Taylor v Gosling

UPDATE: GOSLING IS NOW BANKRUPT

From The Age and SMH

Mentor to pay for 'misleading' couple LEONIE WOOD
March 19, 2010

RETIRED Melbourne couple, Neil and Adele Taylor, can recall the despair of seven years ago when they realised the $245,000 they had invested in a ''no risk'' term loan had vanished.

''I just cried all the way home from work one day,'' Mrs Taylor told The Age this week. ''You wake up in the middle of the night and say, 'Why did we do this?'

''We went through a lot of time blaming ourselves, when what we should have done was blame the people that convinced us to put money in.''

One of those people, the high-profile Victorian business mentor Garry Gosling, was ordered this week to pay more than $340,000 to the couple who mortgaged their fully paid home in mid-2002 after soaking up his misleading spiel about ''no-risk'' investments.

The businessman also was criticised by a Victorian Supreme Court judge who said Mr Gosling falsely denied certain evidence in court, and that his decision to take on a directorship of a company to help business associate, Gabrial Neil Pennicott, hide his involvement ''reflects poorly upon his commercial morality and upon his credibility as a witness''.

Mr Gosling has been since 2006 one of the small business mentors available through the non-profit mentoring network, Small Business Mentoring Service (SBMS), which receives funding support from the Victorian government.

SBMS chief executive David Gregory said Mr Gosling contacted the organisation after the decision was released earlier this week and resigned as a mentor.

Mr Gosling's involvement in promoting the investment was not related to his mentoring role at SBMS.

Justice Kim Hargrave heard the Taylors were close to retirement in mid-2002 when they mortgaged their $300,000 Burwood East home so they could invest $245,873 with IBP Capital, a company owned by Pennicott and Jan Li but whose sole director was Mr Gosling.

''Absolutely we trusted him [Mr Gosling],'' Mr Taylor told The Age. ''He was a guy who had a lot of investment experience.''

Mr Taylor said it was only with help from lawyer Simon Abraham of Tisher Liner & Co that the couple stopped blaming themselves for the shoddy investments ''and understood how good these people really were at what they did''. The Taylors sued Mr Gosling.

The Taylors initially expected to invest in a Phillip Island property development promoted by IBP Capital. But Mr Gosling told them in July 2002 that the project had been delayed, and he suggested they instead park their funds in two short-term loans with IBP.

The Taylors told the court that Mr Gosling assured them there was ''no risk'' and that IBP Capital was backed by more than $4 million of property holdings.

The Taylors received some interest on the loans plus a single payment of $10,000. But when the investment matured in February 2003 and the couple demanded their funds, they were met with what the judge described as ''extreme delaying tactics and obfuscation'' by Pennicott and Li.

In the end, the Taylors got nothing. IBP Capital and its associated company, Urban Investment Services, have collapsed owing millions, Li is bankrupt, and the court heard Pennicott probably will not be able to pay his creditors.

''I have no doubt that they [Pennicott and Li] lied to the Taylors repeatedly,'' the judge said in a decision published this week.

Pennicott and Li are facing many criminal charges relating to the collapse of property development schemes and their roles in enticing people to invest. Their trial is due to begin in the County Court in late July.

Mr Gosling spruiked investments for IBP and Urban Investment Services during seminars at Caulfield Town Hall in early 2002.

The court heard he agreed to be a director of IBP Capital so that Pennicott could disguise his involvement from his former employer, the disgraced property spruiker Henry Kaye. Justice Hargrave said Mr Gosling falsely denied this under cross-examination.

''Mr Gosling took no steps to inform proposed investors in IBP that, although he was its only director, he was acting under the instructions of Mr Pennicott and Ms Li at all times,'' the judge said.

Mr and Mrs Taylor said their contact with IBP was almost solely through Mr Gosling, but in December 2002 they learnt Mr Gosling had resigned as IBP's director four months earlier.

Justice Hargrave found that the main reason the Taylors invested with IBP Capital was ''the misleading statement made by Mr Gosling at the 30 July [2002] presentation, that the short-term loans would carry no risk''.

The court has ordered Mr Gosling to pay the Taylors $200,000 owed from one of the loans, plus interest and costs - a sum that so far exceeds $340,000. Mr Gosling declined to comment.

Slick Rick will (probably) not be deported

Governor Paterson of New York has announced he is pardoning Slick Rick for his attempted murder and weapons convictions. See NY Times article.

Back in the 80s - at least for a moment - Slick Rick was a huge rap star. He shot his cousin (who he believed was trying to kill him) and another man, and went to jail for 6 years. Because he was born in England and moved to America at 11, he is liable to deportation - even though his wife and children are American. [note that Australia has similar laws]

There appears to still be legal proceedings to be had, where Rick will need an immigration Court to decide to exercise its discretion in his favour, but he is inching closer to a decision that will allow him to stay in America.

The Secret: legal battle

Fascinating legal battles emerging over The Secret, as detailed in the New York Times.

The Secret is a self-help book/video/money-marking venture based on the belief that adherents to its philosophy will receive “unlimited happiness, love, health and prosperity”. And who wouldn't want unlimited love? And some unlimited health, happiness and prosperity sounds ok too I guess. Try not to laugh - The Secret has apparently pulled in revenue of $300million.

Apparently "the universe will make your wishes come true if only you really, truly believe in them". Obviously to date I haven't wished hard enough for a new Maserati, Red Hill acreage and for Rachel Bilson to fall deeply in love with me. I'm gonna start wishing harder -starting now.

Anyway, onto the legal stuff. It sounds messy - involving Hungarian companies, jurisdictional battles between Courts in the US and in Australia, conflicting views as to authorship and lots more fun stuff.

Watch this space - I'll try and follow this case through.

Extracts from the New York Times follow:

On Monday the movie’s director, Drew Heriot, filed a copyright suit in United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division, against Ms. Byrne and her production company. The suit claims that Mr. Heriot is the co-author of the screenplay and the book and is therefore entitled to up to half of what his lawyers estimate as $300 million in “Secret” revenue.

The suit alleges that Mr. Heriot worked on the screenplay, conducted most of the interviews for the film and supervised its editing and postproduction. The book, much of it a transcription of the movie, is based on documents Mr. Heriot created, the suit alleges.

Because he was an independent contractor and not an employee of Ms. Byrne’s production company, Mr. Heriot retained rights to his creations, and Ms. Byrne promised him a percentage of profits, the suit argues.

The legal wrangling over the project began in July 2007, when TS Production applied for the United States copyright to the “Secret” movie and spinoffs. The next month Mr. Heriot applied for copyright to “The Secret,” claiming authorship of the movie and the screenplay.

Soon after that, TS Production filed suit in the Australian courts. Both Mr. Heriot and Ms. Byrne are Australian, and they began working on projects together around 2000. That’s when Ms. Byrne, then a television producer, contracted with Mr. Heriot’s production company for his services as an editor on “Australia Behaving Badly,” a “Candid Camera”-style series.

In the Australian courts, TS Production has asked to be declared owner of all copyrights to the book and movie “The Secret.”

Mr. Heriot, the court papers argue, “directed the film under the terms of his employment under a contract of service” with Ms. Byrne’s company and is not entitled to any copyrights.

After filing suit in the United States, Mr. Heriot’s lawyers filed a motion in the Federal Court of Australia, Victoria District Registry, notifying it that he had started litigation in the United States, the country where the copyright registrations had been filed, and asking it to postpone or dismiss its version of the case on jurisdictional grounds.

Interesting GOOG judgment

See this link to an appeal judgment in a Reid v Google - a case brought by a former employee of Google who alleges he was sacked because of his age.

Reid was formerly a Director of Engineering and Director of Operations at Google - a reasonably senior position. The reason he was given when he was sacked was that he was not a 'cultural fit'. Reid claims that the 'youthful atmosphere' at Google demonstrates a bias against older workers.

2 more days

life has been crazy lately = no blog posts.

Today was in Court in Warrnambool - 3 1/2 hours each way from Melbourne. Drove up last night. A very very long day today; in Court, won the case, drove back, preparing for Court tomorrow in a long-running clothes counterfeiting case.

M and I leave in 2 days on our honeymoon.
Israel
Greece
Turkey
Italy
The Netherlands
Belgium
England
China

yay

Fascinating article about Milberg Weiss

I read this article in Fortune quite a while ago and have just come across it again. Absolutely fascinating.

The Brillo-haired Lerach, 60, who bitterly split with Weiss in 2004, taking Milberg's San Diego-based West Coast operation along with him in a new firm, owns a home in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., and vacation properties in Steamboat Springs, Colo., and Hawaii. Lerach travels the country in a chartered jet, says his exercise is drinking Scotch, and will be married this month for the fourth time, to a partner at his firm.

When police showed up at 20563 Beachwood Drive in Rocky River, Ohio, an upscale Cleveland suburb, they were probably expecting to find just another domestic dispute. It was about 4 p.m. on Aug. 22,1996, and a 37-year-old woman named Pamela Davis had reported that her boyfriend had assaulted her, bloodying her mouth.

What the officers were not expecting was the dizzying tale that Davis began telling. She identified her attacker as James "J.J." Little, an attorney with Arter & Hadden, the big Cleveland firm. She said she'd met Little five months earlier at a bar and that although she was still married and had a young son, she and Little planned on tying the knot in December. She explained that Little had a $1,000-a-week crack habit, that it wasn't the first time Little had struck her, that one time she'd ended up in the emergency room, that Little was usually "a very gentle man," that she didn't really want to press charges, and that she was three months' pregnant with his child.

Lerach signed on in 1976, opening Milberg's California office in San Diego. He was ferocious and creative, and worked like a madman, building "Milberg West" into an operation that competed with the New York office for influence and profits. His special target was Silicon Valley companies, whose volatile stocks made them juicy prey; he transformed Milberg into a lucrative volume business that churned out scores of class actions a year. This business model allowed him to settle cases when he wanted; if defense lawyers didn't buckle, he'd simply cash in on another lawsuit and continue to torment their clients.

A favorite Lerach tactic was to scream at CEOs, telling one: "I'm going to take away your f***ing condo in Maui! I'm going to take away every penny you own!" Milberg sued several companies repeatedly - 3Com (Charts) nine times. T.J. Rodgers, CEO of Cypress Semiconductor (Charts), called him "lower than pond scum."

Nine out of ten cases did settle. Companies reasoned that paying up was safer and cheaper than going to trial, since insurance companies paid most of the settlement bill. On average, investors recovered only about 15 cents of every lost dollar, while Milberg Weiss routinely pocketed millions. Weiss and Lerach saw their personal takes soar from $3.4 million apiece in 1990 to $16 million in 1995. During the 1990s, both men earned more than $100 million. Bitter executives came to view it all as an extortion racket - they called it getting "Lerached."

A long week

(almost) the end of a very long week - running 3 cases in a week is exhausting...

Snippet from a recent case

Was in court this week for a fencing dispute, which centred around the location of the new fence v the location of the old fence. One side claims that the fence is built along the same line as the old fence, the other claims that the fenceline was moved.

The other side were calling a neighbour as a witness. They told me his name was Doctor X. No problem. They call Dr X.

Q: What are you a doctor of?
A: Civil Engineering

Q: What is your experience?
A: I've taught at MIT and Stanford

Q: How long have you lived in this house?
A: Since the 1950s

The Doctor then proceeded to give evidence as to the location of the fenceline. As you'd expect, he was a reasonably credible witness!!!

We LOVE the script - From Variety

Baldwin takes stand in Cussler case
Actress-turned-producer asked to testify
By JANET SHPRINTZ
Actress-turned-producer Karen Baldwin took the stand Tuesday in Clive Cussler's breach-of-contract suit against Philip Anschutz's Crusader Entertainment for an afternoon of adverse questioning about the genesis of the ill-fated "Sahara" film.

Baldwin, who with her husband, Howard Baldwin, an entrepreneur who developed several hockey franchises before turning to producing, first brought Cussler's Dirk Pitt action adventure novels to Anshutz's attention in 2000.

Anschutz thereupon bought the rights to Cussler's "Sahara" for $10 million, with an eye to developing a franchise, and gave Cussler wide script approval rights. While the Baldwins championed Cussler throughout the writing process, they acrimoniously parted ways by the time filming began in 2003.

Called as an adverse witness Tuesday by Bert Fields, who represents Cussler, Baldwin was shown several memos addressing key issues in the case. After a lengthy process during which Baldwin declined to acknowledge that it was her signature on the documents, the jury was shown a memo in which she called $10 million a bargain for a Clive Cussler novel.

Fields also showed her memo in which she had written that all of his novels were New York Times bestsellers and that there were more than 90 million Cussler novels in print. Shortly before trial, Crusader's lawyers claimed they were misled by sales figures of Cussler's novels, which, they claim, are closer to 30 million copies.

Fields pointed out that none of the memos mentions a sales figure. On the stand, Baldwin said until that moment she thought sales and the number in print were the same, but Fields showed her a series of emails involving unsuccessful attempts to determine the number of copies sold, in which Baldwin said the number in print alone was important.

Fields began to delve into the long and tortured scriptwriting process, which involved numerous writers and numerous revisions, including drafts by Cussler. In opening statements, Fields said Baldwin kept telling Cussler that Paramount, which distributed the film, loved each script, as well as Cussler's revisions, leaving him angry and baffled when yet more changes were called for.

On the stand, Baldwin was shown a memo she sent saying that Paramount loved a script written by Jim Hart and revised by Cussler. The script proved to be one of many. On Tuesday, making quotation marks with her hands, Baldwin said she realized in hindsight that when Paramount said they "loved" a script, it meant they wanted more changes.

Trial resumes today with further examination of Baldwin.

win some lose some

Won a case today I expected to lose. Yay. And my opponent was a jerk which makes it even better. I still can't believe he whispered "Game, Set and Match" to me when he got an answer he liked from my witness.