Actually, not alleging that they didn't honor the warranty is not justification for not paying the note.
Negative ANN article about Cirrus
- Thread starter Dave Siciliano
- Start date
Actually, not alleging that they didn't honor the warranty is not justification for not paying the note.
Actually, it's a great insult to activists to call what Jim does activism.
There's a difference between being an activist and having a vendetta for personal gain.
Don't know how it's going to bring down ANN. ANN is not a party to this.
ANN may be in dire financial straights otherwise, but whether or not Jim keeps the Cirrus isn't going to affect that. Of course the US Aviator bankruptcy didn't make Zoom go away. He's like a bad penny (or perhaps playing whack-a-mole).
zaitcev
En-Route
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Pete Zaitcev
Actually, it's a great insult to Campbell to be compared with activists. He's just a crazy crank and activists are nasty. Especially the noise abatement ones. Those suing FBOs in California over 100LL are not any better either.
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
I clicked on ANN's Sponsor's link and Google Chrome told me this with a BIG RED WARNING:
Oh, and I don't see his current diatribe on the site... where?
Oh, and I don't see his current diatribe on the site... where?
There's also aero-nose.net
Yeah, his server is infected. There's a lot of that one going around in the past month. Jim will probably assert it's cyberterrorists specifically trying to silence him.
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Steve Foley
Pattern Altitude
Would it be bad form to wish them luck?
wanttaja
En-Route
Hmm. Campbell bought his SR22 *used*. It was at least two years old. Wonder what kind of warranty he had?
Oh, I know: Verbal.
A friend of mine commented that Campbell's latest behavior is similar to his back in the late '90s, just before he took USA into bankruptcy. Fair observation, I think. Then, like now, Campbell was being sued by an entity who could afford it, Campbell was crying for donations to his "legal defense fund," whining about how it was costing him personally, claiming terrorists were out to get him, and screaming about how his first amendment rights were being threatened.
I especially enjoyed this bit of spin:
"We've held up on this for the last several weeks due to some legal confusion..."
i.e., he was waiting to see if his motion to dismiss was granted. I guess "things not being decided in my favor" constitutes "legal confusion."
Still, there's probably no reason for an ANN bankruptcy. Campbell, personally, and the legal entity he formed specifically for the airplane are on the hook for the airplane, not ANN. Even a Florida judge says they aren't related.
There was an interesting legal fillip when he declared bankruptcy last time. The actual declaration was for his publishing company...and it turned out that the publishing company didn't own the rights to the magazine. Those were owned personally by...wait for it...James R. Campbell. This was apparently a surprise to the minority owners of the publishing company.
Like has been mentioned, ANN won't be affected by this. At worst, Campbell will change the name, and stay online in another guise. Advertisers will be told that their contracts were transferred to the new company, just as their verbal contract allows for.
Ron Wanttaja
Well, in this case it may.
It wasn't 'Cirrus Finance Corporation' that loaned him the money but the aircraft manufacturer itself. Failure to perform under a written warranty extended during the sale of the plane could conceivably give him the right to offset note payments with warranty expenses incurred. But to show that, it would sure help to have some certified mail receipts and copies of letters where he informed Cirrus of their failure to honor the warranty and his intent to offset.
wanttaja
En-Route
In addition, it's obviously limited by the disputed amount. Campbell is $35,000 in the hole just since Cirrus' attempt to repossess...BESIDES the orginal $60k he was behind at the time. That's a lot of loose trim...
Ron Wanttaja
Lol, well if he expects free engine overhauls and upgrade to the Avidyne 9 to be included in the warranty (like any person as reasonable as him would :wink2
then the 95k sounds about right as offset.Steve Foley
Pattern Altitude
But since ANN is owned by the debtor Campbell, it can be seized like any other asset owned by the debtor during a bankruptcy.
Campbell is protected from ANN's debts, as well as Kindred Spirit's debts. Those two entities are not protected from the debts of their owners.
I suspect ANN is only worth the electrons it's printed on.
Agreed...I suspect that ANN has no equity and has it's own string of debtors after it.
As for the warranty, new Cirri have a optional 5 year warranty (extended warranty, how I can I lose?) that is transferrable. Of course on a factory sold used bird, it's not clear they offered it (or Jim bought it).
Steve Foley
Pattern Altitude
But wouldn't it be nice if a bankruptcy court liquidated it and imposed a non-compete?
wanttaja
En-Route
According to Campbell's marketing proposal (which he submitted as part of the motion to dismiss) the airplane was to be delivered with normal owner warranty. So it probably didn't have the 5-year extended warranty, but it sounds like it had the normal one.
Of course, *having* a warranty, and having a claim that is actually covered by the warranty, are not necessarily the same thing.
Ron Wanttaja
A non-compete would not likely occur. Anyhow we had front row seats from the US Aviator liquidation, the bankruptcy trustee that got appointed was the late Tony Pucillo (who started out as one of those who believed Jim must have been begin given a bad rap by various of the detractors but changed his tune after he did an impartial investigation).
The standard Cirrus factory warranty is 2 years/1000 hours and certainly had expired so barring something in the purchase contract, there is not expected to be ANY coverage.
Steve Foley
Pattern Altitude
Was this before he took up the defense of the RAH-15?
In any event, I've never heard of an imposed non-compete, but it's nice to think about zoom on the street selling pencils.
It was about a year before the RAH-15 lawsuits, though Tony had made the jump over to the dark side (from Zoom's point of view) well before that. Jim wasn't real happy with Tony being appointed trustee, but he had to be instructed that the trustee doesn't represent him, the represent his creditors.
There was also Tony's RICO lawsuit against Jim.
wanttaja
En-Route
Geeze, talk about memory lane. I had some vague recollections of a log I kept back in the RAH-15 days. A bit of paleozoomtology on my hard drive, and I found it.
Here's some excerpts (all messages from Tony were publicly posted in the newsgroup rec.aviation.homebuilt):
Jan. 1997: Tony Pucillo wrote: "Yes, a person doesn't have to be all good in order to be valuable, regardless of what some who dislike him say. Until the other mags get some testes, USAviator will be missed and needed."
("Missed" refers to US Aviator magazine not being published for the previous three months, & Campbell's announcement that the magazine was being sold.)
Mar. 1997: Tony Pucillo began to get disillusioned with Campbell:"I for one was one of your most avid supporters, and I'm sick of your fantastic and bizarre stories"
Mar. 1997 Tony Pucillo was contacted by Campbell. Pucillo wrote: "As I promised, any nastygrams from Campbell will continue to be posted for your edification." "Isn't this just a fascinating character study? As in how to prove with one's actions the very thing one is simultaneously denying with one's words.."
May 1997: Beginning to investigate Campbell, Tony Pucillo writes: "Let me reiterate that my entire purpose here is to explore the whole, complex history and personality involved. This task wouldn't be worth my time if I didn't see in the role Campbell has created some value to the aviation community."
May 1997: An AOL account is set up in the name of Tony Pucillo, and a threat to kill the President of the Unites States is posted in alt. politics.clinton. The same AOL account was used to send a message to an ex-US Aviator employee who had publicly criticized his former employer (and was to become one of the RAH-15). The US Secret Service commences an investigation.
(I posted Tony's story about this a while back. I did an FOI request on this a few years back, but all the names and any identifiable information had been redacted.)
July 1997: Campbell files bankruptcy for Airdale press, but claimed that he personally owns US Aviator Magazine.
(A company called Aero-Media USA is set up to publish US Aviator)
Aug. 1997: Campbell says, under oath, that Aero-Media USA was incorporated in the state of Florida. Florida records show it wasn't incorporated for another two months.
(At this point, Tony Pucillo is the lawyer for the bankruptcy trustee).
Feb. 1998: Tony Pucillo sues Zoom. Charges Libel, Civil RICO, and Fraud.
Mar. 1998: The Bankruptcy trustee files an adversary proceeding against Campbell, Airedale Press, and Aero-Media USA to recover fraudulent transfers and avoid preferential transfers.
Apr. 1998: Campbell sues 15 members of rec.aviation.homebuilt. His countersuit against Tony Pucillo's Fraud, Libel, RICO, and Breech of Contract suit named 14 others as counterdefendants. Six of the 15 co-defendants are not served.
Apr. 1998: Campbell was ejected from Sun 'n Fun. He was informed
that he was banned permanently.
(The last two events are connected. Campbell had one defendant served at Sun-N-Fun. The SNF staff told him that this was in violation the agreement that let him in after the last time he was banned (e.g., he was not to disrupt the fly-in). Campbell's response was to have the SnF announcer served while he was on-duty.)
May 1998: Motion is filed to dismiss service against the RAH-15 defendants. Several reasons were expressed, but the primary one was that the persons who did most of the service were not allowed to do so under Florida law.
July 1998: Campbell makes a complaint about Tony Pucillo to the Florida bar.
(It was, of course, rejected. Especially after the RAH-15 defendants wrote the bar to express how satisified they were with their attorney).
November 1998: Campbell's attorney agrees to a motion dismissing all but one of the RAH-15 co-defendants, but demands 120 days to re-serve them.
Jan. 1999: Trustee and Campbell agreed to a compromise in the
Airdale Press bankruptcy.
March 1999: No attempt is made to re-serve the RAH-15, and only two (Tony and one man who had been legally served) remain in the suit.
(Tony died a couple of years later, and the final defendant was released when Campbell's suit was dismissed for lack of prosecution).
Apr. 1999 Campbell files suit against Sun 'n Fun for banning him, claiming "First amendment rights" as a journalist.
Apr. 1999: A Federal Judge ruled that Campbell had no first amendment right to attend Sun 'n Fun and that the Airshow may ban him.
Campbell appeals the ruling based on "newly found evidence." The judge rejects the appeal.
I've left a number of other events and lawsuits off the list....
Ron Wanttaja
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
Wow. Ron, thanks for the summary. Did the Secret Service ever prosecute anybody for the AOL threat on the President?
bbchien
Touchdown! Greaser!
Wow. Having a personality disorder is a very disabling thing.....(post 166)
wanttaja
En-Route
The FOI package included what appears to be a final case finding dated 26 June 1997. It's faded dot-matrix printing, tough to read, with names redacted and a lot of white space (like other details had been blanked out). It's a message from the Tampa Secret Service office to the Miami one (the case probably was opened in Miami since that's where Tony lived).
It ends with, "Investigation in this district has been unable to identify the author of the referenced message. Regardless of the authorship, there is no indication that the threat is anything other than a means of harrassment. Case closed in Tampa."
The second sentence is the key one...the USSS's primary worry was whether the President was actually at risk. Once they decided THAT wasn't the case, they closed the case.
Sure, if they'd been able to, they probably would have filed charges. But think about it...if the AOL account had been set up and the message sent from a business address, how do you prove who sent it? "One of my employees snuck in and did it!" Basically, unless the person confesses, it's just about impossible to prove.
There's one interesting bit of redaction in the FOI file. The package includes the original threats (one to the POTUS, and the other to an ex-US Aviator employee). The one against the President has:
"Appoint [ ] as FAA administrator. Have the following FAA employees terminated/arrested for their extracurricular activities:"
Several blank lines follow, where the names were blanked out.
However, using GoogleFoo*, you can still access the original. The original wording was:
"Appoint Norbert Nestor as FAA administrator. Have the following FAA
employees terminated/arrested for their extracurricular activities:
David Millett
Barton Pakull
James Kelln
Edward Greer "
Some of these were involved in the Bob Hoover case. But does anyone recognize the third name from the bottom?
Dr. Barton Pakull. He was one of the FAA psychiatrists who testified against Campbell in the 1980 NTSB case.
(*If you want to read the original threat for yourself, search Google Groups for "Pakull" on 1-2 May 1997. No one else was apparently talking about him.)
Ron Wanttaja
I know a guy who used to be one of the secret service field agents. Investigating those typies of threats against the president was one of his jobs. In 20 years of doing this and out of hundreds of threats he referred 2 for prosecution. The rest of the jub according to him was 'practicing psychiatry without a license' as all of the people who makes those threats are nutjobs.
Gee, this is way after the Zoom incident but for amusement, Dr. Pakull seems to have bumped into another crazy here: http://www.jtalon.tv/cia/davidbaltm...z. A tear of nostalgia for Tony and Chuck.
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Steve Foley
Pattern Altitude
I see the latest filings are:
01/17/2012 Motion for Extension of Time(defendants') to respond to complaint and discovery requests
01/17/2012 Motion (Generic)to withdraw
I'll order these and post when they arrive.
01/17/2012 Motion for Extension of Time(defendants') to respond to complaint and discovery requests
01/17/2012 Motion (Generic)to withdraw
I'll order these and post when they arrive.
Steve Foley
Pattern Altitude
TMetzinger
Final Approach
I LIKE it!
My lawyers are quitting, I need more time to respond.
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall for that "'Sorry sir, we can't represent you" meeting.
My lawyers are quitting, I need more time to respond.
I'd love to have been a fly on the wall for that "'Sorry sir, we can't represent you" meeting.
Now THAT is a suprising development, 'irreconcilable differences' with the defendant, I can't imagine how that could have happened.
Part of the conspiracy, natch.
wanttaja
En-Route
Here's an interesting bit of speculation: Remember the "Defendants cannot jointly admit or deny..." answer given to the original set of Request for Admission? What if that wasn't a clever legal ploy by the defense lawyers, but a desperate grab for more time because their client refuses to participate?
Consider: Campbell doesn't have a lot of wiggle room. One of the things he has to produce is *his* copy of the purchase agreement...and if it's the same as Cirrus', he doesn't have a single leg to stand on. The judge has rejected his claim that the supposed marketing agreement was related to the financing of the airplane.
All filing answers will do is bring about a judgment earlier...and Campbell doesn't want that to happen. As past cases show, he'll delay, he'll plead outside commitments, and flat-out not show up for scheduled court dates. I've attached the court order dismissing his last lawsuit against Sun-N-Fun. Note the history of last-minute cancellations and no-shows. And this was his own lawsuit!
Remember, he has possession of the aircraft. I personally doubt that he's actually using it, but he'll want to keep it as long as possible just to spite Cirrus and run their own expenses up. By torquing off his own lawyers, he has at least 30, probably more like 90 days, before the judge might finally actually address the case.
So, for the lawyers in attendance, a question: Will the judge grant the withdrawal motion automatically, or will he want to meet in court to get the details?
Ron Wanttaja
Steve Foley
Pattern Altitude
The notice of appearance was filed the same day as the motion to dismiss. If the client refused to participate, the lawyers wouldn't have filed the appearance.
My guess is the motion will be granted without discussion. The judge won't make the lawyers say, in open court, why they must withdraw.
Disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer (yet - bar exam in 193 days).
One topic we covered in in Ethics was a 'noisy withdrawl'. That's when the client lets the lawyer know that he plans to perjure himself. An attorney can not knowingly permit a client to get on the stand and lie, but client confidentiality and and privilege prevent the attorney from stating the actual reason that they must, under the rules of ethics, withdraw.
Steve Foley
Pattern Altitude
TangoWhiskey
Touchdown! Greaser!
http://www.aero-news.net/index.cfm?do=main.textpost&id=3fd9f1eb-b8c4-4406-bcc1-bdc1b9ec0fda
"Comments for this page are closed."
Guess Jim doesn't want anyone raining on his ask-for-money parade...
wanttaja
En-Route
Oh, I didn't mean he refused to participate from the very start. I'm just thinking that his relationship with Campbell probably paralleled that of a lot of folks. Good at the beginning, but starting to get frosty as he gets to know Campbell better.
For instance, when he took the case, was the lawyer aware that Campbell's claim that Cirrus owed him money was based on a supposed verbal agreement? If not, this likely soured their relationship a bit.
Ron Wanttaja
wanttaja
En-Route
Well, don't forget that old "Far Side" cartoon, of the two spiders who build a web across the end of a playground slide: "If we can pull this off, we'll eat like kings!"
http://blogerinblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/04/eat-like-kings.jpg
All he needs is one or two sugar daddies; the heck with the $5-$10 donations.
Back when Campbell was suing me, I met a guy who had donated about $8,000 to his "legal defense fund." He was a nice guy, had nothing against me or the rest of the RAH-15. But Campbell was then also attacking another person who THIS person also had a dispute with. It was worth this guy's money to have his adversary harassed without getting his name mixed up in it.
Cirrus is a big company that has sold thousand of planes worth a half-million dollars each or more. It's reasonable to assume that there are some disgruntled buyers, and the probability is that some of them might have $10K-$20K that they'd contribute to someone hassling Cirrus. Surely any of Cirrus' competitors are better off, and a $20,000 check now will probably buy years of Campbell thinking nice things about them.
Ron Wanttaja