So it seems it's being arranged for a telephonic court? Not certain how this works but does each side plead their case via telephone and the judge questions and makes a decisions as in a normal court? According to those papers they aren't going to extend this case past that hearing, but I bet Gary will try his best!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
Hmm, it sounds like the McKells got CME (and CMG/MMOGULS/Now/Garvick?) placed into receivership by a Utah court? Wow.
Of course, the question is getting it enforced in AZ (and NV?) The outcome of the next hearing could go either their way, or the court could stay it longer, forcing them to essentially re-argue the case. However, in that case I would think that the advantage is with them, as CME would have to prove that a legal order of another court must be vacated.
And I wonder what the effect is on the new investment? Is the totality of those funds legally CME's assets, though controlled by the investors? A receiver would trump that control.
You are dead wrong Agricola, Guenther requested that anyone who invested MORE than $25,000 with CME and/or MMOGULS contact him.. I talked to him and he said the reason was he needed sizeable claims for the Bankruptcy filing..
Also, the reason the MMORPG staff banned him was because they felt he was slandering the Mormon faith.. So he was banned for 120 days, all of which in my opinion is BS.
I feel he hit a cord with the MMORPG staff when he mentioned the potential investors. All one needs to do is talk to a few people in Dallas ,like I have, and you will find out what he is capable of doing if they decide to move on CME.. You know if the game were ever finished it would put a big dent in the WOW membership..
Also, the reason the MMORPG staff banned him was because they felt he was slandering the Mormon faith.. So he was banned for 120 days, all of which in my opinion is BS.
Gary Whiting and most of the CME staff do a fine job of doing what you mentioned all themselves (skirts around the ban stick).
Thanks for sticking your neck out to give us an update.
Just something I saw on the court proceedings, dated 9/8: "NOTE: DEFENDANT WHITING’S LEGAL MEMORANDA RE: (1) TRO; (2) RECEIVER AND (3) FRAUD AS IT RELATES TO FULL FAITH AND CREDIT"
Full Faith & Credit: Allows judgments between different courts/state/jurisdictions. “full faith and credit clause of the United States Constitution requires that a final judgment entered in a sister state must be respected by the courts” of another state. “
From what is posted, Gary Whiting’s defense does not want to allow what Utah has already given Nedra because of a FRAUD. This can be many things, but simply it can mean 1) extrinsic fraud if it was produced by outright fraudulent tactics (such as bribery of judicial officers which is doubtful) or 2) Gary is accusing Nedra of producing fraudulent documents or lies (perjury) to which she won her case in Utah allowing the order originally entered (Oh, Mr. fraud accusing others of fraud! How exciting!)
TRO = Temporary Restraining Order which among other things, freezes the defendant’s assets, requires preservation of documents, etc. and is in preparation for a RO (receivership order) which actually grants a plaintiff to take control of said assets. If this goes through, she'll have control of whatever investor money is in an account when granted!
Any way your slice it, this case is serious to the future of CME and all it's half-started games.
No update on what happened in Court today, but it is true. CME is fighting for its life and has been since mid July 2009 when the court proceedings started in Utah. They are indeed looking to oust Whiting from all his companies.
While I don’t have all the court documents copied (Whiting's filing is one big whine fest), you can find a good splattering here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19743774/CME0001
Nedra Rodney Mckell contributed over 2.5 million into “the deal” which included stock in CME in addition to guaranteed profits from MMOGULS and SGW.
CME partnered with MMOGULS to provide MMOGULS with video game content
MMOGULS was designed to be the company through which CME would market SGW and make it available to the public.
SGW was/is essential to the viability and stability of MMOGULS as a company
MMOGULS brought in nearly 1,000,000 in it’s first month.
Gary had no non-compete or non-disclosure agreements in place to protect him when Brent Barton left with other key MMOGULS personnel
Jeff Knowles was to receive 20% of the credit card processing but somehow wanted 50%. Jeff Knowles then was keeping 100% of the processed funds.
Mr. Whiting states in his filings that there is no proof that he took 5M from CME and invested it in UTAH real estate
Mr. Whiting also states there is no proof he ever took MMOGULS funds for personal use
I was thinking... OK, let's say Nedra wins their lawsuit. Then what?
Would she be looking to liquidate and get out what she can, or finish the game? And if the latter, that means with MMOGULs as part of it, right? She's not some white knight rescuing SGW from the jaws of an MLM... she's into that full bore.
What of the "new investors" and MGM who want no part of an MLM?
I'm not saying I'd rather have GW, but just thinking ahead.
In digesting the pleadings, I am enjoying how Gary Whiting likes to twist things into his favor. First, Whiting makes it seem like Brent Barton stole the business plan and key employees, and there after Whiting had to then deal with Jeff Knowles trying to steal his MMOGULS money too.
When in reality, Gary first removed unauthorized money from MMOGULS causing the waterfall effect of Brent bolting and Jeff Knowles withholding funds due to the large amount of chargeback’s they were expecting. Isn’t that a form of perjury? Of course, he could always say he got his dates confused I suppose.
Mr. Whiting states “I had to borrow money to pay for operational costs during February and March” Yeah, you borrowed it from Nedra & Jeff Knowles! Again, what caused the house of cards to fall? After everything fell apart, he didnt borrow anything until the Doctors came to his rescue.
I will upload more of the documents tomorrow. The affidavit from Nedra and the details around the deal are worth it.
I was thinking... OK, let's say Nedra wins their lawsuit. Then what? Would she be looking to liquidate and get out what she can, or finish the game? And if the latter, that means with MMOGULs as part of it, right? She's not some white knight rescuing SGW from the jaws of an MLM... she's into that full bore. What of the "new investors" and MGM who want no part of an MLM? I'm not saying I'd rather have GW, but just thinking ahead. What a mess.
Yeah, we have no idea what Nedra's true intentions are. I could only hope it is to finish Stargate Worlds (and not battle deadlands or whatever). I can understand their frustration in that they had this whole deal all set up as a win (coming in and rescuing Gary from non-payroll #1), and because of Gary’s inability to keep his hands out of the cookie jar, it completely fell apart.
You guys do realise that the most likely canidate to buy this game would be SoE right? They have a habbit of buying up bad games with no future just to add more games to their stable. Examples: Vanguard, Matrix Online. And I think we all know how those games ended due to the other habbit SoE has of taking games (good ones and bad ones) and somehow making them worse.
I won't even bother to cover the whole SWG NGE thing again...
Vangaurd was crap to begin with, Brad Mcquaid lied about the quality of his product at every turn and was apparently on drugs most of the time it was in development. At launch and for about a year after a lot of fanboys ranted about how Sony was going to "fix" this game, but you can see in this rant from a former Vanguard developer that didn't happen, Sony didn't even try apparently: "Sony didn't do ****. The extent of sony's help was 2 designers who ended up writing some diplomacy quests in Tanvu and some adventuring quests in Tursh. I think there was an artist that came in 2 days a week or something for about a month also."
MxO shut down recently. I've heard nothing but bad things about the way Sony ran the game after getting their greedy paws on it. They apparently closed down the live events team very shortly after taking over, which seemed to be the only aspect of this game that was even remotely unique. Then they released several major overhauls of the combat system, each one being no improvement over the old systems it replaced. Pretty much everyone quit the game at this point and Sony proceeded to ignore the game completely until they finally colsed it down.
A game originally published by SEGA of all people, then taken over by SoE, thats a recipe for disaster if I've ever seen one. But imagine this: A game originally owned by Gary Whiting and then bought out by SoE. That should be enough to give you chills just thinking about it. The only way we could possibly make it worse is if Sony decided to use the same third party billing company from Dark and Light that refused to let people cancel their accounts and charged people who never even signed up to play.
Interesting read that court doc, but it did raise some odd questions to me
6. CME and CMG are partnered with MMOGULS, as far as I knew no official contract actually exists, this could be dropped as hearsay or specualtion, or a passing comment by GW that was never actually fulfilled. We have heard over and over there is no contractual agreement between MMOGULS and CME, so this will be an interesting one to prove.
8. MMOGULS may have been designed to MARKET the product, but again without a contract with CME this would hold no water.
9.They knew that SGW would be key in MMOGULS success, was this just buzzwords and such for getting the investors in, I know they dropped other big title games into their marketing machine, are they just using SGW as a way to target CME, because of who is at the helm, as far as I knew SGW would just be 1 of many AAA titles in MMOGULS.
14. They accept they launched MMOGULS with no games, and were literally taking money in for nothing.
28. CME obtained licences and raised money to create studios. Nothing to do with mmoguls, or any of mmoguls cash, as this was investors money, not GW's. Not quite sure why they are stating this, unless they are insinuating MMOGULS INVESTORS money was used to fund CME without there consent.
alot missing as it jumps to 38 from 28.
38. Stating that GW controls MMOGULS CME and other stuff.
41. speculation. As we know that investors have come in and a SG based game is being completed as we chat.
42. speculation. Now I think this is what the real court case is about, whether or not GW is fit to run MMOGULS.
Overall I guess the likely hood of getting money back in PRE release products, or money INVESTED in projects that havent been completed is not really going to happen. From reading the stuff it sounds more likely that she is unhappy with how MMOGULS is run (the missing or moved money) and the person running it, if anything I would say that the missing/moved money will be hammered out, and then the judge would possibly bring in some sort of controller or force the man from the helm, I seriously doubt anything would happen at CME, but the control of MMOGULS could be moved away from GW.
This case doesnt stand a chance of effecting the company CME or the products its making, we know control of all money is now in the hands of the investors at CME, my guess is that this court case will make that also the case at MMOGULS.
I was thinking... OK, let's say Nedra wins their lawsuit. Then what? Would she be looking to liquidate and get out what she can, or finish the game? And if the latter, that means with MMOGULs as part of it, right? She's not some white knight rescuing SGW from the jaws of an MLM... she's into that full bore. What of the "new investors" and MGM who want no part of an MLM? I'm not saying I'd rather have GW, but just thinking ahead. What a mess.
I know this doesn't sound like the smartest thing but who or what is Nedra?
This case doesnt stand a chance of effecting the company CME or the products its making
I sort of see your point. I could cut off my left hand and not injure my right hand. But my whole body is still injured.
I know you are fighting hard not to have to accept the fact that CME and MMOGULS is the same thing, but this reality will eventually set in. When it does, you'll begin to see any litigation involving any part of the "body" as a serious threat.
Nedra is Nedra Roney McKell, one of the founders of Nu Skin Enterprises, now one of the largest MLMs.
I believe that verbal contracts can be made to stand in some cases, particularly in the case of misrepresentation or fraud. But the crux of the matter are the allegations that money was transferred between corporations/GW improperly. I'm not exactly sure if the statements of the ties between CME and MMOGULS are really very important, other than to paint a picture of GW.
However, I think you miss the point of this lawsuit. It is not on the merits of Nedra's case. She has already gotten a Utah court to issue a (temporary?) restraining order, and to appoint a receiver for CME/CMG (and maybe the others? I'm not sure). In other words, someone who is going to come in and take over operational control of the companies. Now, it depends what they have in mind. If it's to cash out, they'll shut the place down to preserve capital and try to sell what they got. If it's to make the game, they'll continue on, and most likely with the MLM plans intact. In the middle, they could keep on the same course that CME says they are on, take the money from the investors, and see what happens, I guess.
GW is attempting to delay/deny it. I'm not sure what his chances are. I imagine that most courts would say, go fight that point out in Utah, where the order was given. But as long as that order stands, I think it is an uphil climb for him. I guess we'll see after today's hearing where it stands.
The point is if anything, they would try and recoup monies from GW, he would do this by liquidating his stock in CME or selling his part in MMOGULS, or try and get stock to the equivalent in CME stock.
Maybe get MMOGULS from GW, and maybe some stock in CME.
I really cant see CME suffering, if anything if they were given control of MMOGULS and then given shares in CME, they would still not have a controlling qty of stock in CME to make any decisions without the other share holders. All they would do is move control of the company back to the stock holders, and since no one person would hold 51%, it would fall back into the majority making the decisions.
Again we are speculating here, but as far as I know, this is against the man not the company, and if anything they maybe after control of MMOGULS, and they will still not have a contract with CME for marketing the game(s) CME produce.
If they remove GW from power at CME (or whatever, loses control due to not owning 51% of shares), more than anything this will be the death of MMOGULS, as the controlling majority would really not bother with MMOGULS at all (why bother with something that has no value to CME at all, especially with all the bad press and scandal (supposedly) thats gone on with it). They would be under no legal binding contract to fulfil what GW may have said in the past, this would be an awesome time to cut the line between MMOGULS and CME once and for all.
If anything whatever the outcome, I see the death of MMOGULS, but not CME. My reasoning for this is that GW loses control of MMOGULS, and maybe sells some CME shares to payback monies owed. He may lose control of CME as being the main share holder, and control would then fall to the majority decision with the share holders. If this happens, who in there right mind would say yes to MMOGULS being a marketing body for CME games when there is no advantage for them to do this.
In the end it would mean a reshuffling of people owning shares, and things will continue, there is just no way they could take control of CME, no matter how much they wanted it.
Really all I can see is, they are just trying to recoup loses and maybe take control of MMOGULS.
I can see how they jumped at releasing MMOGULS (GW and the rest of them, they even said they made the decision, not just GW at launching early) way way WAY before SGW would be shipped, and even before they had a base of games available for the MMOGULS people. AND THEY KNEW THIS.
Originally posted by yellowperil Again we are speculating here, but as far as I know, this is against the man not the company, and if anything they maybe after control of MMOGULS, and they will still not have a contract with CME for marketing the game(s) CME produce.
If Kyrie included the court order from Utah in her copying, we might get a better picture.
But, as of what we can see, the suit is officially filed against: GW, CME, CMG, MMOGULS, Now, and Garvick in AZ. I'm guessing that the Utah order is against them all as well, but I can't be sure.
It could very well be that the receiver will come in and cease all spending, pending further outcomes in Utah, for all we know. It depends on what Nedra has in mind. She might just want to take the loss for tax purposes. Or maybe he will just clean out exec management. Or nothing, except to start auditing books.
I can't imagine that any information that suggests MMOGULS and CME had talked about concrete plans will thrill either MGM or the new investors, though.
Zhiroc, there is no chance they could take full control of CME, if anything they could take some stock, but how much money would you put on 51% of CME shares, do you think a couple of million that they have put in equals 51% of the stock of cme, I dont think so. If anything 5mil maybe will get them 5%, the amount of money they would be asking for is but a small drop compared to what CME is actually worth, with games in progress, or on hold or whatever.
I really cannot see some dodgy dealings, and around 2.5mil in investment in MMOGULS being the death of CME, maybe GW would lose control, but for them to gain control of CME is pretty laughable, remember there is alot of other investors in CME, not just GW.
The Utah court has appointed a receiver. According to that Wikipedia entry:
the receiver completely displaces the defendants: the receiver makes large and small decisions, spends the organization’s funds, and controls hiring and firing determinations.
In other words, the court has circumvented the normal corporate structure.
The court docs that Kyrie posted did say on the first part, p. 7, that:
Judge Laycock then altered the order by hand-writing a brief line stating: "Vick Deauvono shall also act as Receiver under Rule 66 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure for each of the above-listed entities"
Comments
So it seems it's being arranged for a telephonic court? Not certain how this works but does each side plead their case via telephone and the judge questions and makes a decisions as in a normal court? According to those papers they aren't going to extend this case past that hearing, but I bet Gary will try his best!
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience"
CS Lewis
Hmm, it sounds like the McKells got CME (and CMG/MMOGULS/Now/Garvick?) placed into receivership by a Utah court? Wow.
Of course, the question is getting it enforced in AZ (and NV?) The outcome of the next hearing could go either their way, or the court could stay it longer, forcing them to essentially re-argue the case. However, in that case I would think that the advantage is with them, as CME would have to prove that a legal order of another court must be vacated.
And I wonder what the effect is on the new investment? Is the totality of those funds legally CME's assets, though controlled by the investors? A receiver would trump that control.
You are dead wrong Agricola, Guenther requested that anyone who invested MORE than $25,000 with CME and/or MMOGULS contact him.. I talked to him and he said the reason was he needed sizeable claims for the Bankruptcy filing..
Also, the reason the MMORPG staff banned him was because they felt he was slandering the Mormon faith.. So he was banned for 120 days, all of which in my opinion is BS.
I feel he hit a cord with the MMORPG staff when he mentioned the potential investors. All one needs to do is talk to a few people in Dallas ,like I have, and you will find out what he is capable of doing if they decide to move on CME.. You know if the game were ever finished it would put a big dent in the WOW membership..
Gary Whiting and most of the CME staff do a fine job of doing what you mentioned all themselves (skirts around the ban stick).
Thanks for sticking your neck out to give us an update.
no.
Geeked for FFXIV
Freelance FFXIV guide author for Ten Ton Hammer.com
IF it releases, It MIGHT be a profitable niche MMO, but don't delude yourself.
LOL. No single game will make a big dent in WOW.
Just something I saw on the court proceedings, dated 9/8:
"NOTE: DEFENDANT WHITING’S LEGAL MEMORANDA RE: (1) TRO; (2) RECEIVER AND (3) FRAUD AS IT RELATES TO FULL FAITH AND CREDIT"
Full Faith & Credit: Allows judgments between different courts/state/jurisdictions. “full faith and credit clause of the United States Constitution requires that a final judgment entered in a sister state must be respected by the courts” of another state. “
From what is posted, Gary Whiting’s defense does not want to allow what Utah has already given Nedra because of a FRAUD. This can be many things, but simply it can mean 1) extrinsic fraud if it was produced by outright fraudulent tactics (such as bribery of judicial officers which is doubtful) or 2) Gary is accusing Nedra of producing fraudulent documents or lies (perjury) to which she won her case in Utah allowing the order originally entered (Oh, Mr. fraud accusing others of fraud! How exciting!)
TRO = Temporary Restraining Order which among other things, freezes the defendant’s assets, requires preservation of documents, etc. and is in preparation for a RO (receivership order) which actually grants a plaintiff to take control of said assets. If this goes through, she'll have control of whatever investor money is in an account when granted!
Any way your slice it, this case is serious to the future of CME and all it's half-started games.
No update on what happened in Court today, but it is true. CME is fighting for its life and has been since mid July 2009 when the court proceedings started in Utah. They are indeed looking to oust Whiting from all his companies.
While I don’t have all the court documents copied (Whiting's filing is one big whine fest), you can find a good splattering here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/19743774/CME0001
I was thinking... OK, let's say Nedra wins their lawsuit. Then what?
Would she be looking to liquidate and get out what she can, or finish the game? And if the latter, that means with MMOGULs as part of it, right? She's not some white knight rescuing SGW from the jaws of an MLM... she's into that full bore.
What of the "new investors" and MGM who want no part of an MLM?
I'm not saying I'd rather have GW, but just thinking ahead.
What a mess.
In digesting the pleadings, I am enjoying how Gary Whiting likes to twist things into his favor. First, Whiting makes it seem like Brent Barton stole the business plan and key employees, and there after Whiting had to then deal with Jeff Knowles trying to steal his MMOGULS money too.
When in reality, Gary first removed unauthorized money from MMOGULS causing the waterfall effect of Brent bolting and Jeff Knowles withholding funds due to the large amount of chargeback’s they were expecting. Isn’t that a form of perjury? Of course, he could always say he got his dates confused I suppose.
Mr. Whiting states “I had to borrow money to pay for operational costs during February and March” Yeah, you borrowed it from Nedra & Jeff Knowles! Again, what caused the house of cards to fall? After everything fell apart, he didnt borrow anything until the Doctors came to his rescue.
I will upload more of the documents tomorrow. The affidavit from Nedra and the details around the deal are worth it.
Yeah, we have no idea what Nedra's true intentions are. I could only hope it is to finish Stargate Worlds (and not battle deadlands or whatever). I can understand their frustration in that they had this whole deal all set up as a win (coming in and rescuing Gary from non-payroll #1), and because of Gary’s inability to keep his hands out of the cookie jar, it completely fell apart.
If she wants to finish it, GREAT, but at this point I'd be happy if her intention would be to sell SGW as part of any possible liquidation.
At this point any game company would do better.
You guys do realise that the most likely canidate to buy this game would be SoE right? They have a habbit of buying up bad games with no future just to add more games to their stable. Examples: Vanguard, Matrix Online. And I think we all know how those games ended due to the other habbit SoE has of taking games (good ones and bad ones) and somehow making them worse.
I won't even bother to cover the whole SWG NGE thing again...
Vangaurd was crap to begin with, Brad Mcquaid lied about the quality of his product at every turn and was apparently on drugs most of the time it was in development. At launch and for about a year after a lot of fanboys ranted about how Sony was going to "fix" this game, but you can see in this rant from a former Vanguard developer that didn't happen, Sony didn't even try apparently: "Sony didn't do ****. The extent of sony's help was 2 designers who ended up writing some diplomacy quests in Tanvu and some adventuring quests in Tursh. I think there was an artist that came in 2 days a week or something for about a month also."
MxO shut down recently. I've heard nothing but bad things about the way Sony ran the game after getting their greedy paws on it. They apparently closed down the live events team very shortly after taking over, which seemed to be the only aspect of this game that was even remotely unique. Then they released several major overhauls of the combat system, each one being no improvement over the old systems it replaced. Pretty much everyone quit the game at this point and Sony proceeded to ignore the game completely until they finally colsed it down.
A game originally published by SEGA of all people, then taken over by SoE, thats a recipe for disaster if I've ever seen one. But imagine this: A game originally owned by Gary Whiting and then bought out by SoE. That should be enough to give you chills just thinking about it. The only way we could possibly make it worse is if Sony decided to use the same third party billing company from Dark and Light that refused to let people cancel their accounts and charged people who never even signed up to play.
The History of the Order of The Golden Shields
Interesting read that court doc, but it did raise some odd questions to me
6. CME and CMG are partnered with MMOGULS, as far as I knew no official contract actually exists, this could be dropped as hearsay or specualtion, or a passing comment by GW that was never actually fulfilled. We have heard over and over there is no contractual agreement between MMOGULS and CME, so this will be an interesting one to prove.
8. MMOGULS may have been designed to MARKET the product, but again without a contract with CME this would hold no water.
9.They knew that SGW would be key in MMOGULS success, was this just buzzwords and such for getting the investors in, I know they dropped other big title games into their marketing machine, are they just using SGW as a way to target CME, because of who is at the helm, as far as I knew SGW would just be 1 of many AAA titles in MMOGULS.
14. They accept they launched MMOGULS with no games, and were literally taking money in for nothing.
28. CME obtained licences and raised money to create studios. Nothing to do with mmoguls, or any of mmoguls cash, as this was investors money, not GW's. Not quite sure why they are stating this, unless they are insinuating MMOGULS INVESTORS money was used to fund CME without there consent.
alot missing as it jumps to 38 from 28.
38. Stating that GW controls MMOGULS CME and other stuff.
41. speculation. As we know that investors have come in and a SG based game is being completed as we chat.
42. speculation. Now I think this is what the real court case is about, whether or not GW is fit to run MMOGULS.
Overall I guess the likely hood of getting money back in PRE release products, or money INVESTED in projects that havent been completed is not really going to happen. From reading the stuff it sounds more likely that she is unhappy with how MMOGULS is run (the missing or moved money) and the person running it, if anything I would say that the missing/moved money will be hammered out, and then the judge would possibly bring in some sort of controller or force the man from the helm, I seriously doubt anything would happen at CME, but the control of MMOGULS could be moved away from GW.
This case doesnt stand a chance of effecting the company CME or the products its making, we know control of all money is now in the hands of the investors at CME, my guess is that this court case will make that also the case at MMOGULS.
I know this doesn't sound like the smartest thing but who or what is Nedra?
I sort of see your point. I could cut off my left hand and not injure my right hand. But my whole body is still injured.
I know you are fighting hard not to have to accept the fact that CME and MMOGULS is the same thing, but this reality will eventually set in. When it does, you'll begin to see any litigation involving any part of the "body" as a serious threat.
Geeked for FFXIV
Freelance FFXIV guide author for Ten Ton Hammer.com
Check out this awesome Wyoming state Supreme Court case document from Findlaw.com. These are the kinds of people involved in the funding of MMOGULS and SGW.
Oh, she has a Facebook account, too.
Geeked for FFXIV
Freelance FFXIV guide author for Ten Ton Hammer.com
Thanks.
Nedra is Nedra Roney McKell, one of the founders of Nu Skin Enterprises, now one of the largest MLMs.
I believe that verbal contracts can be made to stand in some cases, particularly in the case of misrepresentation or fraud. But the crux of the matter are the allegations that money was transferred between corporations/GW improperly. I'm not exactly sure if the statements of the ties between CME and MMOGULS are really very important, other than to paint a picture of GW.
However, I think you miss the point of this lawsuit. It is not on the merits of Nedra's case. She has already gotten a Utah court to issue a (temporary?) restraining order, and to appoint a receiver for CME/CMG (and maybe the others? I'm not sure). In other words, someone who is going to come in and take over operational control of the companies. Now, it depends what they have in mind. If it's to cash out, they'll shut the place down to preserve capital and try to sell what they got. If it's to make the game, they'll continue on, and most likely with the MLM plans intact. In the middle, they could keep on the same course that CME says they are on, take the money from the investors, and see what happens, I guess.
GW is attempting to delay/deny it. I'm not sure what his chances are. I imagine that most courts would say, go fight that point out in Utah, where the order was given. But as long as that order stands, I think it is an uphil climb for him. I guess we'll see after today's hearing where it stands.
The point is if anything, they would try and recoup monies from GW, he would do this by liquidating his stock in CME or selling his part in MMOGULS, or try and get stock to the equivalent in CME stock.
Maybe get MMOGULS from GW, and maybe some stock in CME.
I really cant see CME suffering, if anything if they were given control of MMOGULS and then given shares in CME, they would still not have a controlling qty of stock in CME to make any decisions without the other share holders. All they would do is move control of the company back to the stock holders, and since no one person would hold 51%, it would fall back into the majority making the decisions.
Again we are speculating here, but as far as I know, this is against the man not the company, and if anything they maybe after control of MMOGULS, and they will still not have a contract with CME for marketing the game(s) CME produce.
If they remove GW from power at CME (or whatever, loses control due to not owning 51% of shares), more than anything this will be the death of MMOGULS, as the controlling majority would really not bother with MMOGULS at all (why bother with something that has no value to CME at all, especially with all the bad press and scandal (supposedly) thats gone on with it). They would be under no legal binding contract to fulfil what GW may have said in the past, this would be an awesome time to cut the line between MMOGULS and CME once and for all.
If anything whatever the outcome, I see the death of MMOGULS, but not CME. My reasoning for this is that GW loses control of MMOGULS, and maybe sells some CME shares to payback monies owed. He may lose control of CME as being the main share holder, and control would then fall to the majority decision with the share holders. If this happens, who in there right mind would say yes to MMOGULS being a marketing body for CME games when there is no advantage for them to do this.
In the end it would mean a reshuffling of people owning shares, and things will continue, there is just no way they could take control of CME, no matter how much they wanted it.
Really all I can see is, they are just trying to recoup loses and maybe take control of MMOGULS.
I can see how they jumped at releasing MMOGULS (GW and the rest of them, they even said they made the decision, not just GW at launching early) way way WAY before SGW would be shipped, and even before they had a base of games available for the MMOGULS people. AND THEY KNEW THIS.
If Kyrie included the court order from Utah in her copying, we might get a better picture.
But, as of what we can see, the suit is officially filed against: GW, CME, CMG, MMOGULS, Now, and Garvick in AZ. I'm guessing that the Utah order is against them all as well, but I can't be sure.
It could very well be that the receiver will come in and cease all spending, pending further outcomes in Utah, for all we know. It depends on what Nedra has in mind. She might just want to take the loss for tax purposes. Or maybe he will just clean out exec management. Or nothing, except to start auditing books.
I can't imagine that any information that suggests MMOGULS and CME had talked about concrete plans will thrill either MGM or the new investors, though.
Zhiroc, there is no chance they could take full control of CME, if anything they could take some stock, but how much money would you put on 51% of CME shares, do you think a couple of million that they have put in equals 51% of the stock of cme, I dont think so. If anything 5mil maybe will get them 5%, the amount of money they would be asking for is but a small drop compared to what CME is actually worth, with games in progress, or on hold or whatever.
I really cannot see some dodgy dealings, and around 2.5mil in investment in MMOGULS being the death of CME, maybe GW would lose control, but for them to gain control of CME is pretty laughable, remember there is alot of other investors in CME, not just GW.
The Utah court has appointed a receiver. According to that Wikipedia entry:
the receiver completely displaces the defendants: the receiver makes large and small decisions, spends the organization’s funds, and controls hiring and firing determinations.
In other words, the court has circumvented the normal corporate structure.
The court docs that Kyrie posted did say on the first part, p. 7, that:
Judge Laycock then altered the order by hand-writing a brief line stating: "Vick Deauvono shall also act as Receiver under Rule 66 of the Utah Rules of Civil Procedure for each of the above-listed entities"