardfield case below. As you can see, if approved Chisholm's OMW holding company will be hit with a total of $692,640 in damages. That's $600,000 in actual damages (the $200,000 "loan" amount, tripled by statute due to the Civil Theft charge in the lawsuit), plus $92,640 in attorney fees.
The Motion for Default filed in the DeForest case (not posted) is similar, except the damages there add up to $612,165.
692,640 + 612,165 = $1,304,795.00
Add to this the 100 grand or so PRG reportedly got in it's state court default judgment, means that One Mighty Weekend will soon be saddled with over 1.4 million dollars in lawsuit debt. That's one mighty debt.
Even taking into account the money collected in the frozen accounts (just under $100K, IIRC), that still leaves what was once arguably the finest circuit party in the world hopelessly* in debt.
This all assumes of course, that the judge will grant these default motions...however, I see no reason why he wouldn't. Chisholm had 30 days to find a new lawyer, and he no doubt intentionally and knowingly just let this happen.
As soon as these motions (and others) are ruled on, I'll let you all know.
*Barring a bankruptcy filing. I'll say more about this possibility if and when it happens. And yes, I have been monitoring the US Bankruptcy Court filings for the name "Chisholm" on a daily basis, so if and when this happens, you'll know about it here as well.
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You wrote on September 10, 2009 at 7:09pm: After a lull of a few weeks, we finally have some new visible activity in the Bardfield case. The new filings are a bit confusing (in part because one of the parties doing the filing seems a bit confused), but I'll try to explain what happened today as clearly and succinctly as I can.
It turns out today (9/10/09) is deadline in the case for the filing of a Joint Scheduling Report. Both parties are supposed to confer, try to agree on when to set key deadlines in the case, and whether they agree or disagree, send their recommendations into the judge.
Well, as we all know, Johnny Chisholm is currently representing himself pro se (ie, w/o a lawyer). So, on 9/3 the plaintiffs' lawyers Fed-Ex'ed directly Chisholm their own proposed pre-trial schedule, asking him to "comment" on it, so as to perhaps come to agreement and make it a "joint" report.
Nothing happens for 6 days. Then yesterday afternoon (9/9) Chisholm sent this email to the plantiffs' lawyers:
As you can see, it refers to a "meeting" tomorrow (Friday). And that he is in the process of hiring a new lawyer (within the week), and requests the "meeting" postponed for two weeks so he can confer with his supposed new lawyer. Nothing about the request for input on the joint report.
Now, there was no "meeting" with Chisholm scheduled for Friday. There was, however, two subpoenas for documents due tomorrow, served not on Chisholm but on two non-parties...the OMW venues Arabian Nights and Buena Vista Hotel. NOT Chisholm personally.
Well, apparantly this morning, the plaintiffs' lawyers emailed back, trying to explain to Chisholm that he's got it all wrong. That there is no meeting or deposition or subpoena for "him" tomorrow, but rather, they would like his input on the proposed trial scheduling. And they need it today.
And Chisholm's response? He filed a pro se motion this afternoon, seeking a "Protective Order" against the "deposition" of him scheduled for tomorrow, citing that it was too far away for him to attend (Fort Lauderdale), he had no time to prepare, he was in the process of hiring a new attorney any day now, and that he had unsuccessfully tried to work it out with the plaintiffs out of court.
The plaintiffs filed a Notice in reponse this afternoon, noting that Chisholm's Motion for Protective Order is basically kind of silly...the plaintiff's want documents from Arabian Nights and Buena Vista tomorrow...NOT Johnny Chisholm. He can stay in Pensacola tomorrow for all they care. They go on to speculate as to two possible motives for Chisholm's nonsensical Motion today:
1) Chisholm is genuinely confused, and mistakenly thinks he is supposed to be in Fort Lauderdale tomorrow, rather than representatives from Arabian Nights and Buena Vista; or
2) This whole thing is an intentional delaying tactic, similar to the discovery shenanigans Chisholm has been pulling in the DeForest case for over a year.
Lastly, because today was indeed the deadline for the Joint Scheduling report, the plaintiffs went ahead and filed a "Unilateral Scheduling Report" since they, despite their best efforts, could not create and file a "joint" one. Here's the schedule they propose:
Oct 7, 2009: Deadline to amend pleading or join other parties (ie, Just Circuit) Nov 12, 2009: Deadline to file dispositive motions Nov 23, 2009: Deadline for discovery to be completed
PROPOSED TRIAL DATE: On or about January, 2010
So, if this unilateral schedule gets approved, that's the schedule we will have.
And through all the confusion, we do learn some interesting new facts about this case:
1) Chisholm is on the verge of hiring a new lawyer (or so he claims); 2) Apparantly, some sort of settlement desires have been made known (see reference in the email linked above)? In the plaintiffs' Unilateral Scheduling Order, they mention settlement talks as well, noting that they have been "unsuccessful." And 3) The plaintiffs have been busily trying depose various Chisholm venues (ie, Arabian Nights and Buena Vista set for tomorrow). They key venue to ask questions of, of course, will be Disney. This whole case, IMO, will turn on what Disney says in those depositions.
If it turns out Disney never told him the Disney venues were "worked out" BEFORE he got the $200,000 loan...then Chisholm is doomed.
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You wrote on September 15, 2009 at 5:43pm: The magistrate judge in the Bardfield case responded to Chisholm's Motion for Protective Order today (see post 102 above). Chisholm has to now "Show Cause" within 7 days as to why his motion is not untimely and/or moot.
In addition, the magistrate is very curious as to this new attorney for Chisholm that has been bandied about, and wants info on the status of his/her hiring made to the court within 7 days as well.
Here's the full text of the magistrate's reply:
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You wrote on September 22, 2009 at 5:38pm: A couple of new orders today in both of the now slowly moving Federal cases. The magistrate judge (who recently took over reviewing pre-trial motions in these cases) decided to delay a decision on the motions for default vs the Chisholm corporations, on some very arcane, technical grounds: Even though Chisholm failed to get a new lawyer for the LLCs within the 30 day deadline, she wants arguments on whether the complaint was "well-pleaded" before she'll sign off on a default. She also wants affidavits in support of the damages they are asking for. They have until Oct 5 to do so, or she'll recommend that the defaults not be granted (the final decision is still in the hands of the district judge).
So now, the plaintiffs have to scramble and file this new info the magistrate wants. So, this is basically amounts to a delay (and extra work for the plaintiffs' attornies).
This was also the deadline for Chisholm to show cause on the Motion for Protective Order he made last week (see post #102 above), as well as inform the court on his efforts to find a new attorney...which he appears to have missed, since there seems to be no filing from him today.
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You wrote on October 1, 2009 at 4:47pm: A new Order was issued by the magistrate in the Bardfield case today, doing two things: 1) rejecting Chisholm's earlier pro se motion for a protective order, and 2) asking Johnny Chisholm, once again, to advise the court on his progress in supposedly hiring a new attorney. Since Chisholm failed to respond to the court last time to this question, the magistrate appears to be a little p/o'ed at him, this time threatening him with sanctions if he blows this demand off.
As you all may recall, other possible court sanctions are still pending against Chisholm for a variety of reasons in both Federal cases, ranging from discovery violations in the DeForest case, to money-laundering violations of the TRO in the Bardfield case.
There were two new Motions for Default on the corporations, in both cases...to meet the demand of the new magistrate judge that the Motions be "well-pled." And well pled they were, as you can see by the [link] above.
But perhaps more importantly, each case also added brand new Motions for Default, against Chisholm personally. Ie, not merely the LLCs. The grounds being, Chisholm's failing to meet deadlines and his ignoring of the judges request indicates that he is, in effect, giving up. Hence, a default judgment Chisholm is appropriate.
If these defaults go through (as they likely will, *if* he fails to respond) then he will be personally on the hook for the combined 1.3 million dollars in judgments in both lawsuits.
All four of these Motions are backed up by numerous Exhibits, which as some of you may realize by now, tend to contain the most interesting stuff to read! Emails, financial statement, depostion transcripts, etc.. And I can tell you folks, there are some very interesting revelations here...
It'll take me a awhile to sort thru it all, but to just give you a sampler of the quality of the info contained within, here is an excerpt (from an attached declaration by Ray DeForest):
"...In phone calls Defendant Chisholm constantly advised me of his status and experience with such events. Whenever I raised an issue of concern during my decision making process, he would dismiss such issues by touting his successes with the Orlando parties and bar ownerships. He constantly told me he had never lost money on any investments and boasted of his financial wealth as well as the wealth of his entities.
During his solicitation, Chisholm asked me to come meet him in Florida and stay at his very lavish condominium on the beach. During my visit, he repeatedly boasted of his wealth and the expense of the condominium. He told me that his condominium was used just for investors in his other entities as well as their friends and clients. I would later learn that Chisholm did not in fact own the condominium or his home and and this charade was part of the scheme..."
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."
-- Edmund Burke
Welcome to The Forest Moon of Endor, a blog devoted to covering the extraordinary 2009 collapse, via lawsuits and bankruptcy, of what was once (arguably) the premier circuit weekend in the world: One Mighty Weekend in Orlando, Florida.
New to this whole story? Read the "How We Got Here" timelime posts, and get caught up:
