#except for one. he beat the allegations and became employed

[royal-flash]

twst characters as screenshots of me and my friends

[kaccvcate]

GREETINGS FROM MEOWTER SPACE.

In my travels I've come to find that I have an extremely strange family background. I'm going to be talking about it in some essays, which may contain descriptions of abuse and neglect. Here's the first one (it's long as fuck.)

On my mom's side, my great great grandmother was Creek. She was alive when I was born, and we briefly met. She was over 125 years old (nobody knows how old exactly.) The men on that side, who were all Scottish, died in their early 40s, except for my grandfather, who left when my mom was a kid. (I met him once, but my mom didn't want me to be around anyone Christian as a kid, so I never met anyone else on that side of the family.) I barely know anything about my Scottish ancestry, although growing up we called the native grapes "bullises," which is a Gaelic word for plums (they're also called muscadines, but I don't know what the truth is anymore.)

My family were subsistance farmers since before colonization, until my grandma became a schoolteacher. Our family moved to what would later be the Free State of Jones from what would later be Alabama, though I'm not sure why. During the Civil War, people in Jones county refused to fight, since nobody owned slaves in the area, and it was declared a Free State. My grandma lives in the Free State, in abject poverty with my uncle and his wife, who just scream at each other and beat their kids and neglect their 15 hoarded dogs all day. And if they have a problem with me saying so, they can eat shit and die.

My mom went to school for anthropology, and taught geology at the University of Southern Mississippi. She was extremely ashamed of how poor our background is, and I wasn't allowed to visit family much, although I wanted to very badly. I got to live with my grandma and my two adopted uncles who are around my age for a little while when we were kids, and they're some of the only positive childhood memories I have. I was extremely isolated and abused, especially by my step dad, who is currently (to my knowledge) employed as a programmer at a major video game company, as well as being a child molester starting when I was 2 or 3 years old (some of my earliest memories.) His name is Rigel Cameron Freeman. I ran away when I was 16 to live with my dad. When I told my mom what he did, she called me a liar and quit speaking to me, and that was the last I heard from her directly. So far as I know, she's been in mental hospitals pretty much since I left.

My dad's mom, whose first name was Ellen, was Ashkenazi Jewish, descended from a family who left Germany before the holocaust. She was a beatnik who was friends with Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg, and she had personal beef with Grace Slick over a boyfriend. My dad's first guitar was a gift from Cat Stevens, although this was something he was a little embarrassed about and only mentioned to me once. She was especially close friends with Tiny Tim. She was in California trying to break into acting, and almost got a part in the Godfather allegedly (actually all of this is alleged by my dad, I only met her once. He really didn't like her, so I don't think he would make it up.)

Then she met my grandfather, Bob Marshall, who was probably in California to do drugs (sacred family tradition.) I have reason to believe he was mostly Choctaw and possibly Irish, although on that side of the family it's traditional to claim to be "French or Italian" unless you're very drunk, and then it's okay to be Indian. They moved up to Alaska and lived on the Athabaskan reservation, where my father, Rogan Russell Marshall, was born on April 19. Later, my grandfather became a civil rights lawyer, and he defended the right for prisoners with AIDS to be desegregated (basically anyone with AIDS would die in solitary before that.)

My dad got into Emerson, dropped out because no one could afford textbooks, moved to Mississippi and started this crazy punk band, and then went ahead and wrote some movies anyway. My favorite is called the Attic Expeditions, it features Seth Green, Jeffery Combs, and Alice Cooper, and it's very trippy and fun. Unfortunately, he became disabled from the same autoimmune condition I have, ankylosing spondylitis, which, if you're born male, has much more severe symptoms (which is why I chose not to start testosterone.) AS used to be thought of as genetic, but has recently been linked to environmental pollutants, and I was likely exposed to something released by one of our many chemical factories (my uncle who abuses his kids and dogs is adopted, I mentioned earlier, grew up in my grandma's house when we were kids together, and has the same symptoms, and multiple people who lived on the same Hattiesburg street as my dad in the 90s were diagnosed.) He was living in Massachussetts in his mom's basement when he married my step mom, a public defense attourney, to get health insurance, and they lived in Miami for eight years together until she left him, shortly after I moved in.

After that, I had to drop out of high school, and I lived in hell for about seven years while I worked full time, usually multiple jobs, to take care of us, and all the cats he would bring home (as many as 13, but I ran my house like a cat ranch and it was kind of beautiful.) His physical and mental health was dogshit, he wouldn't stop doing hard drugs, and our relationship was so hopelessly abusive that I had to quit speaking to him as well. My feelings are complicated because, while I love and admire his work, and he taught me a lot of extremely valuable and positive things, the things he did to me would put him in prison if I believed in the law. I owe him everything, and at the same time, I almost wish we'd never met (I'll have to talk about that in another post as well, because it's a lot, and exremely heavy.)

My third parent, Scott Panther, I honestly don't know very well. According to local legend, and there are many about him, he's Scottish and Cherokee. He was close friends with my parents before I was born, helped start Rong (and probably came up with the best ideas for it.) He was my mom's boyfriend for a long time before I was born.

My mom met Scott and Rogan at a Rong show, I was conceived after a Rong show (Scott drove Rogan to her house), and the night I was born there was a Rong show. Scott was overdosing when my mom went into labor, and I was born at 4 AM while multiple tornadoes passed through town. Later that night, he was ready to play the show (hats off). No one told Rogan I was born, though in the full video of the show he mentions the other people in town who were born on April 18. Unfortunately, the video is probably lost - he gave all the Rong tapes to someone I don't know, and he didn't say who (he may have even been lying and threw them away.)

I inherited a lot of personality traits from Scott, as many people who know us have noticed, although I gained them not through direct teaching, or through any modern understanding of genetics. I've read that before colonization these kind of things were more common and better understood.

[sublimeobservationarcade]

Is Telling Lies, The Remit of The News?

Fox News knowingly spread lies about the 2020 US election being rigged. Can you call yourself a News station and deliberately peddle misinformation? America is going to have to make that call at the judicial level, probably via the Supreme Court eventually. Rupert Murdoch sees Fox News as an entertainment platform. He provides a visual medium for the Republican party to push their point of view and does not maintain any semblance of Fox News being a source of objective information in the US political sphere.

Photo by Karolina Grabowska on Pexels.com

News or Entertainment?

One could say that all of the Murdoch media platforms on screen, radio, and in print are preaching from the right wing. In Australia, The News Corp newspapers, radio network, and TV presence are all deeply conservative in their editorial stance. Murdoch was instrumental in introducing opinion journalism over investigative journalism. The News Corp operatives begin with a bias and gather arguments on that basis. The dumbed down media gives dyed in the wool conservative readers and viewers more of what they already espouse themselves. Indeed, they take these folks further to the right with emotive beat ups about migrants taking their jobs and transexuals invading their sports and schools.

Telling Lies For A Living Murdoch has successfully influenced the political sphere in the UK, Australia, and America for many years. Despite Murdoch’s 90+ years his minions are carrying on his ghastly reputation across the western world for divisive dog whistling. Tabloid newspapers tell lurid stories to stupid people. Murdoch has built an empire on the back of these key ingredients in the human condition. A corporate army of soulless minions have toed the right wing line for decades to reap material rewards and job security. This is the world we live in where corporations have grown into powerful stake holders at the expense of governments and those not aligned to a corporate tribe.

Photo by Duané Viljoen on Pexels.com America is a dollar driven nation, which is why Rupert Murdoch became a US citizen back in the 1990s. Fox News chose to purposely tell lies instead of reporting the facts because it was all about making money. They would lose their audience and their advertisers if they reported the truth about the Trump lies. The Fox anchors knew that the Trump lawyers were telling lies and that there was no evidence for the claims about rigged voting machines. Emails between them and management confirms that. Large sections of the American population would sell whatever for a bunch of money. Looking out for number one is the Libertarian credo, as the world clearly saw during the Covid pandemic. Murdoch’s Frankenstein, Donald Trump, fumbled and bumbled his gross way through his presidency. Incompetence reached new levels and cost the lives of hundreds of thousands through a complete lack of leadership. Murdoch helped, along with Putin, to put the Trump puppet on the throne. The billionaire who wasn’t really a billionaire. The compulsive liar. The cheat. The epitome of the ugly American.

Rupert Murdoch is, perhaps, the most despicable Australian who has ever lived. Except, he is, of course, no longer an Australian. It would be great to see his evil empire removed completely from these shores. The News Corp influence has waned considerably, as seen from the results of the most recent federal election but his minions and family are still peddling fascist muck. Divisive narratives designed to stir up trouble to sell advertising space. Filthy muck rakers employed by a nasty individual and those who have been trained under his auspices. Is telling lies, the remit of the News? Fox News is attempting to defend this libel suit on the grounds of their first amendment rights. “Fox attorneys argue that when voting-technology companies denied the allegations being made by Trump and his surrogates, Fox News aired those denials, while some Fox News hosts offered protected opinion commentary about Trump’s allegations.” - (https://www.cpr.org/2023/02/16/fox-news-claims-dominion-defamation-suit-is-assault-on-first-amendment/) Legal commentators remain sceptical about this defence, but it is America. The Dominion libel suit against Fox News for a billion dollars may succeed on this basis. We can only wish that, if it is so, that the ramifications take down the whole company. America and the whole world needs to decide if the News is about truth or entertainment. Fake news on our screens means a loss of the middle way. If there is no centre, no line of truth, we are all lost in the end. ©House Therapy Read the full article

[patriotsnet]

Did Trump Ever Say Republicans Are Stupid

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/did-trump-ever-say-republicans-are-stupid/

Did Trump Ever Say Republicans Are Stupid

Trump Secretly Mocks His Christian Supporters

Donald Trump Tells Oprah in 1988 What He Would Do as President

Former aides say that in private, the president has spoken with cynicism and contempt about believers.

One day in 2015, Donald Trump beckoned Michael Cohen, his longtime confidant and personal attorney, into his office. Trump was brandishing a printout of an article about an Atlanta-based megachurch pastor trying to raise $60 million from his flock to buy a private jet. Trump knew the preacher personallyCreflo Dollar had been among a group of evangelical figures who visited him in 2011 while he was first exploring a presidential bid. During the meeting, Trump had reverently bowed his head in prayer while the pastors laid hands on him. Now he was gleefully reciting the impious details of Dollars quest for a Gulfstream G650.

Trump seemed delighted by the scam, Cohen recalled to me, and eager to highlight that the pastor was full of shit. Theyre all hustlers, Trump said.

The presidents alliance with religious conservatives has long been premised on the contention that he takes them seriously, while Democrats hold them in disdain. In speeches and interviews, Trump routinely lavishes praise on conservative Christians, casting himself as their champion. My administration will never stop fighting for Americans of faith, he declared at a rally for evangelicals earlier this year. Its a message his campaign will seek to amplify in the coming weeks as Republicans work to confirm Amy Coney Barretta devout, conservative Catholicto the Supreme Court.

The People Whom President Trump Has Called Stupid

Since he declared his candidacy for the presidency, no group has been deemed stupid by Donald Trump more frequently than Americas leaders. There are stupid people running the country, he said over and over and over again on the campaign trail; making stupid deals with Iran and stupid deals on trade. Everyone in charge was dumb and he wasnt except that he was stupid for self-funding his campaign. That, in broad strokes, was Trumps rhetoric in 2015 and 2016.

But that wasnt the full extent of it. When Trump tweeted disparagement of LeBron James and CNNs Don Lemon Friday night, it was a reminder that Trump often divides the world into two groups: those who are stupid and those who arent. It was also a reminder that, of late, Trump has often chosen to describe as stupid people who are not white.

That wasnt always the case. Before the presidential election, Trump mostly disparaged white people as stupid.

Of course, back then, his political opponents were mostly white people: those running against him in the Republican primary and the conservative establishment broadly opposed to his candidacy. He called Karl Rove, former George W. Bush adviser, stupid five times, including in interviews. Bloombergs Tim OBrien, whom Trump once sued unsuccessfully for alleged libel, earned the description three times, as did television host Glenn Beck.

Since President Trumps inauguration, though, that has changed.

It wasnt Obama.

The Dumbest Stuff Donald Trump Has Ever Said

Paul J Richards/AFP/Getty

Americas favorite faux-political shock jock came back with a vengeance two weeks ago when, during a press conference to announce his candidacy for the presidency, he characterized all Mexican immigrants as drug-peddling rapists.

The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody elses problems, he said. When Mexico sends its people, theyre not sending their best. Theyre not sending you. Theyre sending people that have lots of problems, and theyre bringing those problems with us. Theyre bringing drugs. Theyre bringing crime. Theyre rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.

The comments ended up getting both him and his television programs booted from NBC. After a public pressure campaign that racked up more than 200,000 petition signatures, the network decried his words as derogatory. Trump, as to be expected, railed against NBC. Instead of apologizing for his words, he later asserted that his stance on immigration is correct.

Its not the first time Trump has insulted Americas southern neighbor. This past February, when Mexican director Alejandro González Iñárritu took home an Oscar for his film Birdman, Trump offered dubious congratulations. Well it was a great night for Mexico, as usual in this country It was a great night for Mexico. This guy kept getting up and up and up. I said, you know, whats he doing? Hes walking away with all the gold.

On African-Americans:

Laziness is a trait in blacks.

On women:

On religion:

Read Also: Do Republicans Support The Death Penalty

Trump ‘knows Republicans Are Stupid’ Jared Kushner Allegedly Said To Former Editor

Greg Price U.S.Jared KushnerDonald TrumpRepublicans

One of the strategies Donald Trump employed as he began putting his name on the U.S. political map years ago was championing “birtherism,” the long-held conspiracy theory that President Barack Obama was born outside of the U.S. and hence should never have been elected. He often chastised Obama and demanded the president produce his birth certificate, revving up an anti-Obama base that eventually helped put Trump in the White House.

Evidently, Trump may have been using the so-called birthers only as a means to an end.

His son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who is also a senior adviser to the president, allegedly told a former editor of the newspaper he once owned that the billionaire real-estate mogul didn’t believe his own “birtherism” claims, and only made them to charge up Republicans because they are “stupid,” GQ reported.

During a discussion on how to cover Trump, the former New York Observer editor, Elizabeth Spiers, claimed she told Kushner that she had serious problems with Trump’s repeated claims that Obama was not born in the U.S., to which Kushner allegedly told her: “He doesn’t really believe it, Elizabeth. He just knows Republicans are stupid and they’ll buy it.”

Spiers told her Kushner anecdote in response to a question from a conservative blogger on Facebook, and then screenshotted the response and put it up on Twitter.

In 1988 Oprah Asked Donald Trump If He’d Ever Run For President Here’s How He Replied

Donald Trump;wasn’t always so sure he wanted to run for president.

Long before The Donald officially kicked off his;polarizing2016run and became;the Republican frontrunner, Oprah asked the business tycoon about his political aspirations on a 1988 episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” ;Trump had originally appeared on the show to promote a new book and discuss his life as a businessman, but the conversation soon turned toward foreign policy and how Trump would take a tougher stance with America’s allies.

“I’d make our allies pay their fair share. We’re a debtor nation; something’s going to happen over the next number of years in this country, because you can’t keep going on losing $200 billion,” he said on “The Oprah Show” back then. “We let Japan come in and dump everything right into our markets… They come over here, they sell their cars, their VCRs. They knock the hell out of our companies. And, hey, I have tremendous respect for the Japanese people. I mean, you can respect somebody that’s beating the hell out of you, but they are beating the hell out of this country. Kuwait, they live like kings and yet, they’re not paying. We make it possible for them to sell their oil. Why aren’t they paying us 25 percent of what they’re making? It’s a joke.”

The rant prompted Oprah to ask the question that people would ask for the next few decades.

Of course, he couldn’t help but hedge.

“I think I’d win,” Trump said. “I’ll tell you what: I wouldn’t go in to lose.”

Also On HuffPost:

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Trumps 10 Most Hilariously Stupid Things He Said In 2019

President Donald Trump has a long history of saying some of the most bizarre things in politics. This year was one for the books as the president flailed, searching for excuses for his July 25 phone call with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Here are some of the most hilariously stupid things the president has said this year:

1. Windmills cause ear cancer

If you have a windmill anywhere near your house, congratulations, your house just went down 75 percent in value, Trump told Republicans in April. And they say the noise causes cancer. You tell me that one. He then made a whirring noise mimicking a turbine.

2. He wants to buy Greenland

In meetings, at dinners and in passing conversations, Mr. Trump has asked advisers whether the U.S. can acquire Greenland, listened with interest when they discuss its abundant resources and geopolitical importance and, according to two of the people, has asked his White House counsel to look into the idea, the Wall Street Journal reported in August.

Denmark essentially owns it, Trump told reporters in the days that followed. Were very good allies with Denmark. We protect Denmark like we protect large portions of the world. Strategically its interesting.

Trump then got into a fight with Danish leaders and had to cancel a trip hed planned to the country.

3. Trump is the chosen one.

4. Why dont they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came.

Im Getting The Word Out: Inside The Feverish Mind Of Donald Trump Two Months After Leaving The White House

I Alone Can Fix It

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Seventy days had passed since Donald Trump left Washington against his will. On March 31, 2021, we ventured to Mar-a-Lago, where he still reigned as king of Republican politics. We arrived late that afternoon for our audience with the man who used to be president and were ushered into an ornate sixty-foot-long room that functioned as a kind of lobby leading to the clubs patio. A model of Air Force One painted in Trumps proposed redesigna flat red stripe across the middle, a navy belly, a white top, and a giant American flag on the tailwas proudly displayed on the coffee table facing the entrance. It was a prop disconnected from reality.; Trumps vision never came to be; the fleet now in use by President Biden still bears the iconic baby blue-and-white livery designed by Jacqueline Kennedy.

Trump had invited us to Mar-a-Lago to interview him for this book. He had declined an interview for our first book about his presidency, and when A Very Stable Genius was published in January 2020, attacked us personally and branded our reporting a work of fiction. But Trump was quick to agree to our request this time. He sought to curate history.

But future elections were not front and center in his mind. A past election was. Trump was fixated on his loss in 2020, returning to this wound repeatedly throughout the interview.;

Also Check: How Many Republicans Voted For Obamacare In The Senate

Trump Told A Reporter His Biggest Secret: That He Is A Danger To The American People

Trump is a particularly stupid man who thinks he is very smart. Perhaps this lies at the root of his monumentally dumb decision to grant Bob Woodward 18 interviews

The Inuit are supposed to have dozens of words to describe snow. The Brits have endless ways to talk about rain. Now its time for Americans to delineate all the many ways that Donald Trump is dumb.

If Bob Woodwards new blockbuster teaches us anything new about the character of the 45th president, its that we dont yet have the words to describe the multiple variants of the vacuum inside his head.

Theres the stupidity of arrogance, the stupidity of ignorance and his old friend: the stupidity of blatant duplicity. Theres his homicidal stupidity, his traitorous stupidity, his criminally corrupt stupidity and his plain old infantile stupidity.

Lets start with the top of this taxonomy: the domain of Donalds dumbness. At his core, the former reality TV star is a particularly stupid man who thinks he is very smart. Or as he prefers to call his own character, a very stable genius.

Perhaps, just maybe, this lies at the root of his monumentally dumb decision to grant Woodward 18 interviews, on the record and on tape.

Instead, our very stupid genius vomited up all manner of secrets that collectively prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he represents the greatest single danger to the fate of both the American people and to himself.

Fact Check: Did Trump Say In ’98 Republicans Are Dumb

Donald Trump: I didnt say that. (He did.)

Did Donald Trump tell People magazine in 1998 that if he ever ran for president, hed do it as a Republican because theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country and that he could lie and theyd still eat it up?A:;No, thats a bogus meme.

FULL ANSWER

The meme purports to be a quote from Trump in;People;magazine in 1998 saying, If I were to run, Id run as a Republican. Theyre the dumbest group of voters in the country. They believe;anything on Fox News. I could lie and theyd still eat it up. I bet my numbers would be terrific.

We were alerted to the meme by a reader, A. Douglas Thomas of Freeport, N.Y., among others, who saw it in his Facebook feed, along with a message from someone who said, I just fact-checked this. Google Donald Trump, People magazine and 1998. This is an actual quote by Trump.

Well save you the effort. It is;not;an actual quote by Trump.

We scoured the;Peoplemagazine archives and found nothing like this quote in 1998 or any other year.

And a public relations representative with;People;told us that the magazine couldnt find anything like that quote in its archives, either.;Peoples Julie Farin said in an email: Peoplelooked into this exhaustively when it first surfaced back in Oct.;We combed through every Trump story in our archive.;We couldnt find anything remotely like this quote and no interview at all in 1998.

There were several stories in the late 1990s about Trumps flirtation with a presidential run.

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Trump Is Right: Republicans Are Stupid

Donald Trump, master of the deal, is right. The Republicans are stupid, not only as politicians but also as political psychologists. He criticized Paul Ryan for bringing up the subject of Medicare reform that the Democrats could use to turn the elderly against the Republicans. Their video of grandma being shoved over the cliff by Republicans is a stark indication of how the Dems will fight to win four more years for Obama.

As the discussions over increasing the debt limit go on, the Democrats are portraying themselves as the more flexible party in the negotiations. They are willing to cut cherished programs such as Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, provided Republicans agree to some increases in revenue. They want the Republicans to agree to raise taxes and cut spending on programs that the elderly hold sacred. A perfect recipe for Republican defeat in November 2012. Thursdays meeting was supposed to focus on spending cuts in the two health care programs and on new revenue. And only stupid Republicans would attend such a meeting.

From the very beginning, by focusing on cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, the Republicans have trapped themselves into a no-win situation. Why havent they offered a list of real cuts in federal spending? Who told them that cutting programs that the elderly are dependent on is the way to win votes in 2012?

Here Are The Top 10 Stupidest Things Trump Did As President

We’re tentatively starting to emerge from the four year-long national nightmare of Donald Trump’s presidency, but the reckoning of what the nation endured will take years to really understand. Trump was terrible in so many ways that it’s hard to catalog them all: His sociopathic lack of regard for others. His towering narcissism. His utter ease with lying. His cruelty and sadism. The glee he took in cheating and stomping on anything good and decent. His misogyny and racism. His love of encouraging violence, only equaled by his personal cowardice.

But of all the repulsive character traits in a man so wholly lacking in any redeemable qualities, perhaps the most perplexing to his opponents was Trump’s incredible stupidity. On one hand, it was maddening that a man so painfully dumb, a man who clearly could barely read even on those rare occasions when he deigned to wear glasses still had the low cunning necessary to take over the Republican Party and then the White House.

On the other hand, it was the one aspect of Trump’s personality that kept hope alive. Surely a man so stupid, his opponents believed, will one day blunder so badly he can’t be saved, even by his most powerful sycophants. That has proved to be the case as Trump fumbles his way through a failed coup, unable and unwilling to see that stealing the election from Joe Biden is a lost cause.

He then pointed at his head, and said, “I’m, like, a person who has a good you-know-what.”

Read Also: Where Are Republicans On The Political Spectrum

Top 10 Actual Things Donald Trump Said At His 2016 Presidential Campaign Kickoff

Top 10 Actual Things Donald Trump Said At His 2016 Presidential Campaign Announcement

— On Tuesday, real estate mogul-turned reality show star, Donald Trump, became the latest Republican to jump into the 2016 presidential race.

If hes elected in 2016, the GOP hopeful predicated that he would be the most successful president for U.S. jobs that God ever created, used the recent sale of a multi-million dollar apartment he owned to someone from China as an example of his friendly ties with the country, voiced concern that people from the Middle East are probably sneaking into the country through the border, and revealed that rich Islamic terrorists are his competition within the hotel market in Syria.

This is all real, and its trademark Trump. Here are the quotes from Trumps presidential announcement that you will never hear another presidential candidate say — ever.

[multiverseforger]

Jester and screwball Spiderman villians

Screwball was self-styled as a performance artist and the world's first live-blogging super-villain. She was an Internet personality and social-media attention monger to such an extent that she commited crimes on camera. Her real name and identity remain as of yet unknown. Her first crimes were filmed by an amateur camera crew, and uploaded on a website.[2]

One of her earliest crimes consisted of robbing an off-track betting parlor for the sake of it, but she was sighted by Spider-Man . He tried to give chase, but eventually fell behind due to Screwball's proficiency in parkour. During this time, corrupt NYPD officers were employing Spider-Tracers to incriminate Spider-Man in numerous deaths; so when Spider-Man tagged Screwball with a Spider-Tracer, she believed she had been marked for death, and turned herself over to the nearest police officers to find protection from the alleged killer.[2]

Screwball's original costumeThe superhero fight bookmaker Bookie paid for Screwball's bail in exchange for her to dress up as Spider-Man and arrange a fight with the Basher so that he could swindle his supervillain clients at the Bar with No Name, who had bet Spider-Man wasn't going to accept Basher's challenge. After Screwball took down the Basher, the real Spider-Man appeared in the scene and chased after Screwball. He webbed her up and unmasked her.[1]

Later on, Screwball started using a camera embedded into her helmet to record her exploits. She was taken down by Spider-Man after stealing ten million dollars from an investment firm. However, she managed to evade him after hurling the stolen property into the air, forcing him to go after it.[4] Since the traffic to Screwball's site went up eighty-five percent any time she and Spider-Man tussled, she hacked into the screens of New York's cab fleet to display a message to challenge Spider-Man to a fight.[5] Spider-Man's took advantage of Screwball's challenge, and lured her to a confrontation between him and Raptor to use her as a distraction. After Screwball served her purpose, Spider-Man knocked her out.[6]

Following the birth of Lily Hollister and Norman Osborn's baby, Doctor Octopus rallied numerous villains to go after the infant. As the child of two people powered by the Goblin Serum, Octavius believed its blood carried the key to cure him of his crippling illness.[7] Screwball was one of the villains that tried to track down the baby. After the Chameleon took off with the child and tricked Spider-Man into thinking it had died, the wall-crawling hero went on a rampage to take down every villain involved in Doctor Octopus' scheme. Screwball was approached in Midtown Manhattan by the Looter to warn her of Spider-Man's actions. Before she could finish brushing him off, Screwball was taken down by Spider-Man from behind.[8]

Screwball was briefly seen being chased by Spider-Girl who had informed Screwball that she was no longer broadcasting her show due to the heroine taking out her cameraman. She was last scene being arrested by the police after Spider-Girl left.[9]

Screwball later joined forces with Jester into pranking Mayor J. Jonah Jameson. Upon uploading the prank on the Internet, both villains were defeated by Spider-Man, whose mind at the time had been taken over

She was later seen in Las Vegas[11] having formed a partnership with Arcade in which she did his bidding and he gave her training, equipment and exclusive streaming rights.[12]

Jonathan Powers was a struggling actor of huge ego who finally got his big break as the leading character in an off-Broadway revival of Cyrano de Bergerac. Panned by critics, jeered by the audience, and disdained by his fellow performers, Powers was fired after one performance. Obsessively, he continued to study the various arts and crafts that he thought would make him a versatile actor: fencing, gymnastics, body building --everything except acting lessons. Still, he was only able to find employment as a stooge on a children's television show taped in New York. Finally getting fed up with having pies thrown in his face, Powers decided that if the public wants laughter at other people's expense, he would give it to them. Contracting the criminal weapons-maker known as the Tinkerer to make him a number of gimmicks, Powers fashioned himself a gaudy harlequin-like disguise and called himself the Jester.

Criminal Career

Committing a wave of crimes based on his toys and gimmicks, and then secretly hired by corrupt politician Richard Raleigh to threaten D.A. candidate Franklin Nelson, the Jester was opposed by Daredevil, who eventually stopped his criminal activities and saw him put behind bars.[2]

The Jester escaped on numerous occasions to plague New York anew. In one of his biggest plots, he began distributing false newscasts claiming that John F. Kennedy was still alive,[3] or that the Vietnam War had never happened to get the public to stop trusting the news media.[4] He also created false commercials and newscasts for Foggy Nelson's reelection campaign as District Attorney which caused him to lose the election.[5] He then went on to frame Daredevil as a murderer,[6] before finally having a fake President Ford denounce the NYPD as criminals. When Daredevil was overcome by an angry mob, he staged a trial to sentence him to death.[7] Daredevil then freed himself and defeated the Jester, restoring order to the city.[8]

Briefly, the Jester, impersonating a famous actor, performed Cyrano on television. This appeared to end his criminal career after fulfilling his dream.[9] He left prison years later and became a stylised performer, process server, and showman.[10]

Superior Spider-Man

Powers eventually backslid, becoming partners with Screwball for a web-show called Jested. After pranking Mayor J. Jonah Jameson and uploading it live on the Internet, both pranksters were targeted by Spider-Man (whose body was being controlled by Doctor Octopus at the time). When Spider-Man came into conflict with Screwball and the Jester, their tactics of bullying and pranks caused him to snap and brutally beat them up within an inch of their lives.[11]

Death & Resurrection

After serving his time in prison for any and all offences, Powers once again abandoned his life of crime. He still ended up in prison once again when an undercover federal agent and a paid informant got him to confess his desire to return to his bad habits. She-Hulk represented Powers in court, but her argument that Powers shouldn't be arrested for thinking about committing a crime rather than actually committing a crime wasn't enough to convince the jury. He was killed by a prison guard during a scuffle started by other two inmates.[12]

Through unrevealed means, the Jester was revived and returned to a life of crime, only to be defeated by Jessica Jones and Spider-Woman.[13]

Powers and Abilities

Power Grid [16]Intelligence4 Strength 2Speed 2Durability 2Energy Projection 3Fighting Skills6 

Abilities

The Jester is an above-average athlete with special skills in gymnastics, swordsmanship, and unarmed combat.[14]

Strength level

The Jester possesses the normal human strength of a man of his age, height, and build who engages in intensive regular exercise.

Paraphernalia

Weapons

The Jester employs a variety of harmless-looking toys and gimmicks modified into deadly weapons or special tools. He has a yo-yo whose weighted knob can be used for striking and whose thin steel cable can be used for strangling. He has a bag of polished ball bearing marbles which he throws onto the ground to make an opponent lose his footing. He has a box of popcorn-like objects which explode on impact and emit a noxious tear-gas. He has a number of 8-inch diameter plastic flying discs rigged to squirt an anaesthetic drug. He has various sized rubber balls containing plastic explosives in their centers. He has an extendable artificial hand on a scissors rigged with a high voltage electrical charge, as well as an artificial hand that can be fired from a small air-cannon.

Besides these weapons, which he carries on his person or in a pouch, he occasionally employs larger and more complicated weapons, such as miniature (2 feet tall) robots outfitted with laser weaponry, diamond drill bits, etc., that can be remotely controlled by a radio-linked micro-processor that responds to spoken commands.

The Jester is constantly expanding and refining his arsenal of deadly toys

[marymosley]

Pierce Bainbridge and Littler Mendelson: Two Law Firms in the Same Deceitful Pod?

Christopher N. LaVigne (Pierce Bainbridge), S. Jeanine Conley (Littler Mendelson) and Denver G. Edwards (Pierce Bainbridge) have been accused of dishonesty and deceit in the lawsuits filed by Don Lewis, an ex-partner at Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP.  Littler served as outside counsel for the firm, until compelled to withdraw when Conley and the firm became defendants themselves.  Lewis claims he blew the whistle on illicit financial activity, and, in response, Pierce Bainbridge, a slew of its partners, along with the firm of Putney Twombly Hall & Hirson LLP (Michael D. Yim) weaponized the #MeToo movement to demonize and discredit him. According to Lewis, Conley and Littler were hired by Pierce Bainbridge to finish the job against him, and in doing so employed deceitful litigation tactics more typical of their client.

The impact of the lawsuits, and related revelations of a bevy of ugly realities about firm founder John Mark Pierce, certain of  his partners, as well as firm operations, has turned the Pierce Bainbridge carousel into a “not-so-merry” ride; thirty-five attorneys have quit in the last several months. Be that as it may, the firm apparently continues to represent a high-profile clientele: Rudy Giuliani, Michael Avenatti, Lenny Dykstra (two of them convicted felons; the third with potential criminal headaches of his own), Tulsi Gabbard, as well as one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world Kraken, Inc. d/b/a Payward.

The conduct of Conley is particularly odd, however.  Through events at the Federal Bar Association, the NYC Society For Human Resource Management, and the Metropolitan Black Bar Association, Conley has advocated for the ���elimination of bias,” “lawful investigations in the Wake of #MeToo,” and “interrupting racism and inequality within the profession.”  Lewis says:  “S. Jeanine Conley has supported the deeply depraved and misogynistic John Pierce, race-based discrimination led by Pierce and a sham #MeToo investigation conducted by Michael D. Yim of Putney Twombly who flatly stated I was not entitled to ‘due process.’ Conley’s conduct, particularly given who she publicly holds herself out to be, was shocking to me.”

It appears, that Conley “bet on the wrong horse.”

Deceitful Litigation:  “The Norm, not the Exception at Pierce Bainbridge”

Boasting About Violating the Ethical Rules

Lewis provided the quote above, but there seems to be a good deal of history lending support.  It apparently starts right at the top.  As a glaring example, the recently departed long-time Managing Partner of the Pierce Bainbridge New York Office, David L. Hecht, foolishly boasted publicly about violating the ethical Rules of Professional Conduct.  It was not just a garden variety violation; Hecht was found to have violated Rule 8.4, which the federal court noted:  “prohibits conduct involving dishonesty and misrepresentation;” the opinion invoked the words “trickery” and “deceit.” Hecht apparently took pride in the decision, because the court stopped short of disqualifying the firm.  Indicative of the Pierce Bainbridge culture, other so-called leaders “liked” the post:  Firm Managing Partner John Mark Pierce and Los Angeles Managing Partner Amman Khan.

$27,500,000 Malpractice Claim and Accusation of  Intentionally “Bungling” a Client’s Case

Khan’s reaction to Hecht’s post is arguably unsurprising; he is no stranger to controversy concerning his litigation practice.  A Law360 report indicates that while a partner at Glaser Weil, Khan was a defendant in a $27.5 million malpractice suit.  Khan was accused of “intentionally bungling a legal action,” “breaching his fiduciary duties to his client,” and forming a “plan, scheme and conspiracy,” to foul up the litigation.  The case dragged on for almost three years, before an apparent resolution was reached.

New Managing Partner Tom Warren:  Sanctions and Violation of Ethical Rules

Thomas David Warren was chosen to succeed John Mark Pierce as Pierce Bainbridge Managing Partner, and it appears the firm intends to not skip a beat on its unethical litigation conduct. Warren, who has had his own recent ethical issues with courts, is named as a defendant in a proposed amended defamation complaint Lewis filed in October 2019.

******************

Additional new current and former partner defendants in Lewis’s proposed complaint are Brian Slater (formerly of Kramer Levin), ex-partner Conor McDonough (formerly of Paul Weiss) Christopher N. LaVigne (formerly of Success Academy Charter Schools), ex-partner David L. Hecht (Hecht Partners), Gregory Sephton (formerly of Kramer Levin), Jeff Alexander (Wachtell Missry), Jonathan Kortmansky (BraughnHagey & Borden), Michael Pomerantz (formerly of Grais & Ellsworth), Susan Winkler (Winkler Law LLC) and Ted Folkman (Folkman LLC). The nature of the claim is a conspiracy to defame. 

Lewis say four new defendants: “conspired with Pierce in one of the most heinous defamatory lies one could make about a person; it is disgusting; Kortmansky, Warren, Pomerantz and Hecht all endorsed and promoted the most depraved of Pierce’s misconduct, as well as his outright public lies about the firm’s relationship with litigation funder Pravati and litigation funders generally, as well as Pierce’s baseless public attack on Bloomberg Big Business Law reporter Meghan Tribe.” Warren and Hecht are pictured above.  Pomerantz (left) and Kortmansky (right) are pictured below)

*****************

In September 2018, while Warren was a partner at BakerHostetler, his client was hit with a motion for sanctions by Dostart Hannink & Coveney LLP.  The sanctions request accused Warren and his client of “scurrilous accusations,” engaging in “totally improper” conduct, and deploying a “motion-by-ambush tactic.”  The court granted monetary sanctions against Warren’s client for over $20,000.

Warren joined Pierce Bainbridge three months later, and it did not take him long to get back to unethical work.  Just months after Hecht’s fiasco, Warren – while representing convicted felon Lenny Dykstra – was found by Los Angeles State court judge to have violated the ethical Rules of Professional Conduct, with the judge noting that such issues are “simply the purview of the State Bar . . .”

Yet Another Sanctions Motion

Incredibly, shortly after Warren took the Iron Throne for House Bainbridge in late February; the ethical problems for the firm seamlessly continued.  On March 5, 2020, in a case where Pierce, Jim Bainbridge, ex-counsel Matt Rand (formerly of McKool Smith) and Michael Eggenberger appear on the signature block, Pierce Bainbridge was on the receiving end of sanctions motion to “avoid further fraud upon the court.”

Fraud on the Court and Destruction of Evidence

The “fraud on the court” motion dovetails well with recent events in the Lewis lawsuits.  As Legal Desire previously reported, Marc Mukasey, of Mukasey, Frenchman & Sklaroff LLP recently filed to withdraw as counsel for Pierce Bainbridge citing ethical concerns with continued representation.  In response, Lewis’ counsel filed an affidavit which states:  “we have strong reason to believe — based on information provided to us by former and current employees and partners of PB — that PB . . . has corrupted these proceedings”; and continues: “we have been led to believe . . .that the PB Defendants have destroyed pertinent and material evidence; have manufactured false ‘evidence’. . . and mislead the Court as to when they were aware of the arbitration provisions that were part of the recent motions before the Court.”

The pairing of Littler and Pierce Bainbridge was perhaps a match of kindred litigation spirits; Littler has a history of sanctions of its own.  Indeed, it is exceedingly rare that a reputable law firm receives monetary sanctions for “frivolous” court filings and “violations of rules”.  Lewis says: “a quick review reveals that Littler has been a culprit at least four times, and at least twice the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals supported such sanctions.”

John’s Pierce’s Three Musketeers of Dishonesty, Deception and Deceit

The apparently troubling issues surrounding Lewis’s ousting from the firm, with Michael D. Yim of Putney Twombly riding shotgun with Pierce Bainbridge, have been well documented.  Conley appears to have been brought in to help finish what Yim failed to accomplish, silencing Lewis or destroying his credibility through lies.  Conley, along with Pierce, Edwards and LaVigne are alleged to have hatched a conspiracy to defame Lewis on a nationwide scale to mute his soon to be filed complaint.

Lewis had provided Pierce Bainbridge a deadline to agree to private mediation.  It appears that in order to buy more time, Conley claimed she misread a one-page letter with the deadline.  Lewis gave her the benefit of the doubt and extended the deadline, but when two days later Pierce Bainbridge still did not agree to the conditions to mediation, Lewis moved forward with the filing of his complaint.

Conley, however, deceived Lewis’s New York counsel by continuing a charade of settlement negotiations in bad faith. Conley – by e-mail – asked Lewis to withdraw his complaint in New York so that the parties could continue negotiations, thanked him – by e-mail – for doing so, yet four hours after it was withdrawn, Pierce Bainbridge filed a complaint in California against Lewis and, most incredibly, alleged that Lewis filed and withdrew his action in New York as “part of a scheme to extort.”

Even worse, three months later, Lewis learned that Pierce Bainbridge and Conley were not only being deceitful to beat Lewis to the court with a sham complaint in California, but on that same day, Pierce Bainbridge was also filing a lawsuit in New York under seal; a filing in which firm partners Denver G. Edwards and Christopher N. LaVigne, according to Lewis, both demonstrably lied in supporting affidavits.

Lewis said:  “The deceit, dishonesty and outright lies over a three-day period – by Christopher N. LaVigne, John M. Pierce, S. Jeanine Conley and Denver Edwards are actually incredible.  Like I said in my complaint, stuff like this does not happen over the course of most lawyers’ careers.”

The White-Collar Partner Exodus

As for the financial misconduct that Pierce Bainbridge sought to cover-up, interestingly, the firm itself has conceded that the financial misconduct alleged by Lewis (which has been validated by recent events): “if true….would amount to criminal activity.” LaVigne, according to Lewis, made a very telling statement months after Lewis was no longer with the firm:

“John hired a bunch of white-collar lawyers; he thinks they’ll help when the Feds come knocking; they will be the first one’s out the door.” ~ Christopher N. LaVigne

Since LaVigne’s purported statement, at least eleven white-collar partners have hit the Pierce Bainbridge escape hatch:

Caroline Polisi (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Deborah Renner (Renner Law, formerly of BakerHostetler)

Eric Creizman (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Franklin Velie (formerly of Sullivan & Worcester)

Jeffrey Alexander (Wachtell Missry, formerly Kasowitz Benson)

Jonathan Kortmansky (BraunHagey & Borden LLP, formerly of Sullivan & Worcester)

Joan Meyer (Thompson Hine, formerly of Baker McKenzie)

Melissa Madrigal (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Michael Winograd (Brown Rudnick, formerly of Ropes & Gray)

Susan Winkler (Winkler Law, United States Attorney’s Office, Winkler Law)

Thomas Frongillo (formerly Fish and Richardson)

We are reminded of an attorney who warned Pierce in Fall 2018:  “Trying to do what you are doing – build a major NYC firm overnight is hugely risky. . . The last person who tried it in NY was Mark Dreier.  He ended up in jail.”

Brazen Lies and Brazen Deceit

Christopher N. LaVigne

Notwithstanding LaVigne’s blistering written criticism of firm founder John Mark Pierce as a “lunatic,” “bully,” and “snake,” who “loses track of his lies,” “talks out of every side of his mouth,” and is “probably deep into the sauce [alcohol] and coke [cocaine],” LaVigne, according to Lewis, “lied under oath” to protect Pierce.

In court filings, Pierce Bainbridge claimed Lewis – who has played ice hockey socially with LaVigne for over ten years – never played with LaVigne from November (when he was ousted) until April (when LaVigne claims Lewis extorted him during a conversation after a game).   The clear objective was to create a (false) narrative of Lewis going out of his way in order to allegedly “extort,” LaVigne.  Hard evidence supports that Pierce Bainbridge and LaVigne were untruthful in court filings.

Below are photos from a February 13, 2019 championship game at Chelsea Piers Sky Rink Arena; LaVigne and Lewis are identified in the first, in the second they are side-by-side in the middle. In addition, a screenshot from a March 6, 2019 exchange between the two about another game is below.  “OMW” means “on my way.”

Both February 13, 2019 and March 6, 2019, fall between November 2018 and April 2019.

Denver G. Edwards

Denver G. Edwards is on the Board of Trustees at Middlebury College.  He has previously worked as a partner at Bryant Rabbino LLP and Bressler, Amery & Ross LLP.   Edwards claimed in court filings and a sworn affidavit that Lewis blew confidentiality by publicly naming the firm’s litigation funder Pravati Capital LLC.  To the contrary, the relationship was already the subject of media coverage, a press release from Pravati (the firm’s original name was Pierce Sergenian) and, even worse, publicly filed UCC lending documents in Denver Edwards’s own name, disclosed the relationship.  (Below is an image from a March 8, 2019 UCC  filing.)

The Conley “Withdrawal Stunt”

The third musketeer, Conley, is, according to Lewis: “as deceitful as the others.”  The “Withdrawal Stunt” covered earlier, is detailed below.

Lewis Withdraws the Complaint at Conley’s Request, She Thanks Him

May 15, 11:40 a.m. – Lewis filed his complaint in New York.

May 15, 12:12 p.m. – Conley e-mailed Lewis’s counsel to request that he withdraw the complaint stating: “[PB] could get to Lewis’ number if you provide more time.”

May 15, 2:12 p.m. – Lewis’s counsel withdrew the complaint, Conley wrote to thank him and ask for a copy of the withdrawn complaint with the filing-stamp affixed.

May 15, 6:12 p.m. – Pierce Bainbridge filed a complaint in Los Angeles against Lewis which was never mentioned during the Conley-led negotiations.  The complaint included the filed-stamped copy of the withdrawn complaint Conley requested.

Pierce Bainbridge Says Lewis Withdrew as “Scheme to Extort”

Incredibly, Pierce Bainbridge then alleged in LA: “[Lewis] deleted the filing as a tactic, furthering his scheme to extort [PB].” Seeing what had happened, Lewis’s counsel immediately took Conley to task:

Conley avoided these pointed questions,  Pierce Bainbridge then labeled Lewis an “extortionist” and “terrorist,” S. Jeanine Conley failed and, eleven months later, continues to fail to come forward with the truth.

Know When to Hold ‘Em, Know When to Fold ‘Em

For months, Pierce Bainbridge has been on a downward spiral towards full implosion.  Thirty-five lawyers have jumped the sinking ship.  Pierce was finally stripped of his Managing Partner title after his alleged Ponzi-Like financial foul play, which Lewis reported to the partnership well over a year ago.  Now Pierce Bainbridge’s own attorney, Marc Mukasey, citing ethical concerns, has asked to withdraw as outside counsel.  Attorneys who were or are with Pierce Bainbridge have apparently broken the wall of silence, as Lewis recently reported to the court, and reportedly have divulged information concerning Pierce Bainbridge manufacturing and destroying material evidence, and engaging in fraud on the court.

With respect to his former partners, who largely only started leaving when the firm was already in meltdown mode, Lewis says, “they are like rats fleeing a sinking ship; each of them turned a blind eye to issues I pointed out in written communications over a year ago; they did not care; their greed outweighed their integrity.”  Lewis continued:  “It is crystal clear to any reasonable person what has happened here, yet none of my former partners has ever reached out to apologize or attempt to make this right; they remained concerned with themselves only, fueled by selfishness and greed.”

The reports of substance abuse, the lies, the illicit financial dealings, the misogyny, Mukasey filing to withdraw, thirty-five lawyers quitting Team Pierce: none of this, however, has deterred Conley, LaVigne and Edwards.   They remain committed to John Pierce and the firm, like the musicians on the Titanic.   Beloved country western singer Kenny Rogers recently passed, but his lyrics in “The Gambler” are timeless words of wisdom; perhaps it’s time for the “Three Pierce Musketeers” to pay them heed.

The post Pierce Bainbridge and Littler Mendelson: Two Law Firms in the Same Deceitful Pod? appeared first on Legal Desire.

Pierce Bainbridge and Littler Mendelson: Two Law Firms in the Same Deceitful Pod? published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[hencoplumbingservices]

Tide rising for Vigor in Vancouver

Find out how to get the best plumber in Vancouver Washington

As economic development director for the city of Vancouver, Chad Eiken knows that opportunities don’t happen often like the one that walked through the door in late November.

“Dropped in our lap,” Eiken said.

At that time, two representatives for Vigor, the Portland-based shipping and metal fabrication company, met with Eiken and City Manager Eric Holmes.

Here’s the deal, the Vigor representatives said. They had a contract for about $1 billion with the U.S. Army to build a next-generation landing craft and several other marine projects. They envisioned the manufacturing facility would employ about 130 workers to start and likely ramp to 400 after three years or so. These would be family-wage jobs, both union and nonunion.

Could the city help?

“It happened so fast there weren’t a lot of things we had to coordinate on,” Eiken recalled last week. “Their angle was mainly focusing on the workforce — how to connect (Vigor) with workforce training.”

Eiken and Holmes would meet face-to-face with the Vigor officials on only one other occasion — Jan. 22, when the city officials were told they were the winners of a contest they really hadn’t known they’d entered. Portland and Seattle had tied for second place. Don’t tell anybody, one of the Vigor officials said, because the company would first need to tell several employees who would be affected by the Vancouver choice.

On Friday morning, Feb. 1, Vigor announced it had entered an agreement to take over the former home of Christensen Yachts at 4400 S.E. Columbia Way in the Columbia Business Park.

The cavernous structure once was the factory for multimillion dollar yachts. Now it will become a Vigor manufacturing facility that figures to revive the Vancouver waterfront’s shipbuilding heritage.

Later this year, Vigor will begin working on a prototype of the U.S. Army’s landing craft called Maneuver Support Vessel (Light) or MSV(L). The nearly $1 billion MSV(L), 10-year contract represents the largest award in Vigor’s history. The craft will be among an array of all-aluminum watercraft built at the facility, which is expected to undergo millions of dollars in capital upgrades and equipment this summer.

The MSL(V) replaces the Landing Craft Mechanized 8, a 74-foot boat with a top speed of 9 knots that entered service in the late 1950s, Defense News reported when the contract was awarded to Vigor in September 2017.

“The MSL(V) will be 100 feet and can haul one M1A2 Abrams tank, two Stryker armored vehicles with slat armor or four joint light tactical vehicles with trailers,” Defense News reported. “It will have a top speed of 18 knots, 15 knots fully loaded, and a range of about 350 miles.”

Vigor beat four competitors for the huge contract. It was one of the latest victories for the privately held company.

Vigor has grown into a company with an estimated $700 million in annual sales — about 60 percent from ship repair — through securing major contracts like the one announced recently and also through acquisitions. Those acquisitions affected Vancouver.

In May 2014, Vigor and Oregon Iron Works announced they were forming a combined company that will employ about 2,300 workers in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon Iron Works became a subsidiary of Vigor, which does business in Oregon as Vigor Industrial LLC and as Vigor Shipyards Inc. in Washington.

The companies said in a statement at the time that merging Clackamas, Ore.-based Oregon Iron Works’ fabrication abilities with Vigor’s shipbuilding and marine-launch capabilities would allow them to complete large-scale projects that neither company could do alone, the Associated Press reported.

Oregon Iron Works’ facilities included a manufacturing plant at the site of the former Kaiser Vancouver shipyard, 3515 S.E. Columbia Way.

The 11.5-acre facility next to the Columbia River — less than a half mile west of the Christensen property — has about 115 employees.

Vancouver, like its Clackamas counterpart, specializes in heavy, complex manufacturing, said Jill Mackie, Vigor senior vice president for public affairs.

That sort of work includes gates for locks and dams and components for commercial nuclear power plants, Mackie said.

Vigor Vancouver constructed the deck for the Wittpenn Bridge linking Kearny and Jersey City, N.J. The Vancouver plant also participates in defense-related projects.

Vancouver is one of seven Vigor sites. The others are Portland; Clackamas, Ore.; Seattle; Ballard; Port Angeles; and Ketchikan, Alaska. The company’s three primary shipyards are at Swan Island in Portland, Harbor Island in Seattle and Ketchikan.

Vigor’s Ballard site will be closing with the advent of the Vancouver facility at the former Christensen Shipyard. Kvichak Marine Industries, as it was called before merging with Vigor, laid the groundwork for winning the Army landing craft contract. Its 60 employees have been offered the opportunity to follow their aluminum-specialty jobs to Vancouver. Another 70 jobs will be transferred to Vancouver from Clackamas, Ore.

Vigor acquired Todd Shipyards Inc. in a $130 million purchase in 2011. The entity is known as the Seattle Harbor Island Shipyard.

Vigor facilities have a 2,300-person workforce that is a mix of union and nonunion laborers. It is an arrangement that has not always gone smoothly.

In 2012, the Teamsters Union, on behalf of locals 117 and 174, filed a lawsuit in federal court in Seattle, accusing Vigor of labor practice violations affecting 25 of its members at the former Todd Shipyards. The suit was filed a year after the purchase.

Mackie, noting the alleged actions were not proven and the case was resolved years ago, said in an email, “Vigor has worked hard to develop our current partnership with the unions that represent some Vigor subsidiary employees, and we believe that partnership is strong.”

The aluminum fabrication plant at Vancouver, she added, “will bring together groups of current employees — some of which are represented and some of which are not. We have no doubt that the teams will work together successfully.”

This may or may not have something to do with an operating philosophy of Vigor CEO Frank Foti.

Foti, who’s the majority owner having purchased Vigor in 1995, is not bashful about touting the company’s four corporate values, which he has acknowledged may not square with an industry closely associated with heavy metal, hard hats and blazing hot welding torches.

The values: truth, responsibility, evolution and love.

“There’s nothing unique about our four values,” Foti said in an interview last year with Oregon Business magazine, “except that we try to make them unifying principles that can have foundational values that can stand the test of a rapidly changing world.”

Foti, in an interview last week, said Seattle and Portland were the leading contenders for the aluminum boat manufacturing plant. While both sites had drawbacks, he said the Vancouver site rose to the top more on its merits than the shortcomings of the other two.

“Vancouver is optimal because we move everything into a purpose-built facility,” he said, referring to Christensen’s boat heritage. ” All of our employees are excited about the potential move.”

[Read More …]

Find out how to get the best Vancouver Washington plumber

[caveartfair]

Hidden “Void” Discovered in Egypt’s Great Pyramid—and the 9 Other Biggest News Stories This Week

01  A team of researchers and scientists have discovered a “void” in Egypt’s Great Pyramid of Giza with the help of particle physics.

(via Wired & National Geographic)

In an article published in the journal Nature on Thursday, an international team of researchers detailed their discovery of a previously unknown giant “void” above the Grand Gallery of the 4,500 year-old, 50-story pyramid. With the permission of Egypt’s Ministry of Antiquities, a group of scientists entered the Great Pyramid in December 2015 and left several bathroom tile-sized panels containing special photographic film on the floor of the queen’s chamber, an area usually closed to the public. They left the panels, made with nuclear emulsion film, there for more than three months to capture images they could later use to discover new passageways in the pyramid. The film works by recording pictures of tiny particles called muons (like electrons but heavier). The process has previously been used to observe the magma of volcanoes and the inside of Belize’s Mayan pyramids. Physicist Jacques Marteau told Wired that “it’s the same principle as X-rays,” only stronger. Overall, the team of researchers employed three independent measures to verify the 153-foot-long, 26-foot-tall space, which they’ve decided to call a “void” rather than a chamber, as its purpose remains unknown. The team will likely work with specialists on ancient Egyptian architecture as it aims to uncover the void’s ancient uses.

02  Hundreds of works from the famed trove of Nazi art dealer Hildebrand Gurlitt went on view this week at a pair of exhibitions in Germany and Switzerland.

(via the New York Times)

The roughly 450 pieces, by artists including Claude Monet and Paul Cézanne, that are on view as part of the dual-venue exhibition “Gurlitt Status Report” are only a fraction of the 1,500 pieces found during a 2012 police raid of the Munich apartment of Cornelius Gurlitt, Hildebrand’s son. A subsequent raid unearthed more works in his Salzburg home. The initial seizure only became public about a year later, and led to early speculation that the collection held $1 billion worth of art, estimates that have since proven wrong. The exhibitions at the Kunstmuseum Bern in Bern and Bonn’s Bundeskunsthalle are the first opportunity for the public to see some of the pieces Cornelius hoarded away in his apartment after the death of his father. Cornelius, who died shortly after the discovery of his work, bequeathed the collection to the Kunstmuseum Bern, but a legal challenge to the will by a distant cousin delayed exhibition. An ongoing investigation into the provenance of the works has so far confirmed that six pieces were looted by Nazis, though many of the works on view are of dubious provenance as well. Though Gurlitt bequeathed his entire collection to the Kunstmuseum Bern, the institution has only accepted works for which the provenance has been firmly cleared.

03  Linda Nochlin, a pioneering scholar who famously shepherded feminist theory into the art-historical canon, died Sunday at the age of 86.

(Artsy)

She is best known for her essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists?,” a searing takedown of gender inequality in the art establishment. First published by ARTnews in 1971, it shook the deep-seated patriarchal underpinnings of the art world by asserting: “The fault lies not in our stars, our hormones, our menstrual cycles, or our empty internal spaces, but in our institutions and our education.” Other groundbreaking writing followed. Woman as Sex Object: Studies in Erotic Art, 1730–1970 (1973) and Women, Art and Power (1988), for instance, combined Nochlin’s incisive intelligence with her passion for communicating art’s cultural influence. Beyond her wide-ranging scholarly achievements, Nochlin is also remembered for her intellectual generosity and consistent support of aspiring art historians over her many years teaching at Vassar College. “She was brilliant, of course,” art writer and former Nochlin student Aruna D’Souza of the trailblazing historian’s far-reaching impact told Artsy. “But she was also kind and empathetic, she was funny and sharp, and most of all she treated everyone as if they had the potential to change the way she, and the field, thought about art. How empowering that was, and how refreshing, too, her determination not to reproduce herself—to support work that challenged her own views, that took unusual paths and awoke new curiosities.”

04  Thousands signed a letter denouncing sexual harassment in the art world, and Artforum contributing editors publicly criticized their publishers, as fallout from the Knight Landesman scandal continues.

(via The Guardian, Artforum, and Artsy)

Over 150 artists, gallerists, and curators, among others in the art world, penned an open letter last week addressing discrimination and harassment against women in the art industry and distributed it through social media channels with the hashtag #notsurprised. “We have been silenced, ostracised, pathologised, dismissed as ‘overreacting’, and threatened when we have tried to expose sexually and emotionally abusive behaviour. We will be silenced no longer,” it reads. Though the letter was seemingly prompted by sexual harassment allegations against Landesman, who resigned as a co-publisher of Artforum last week, it said, “the resignation of one publisher from one high-profile magazine does not solve the larger, more insidious problem: an art world that upholds inherited power structures at the cost of ethical behaviour.” Around 2,000 people signed the letter before it was released to the public. In a separate message posted to Artforum’s website Wednesday, several of its contributing editors—including Hans Ulrich Obrist and Anne M. Wagner—said they “stand with the magazine’s current and former staff in condemning the publishers’ handling of the allegation of Knight Landesman’s sexual misconduct—as reflected in their original statement.” The letter also expressed “full support” for David Velasco, who assumed the role of editor-in-chief after his predecessor, Michelle Kuo, tendered her resignation from the role on October 18th. “We expect the magazine’s publishers both to assume responsibility and to take all action necessary,” the letter stated. Following the publication of the contributors’ letter, Artforum’s publishers reached out to each of them individually to tell them the publication’s original statement from October 24th, which called the complaint “unfounded,” was made in response to the legal suit and was “in no way intended as a defense of Knight Landesman or any of his actions.” They added, “as publishers, we assume complete responsibility for the statement, despite the profound regret we feel for the making of it.”

05  Cyber criminals are stealing “large sums” from galleries, dealers, artists, and collectors by impersonating them in email correspondence.

(via The Art Newspaper)

The theft involves “straightforward email deception,” in the words of The Art Newspaper. Thieves hack into the email accounts of art dealers and collectors, monitoring their correspondence. When a legitimate sale has occurred and an invoice is sent to a purchaser for payment, the thieves send a follow-up email to the buyer from the seller’s account claiming that the details of the legitimate invoice were incorrect. The buyer is then told to wire funds to a different bank account belonging to the criminals, who then move the money, so that both buyer and seller are unable to recover funds after the deception is discovered. London dealer Laura Bartlett only realized she’d fallen victim to the scam after she called a U.S. client after not receiving payment for a sale. The collector had wired funds to the account of the scammers, who then used the client’s account to send Bartlett a series of emails promising payment and stalling her inquiries. “This particular sale was going to pay a lot of bills,” said Bartlett, who shuttered her gallery shortly after the fraud. Other times, the fraudsters send a gallery or art fair accountant an invoice from the email account of an internal source asking for funds to pay for a fictitious service. Global gallery Hauser & Wirth and Tony Karman, president of EXPO Chicago, were both targeted, but detected the fraud and avoided any loss of funds. The thefts and attempted thefts have raised awareness about the need for cybersecurity across the art industry, which is not known for being on the cutting edge of technology.

06  A judge in a Massachusetts court heard arguments on whether to grant an injunction against the proposed sale of works from the Berkshire Museum’s collection.

(via ARTnews)

The roughly two-hour hearing at Berkshire County Superior Court on Wednesday grew contentious as lawyers for each side debated whether the board of the museum had breached its fiduciary duties and been honest and transparent with its members. They also debated whether the plaintiffs, who include museum members and the sons of Norman Rockwell, whose donated works are due to be sold for tens of millions of dollars on November 13th, had legal standing to pursue the museum in court. The office of Massachusetts Attorney General Courtney Aladro filed a motion Wednesday to join the suit as a plaintiff in case others were found to lack standing. Judge John A. Agostini said in closing “that he would rule as soon as possible, and thanked the crowd for its attention,” ARTnews reported. Agostini had noted at the opening of the hearing that the courtroom typically didn’t see such crowds “except for a few large murder cases.”  

07  Sotheby’s CEO Tad Smith reported a third-quarter loss of $23.5 million—slightly better than expected—during the company’s earnings call Friday.

(via ARTnews)

The auction house’s total revenue over that period was $171 million, beating projections by roughly $60 million. The $23.5 million overall loss amounted to a $0.45 net loss per share, above an anticipated $0.67 per share decline (the third quarter is typically the slowest for the New York auction house). Some of the better-than-expected results can be chalked up to $7.4 million that Sotheby’s set aside in 2013 for a potential tax liability. When the statute of limitations on that liability expired, Sotheby’s was able to count that money as income, boosting third-quarter bottom line. “Such an action provided a one-time discrete cash infusion that, while relatively insignificant, made a ripple in this most uneventful of quarters, and was responsible for a $0.14 per share benefit,” reported ARTnews. Smith also cited sales in Hong Kong, the scheduling of which meant they were included as part of the company’s third-quarter this year, for the uptick. Total sales for the auction house nine months into the year are up 13%, according to Smith.

08  Police seized a $1.2 million ancient bas-relief from a dealer at The European Fine Art Fair.

(via the New York Times)

Last Friday afternoon, prosecutors and police officers entered the Park Avenue Armory, the New York home of The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), with “with stern expressions and a search warrant,” reported the Times. They left after seizing an ancient limestone relief depicting a Persian soldier from the booth of London-based antiquity dealer Rupert Wace. While police did not provide details around the evidence underpinning the warrant, some experts suspect that the work—which was unearthed during a 1933 excavation of the ancient region of Persepolis, in modern-day Iran—left the country after the Persian government passed a law in 1930 prohibiting the export of antiquities. An Iranian cultural official told the Tehran Times that the relief had been stolen, and “legal follow-ups are underway to first prove that the relic belongs to Iran and finally repatriate it.” But Wace maintains he purchased it legally, telling the New York Times that “this work of art has been well known to scholars and has a history that spans almost 70 years.” He said an art collector donated the bas-relief to the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts in the 1950s, where it hung until it was stolen in 2011. Authorities recovered the work in 2014, but the museum kept the insurance money it received and left the work to AXA, the insurance company that Wace said sold him the object. As of Friday, the Manhattan district attorney had yet to make any arrests in connection with the seizure.

09  Artist Sean Scully’s former assistant has been arrested for allegedly stealing a triptych and later offering it at auction.

(via Hyperallergic and the New York Post)

Brooklyn-based artist Arturo Rucci purportedly stole a small three-panel painting from Scully’s Chelsea studio in 2011 before consigning it to Bonhams Auction House. Scully contacted the NYPD when the auction house called to confirm the authenticity of his 1985 work (valued between $400,000 and $600,000) and he realized it was missing. The 50-year-old Rucci has seen modest success as an artist himself since leaving Scully’s employ, exhibiting in various New York galleries and selling work for sums hovering just below $2,000. Pieces by Scully, a famed Irish artist, on the other hand, have appeared at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, Chicago’s Art Institute, and London’s Tate Modern, among other institutions. They generally sell for upwards of $1 million. Police arrested Rucci on Thursday, charging him with “criminal possession of stolen property,” according to the New York Post

10  London architecture firm dRMM won the Royal Institute of British Architects Stirling Prize for its rehab of a disused pier in Hastings, England.

(via dezeen)

The winning plan transformed the 1872 pier into a wide-open deck with a visitor’s center clad in reclaimed wood. The large, unadorned deck allows flexibility in how it is used, departing from the typical pier plan that has a lot of commercial spaces, such as restaurants or cafes. The design also has “a grand external staircase that doubles as a performance space,” according to dezeen. The annual RIBA Stirling Prize goes to a project “judged to have made the biggest contribution to British architecture in the past year,” dezeen reported. The judges said dRMM’s pier project had “evolved the idea of what architecture is and what architects should do.” Shortlisted twice before, dRMM’s final victory this year follows last year’s selection of Caruso St John Architects for designing Newport Street Gallery in south London.

from Artsy News

[marymosley]

Pierce Bainbridge and Littler Mendelson: Two Law Firms in the Same Deceitful Pod?

Christopher N. LaVigne (Pierce Bainbridge), S. Jeanine Conley (Littler Mendelson) and Denver G. Edwards (Pierce Bainbridge) have been accused of dishonesty and deceit in the lawsuits filed by Don Lewis, an ex-partner at Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP.  Littler served as outside counsel for the firm, until compelled to withdraw when Conley and the firm became defendants themselves.  Lewis claims he blew the whistle on illicit financial activity, and, in response, Pierce Bainbridge, a slew of its partners, along with the firm of Putney Twombly Hall & Hirson LLP (Michael D. Yim) weaponized the #MeToo movement to demonize and discredit him. According to Lewis, Conley and Littler were hired by Pierce Bainbridge to finish the job against him, and in doing so employed deceitful litigation tactics more typical of their client.

The impact of the lawsuits, and related revelations of a bevy of ugly realities about firm founder John Mark Pierce, certain of  his partners, as well as firm operations, has turned the Pierce Bainbridge carousel into a “not-so-merry” ride; thirty-five attorneys have quit in the last several months. Be that as it may, the firm apparently continues to represent a high-profile clientele: Rudy Giuliani, Michael Avenatti, Lenny Dykstra (two of them convicted felons; the third with potential criminal headaches of his own), Tulsi Gabbard, as well as one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world Kraken, Inc. d/b/a Payward.

The conduct of Conley is particularly odd, however.  Through events at the Federal Bar Association, the NYC Society For Human Resource Management, and the Metropolitan Black Bar Association, Conley has advocated for the “elimination of bias,” “lawful investigations in the Wake of #MeToo,” and “interrupting racism and inequality within the profession.”  Lewis says:  “S. Jeanine Conley has supported the deeply depraved and misogynistic John Pierce, race-based discrimination led by Pierce and a sham #MeToo investigation conducted by Michael D. Yim of Putney Twombly who flatly stated I was not entitled to ‘due process.’ Conley’s conduct, particularly given who she publicly holds herself out to be, was shocking to me.”

It appears, that Conley “bet on the wrong horse.”

Deceitful Litigation:  “The Norm, not the Exception at Pierce Bainbridge”

Boasting About Violating the Ethical Rules

Lewis provided the quote above, but there seems to be a good deal of history lending support.  It apparently starts right at the top.  As a glaring example, the recently departed long-time Managing Partner of the Pierce Bainbridge New York Office, David L. Hecht, foolishly boasted publicly about violating the ethical Rules of Professional Conduct.  It was not just a garden variety violation; Hecht was found to have violated Rule 8.4, which the federal court noted:  “prohibits conduct involving dishonesty and misrepresentation;” the opinion invoked the words “trickery” and “deceit.” Hecht apparently took pride in the decision, because the court stopped short of disqualifying the firm.  Indicative of the Pierce Bainbridge culture, other so-called leaders “liked” the post:  Firm Managing Partner John Mark Pierce and Los Angeles Managing Partner Amman Khan.

$27,500,000 Malpractice Claim and Accusation of  Intentionally “Bungling” a Client’s Case

Khan’s reaction to Hecht’s post is arguably unsurprising; he is no stranger to controversy concerning his litigation practice.  A Law360 report indicates that while a partner at Glaser Weil, Khan was a defendant in a $27.5 million malpractice suit.  Khan was accused of “intentionally bungling a legal action,” “breaching his fiduciary duties to his client,” and forming a “plan, scheme and conspiracy,” to foul up the litigation.  The case dragged on for almost three years, before an apparent resolution was reached.

New Managing Partner Tom Warren:  Sanctions and Violation of Ethical Rules

Thomas David Warren was chosen to succeed John Mark Pierce as Pierce Bainbridge Managing Partner, and it appears the firm intends to not skip a beat on its unethical litigation conduct. Warren, who has had his own recent ethical issues with courts, is named as a defendant in a proposed amended defamation complaint Lewis filed in October 2019.

******************

Additional new current and former partner defendants in Lewis’s proposed complaint are Brian Slater (formerly of Kramer Levin), ex-partner Conor McDonough (formerly of Paul Weiss) Christopher N. LaVigne (formerly of Success Academy Charter Schools), ex-partner David L. Hecht (Hecht Partners), Gregory Sephton (formerly of Kramer Levin), Jeff Alexander (Wachtell Missry), Jonathan Kortmansky (BraughnHagey & Borden), Michael Pomerantz (formerly of Grais & Ellsworth), Susan Winkler (Winkler Law LLC) and Ted Folkman (Folkman LLC). The nature of the claim is a conspiracy to defame. 

Lewis say four new defendants: “conspired with Pierce in one of the most heinous defamatory lies one could make about a person; it is disgusting; Kortmansky, Warren, Pomerantz and Hecht all endorsed and promoted the most depraved of Pierce’s misconduct, as well as his outright public lies about the firm’s relationship with litigation funder Pravati and litigation funders generally, as well as Pierce’s baseless public attack on Bloomberg Big Business Law reporter Meghan Tribe.” Warren and Hecht are pictured above.  Pomerantz (right) and Kortmansky (left) are pictured below)

*****************

In September 2018, while Warren was a partner at BakerHostetler, his client was hit with a motion for sanctions by Dostart Hannink & Coveney LLP.  The sanctions request accused Warren and his client of “scurrilous accusations,” engaging in “totally improper” conduct, and deploying a “motion-by-ambush tactic.”  The court granted monetary sanctions against Warren’s client for over $20,000.

Warren joined Pierce Bainbridge three months later, and it did not take him long to get back to unethical work.  Just months after Hecht’s fiasco, Warren – while representing convicted felon Lenny Dykstra – was found by Los Angeles State court judge to have violated the ethical Rules of Professional Conduct, with the judge noting that such issues are “simply the purview of the State Bar . . .”

Yet Another Sanctions Motion

Incredibly, shortly after Warren took the Iron Throne for House Bainbridge in late February; the ethical problems for the firm seamlessly continued.  On March 5, 2020, in a case where Pierce, Jim Bainbridge, ex-counsel Matt Rand (formerly of McKool Smith) and Michael Eggenberger appear on the signature block, Pierce Bainbridge was on the receiving end of sanctions motion to “avoid further fraud upon the court.”

Fraud on the Court and Destruction of Evidence

The “fraud on the court” motion dovetails well with recent events in the Lewis lawsuits.  As Legal Desire previously reported, Marc Mukasey, of Mukasey, Frenchman & Sklaroff LLP recently filed to withdraw as counsel for Pierce Bainbridge citing ethical concerns with continued representation.  In response, Lewis’ counsel filed an affidavit which states:  “we have strong reason to believe — based on information provided to us by former and current employees and partners of PB — that PB . . . has corrupted these proceedings”; and continues: “we have been led to believe . . .that the PB Defendants have destroyed pertinent and material evidence; have manufactured false ‘evidence’. . . and mislead the Court as to when they were aware of the arbitration provisions that were part of the recent motions before the Court.”

The pairing of Littler and Pierce Bainbridge was perhaps a match of kindred litigation spirits; Littler has a history of sanctions of its own.  Indeed, it is exceedingly rare that a reputable law firm receives monetary sanctions for “frivolous” court filings and “violations of rules”.  Lewis says: “a quick review reveals that Littler has been a culprit at least four times, and at least twice the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals supported such sanctions.”

John’s Pierce’s Three Musketeers of Dishonesty, Deception and Deceit

The apparently troubling issues surrounding Lewis’s ousting from the firm, with Michael D. Yim of Putney Twombly riding shotgun with Pierce Bainbridge, have been well documented.  Conley appears to have been brought in to help finish what Yim failed to accomplish, silencing Lewis or destroying his credibility through lies.  Conley, along with Pierce, Edwards and LaVigne are alleged to have hatched a conspiracy to defame Lewis on a nationwide scale to mute his soon to be filed complaint.

Lewis had provided Pierce Bainbridge a deadline to agree to private mediation.  It appears that in order to buy more time, Conley claimed she misread a one-page letter with the deadline.  Lewis gave her the benefit of the doubt and extended the deadline, but when two days later Pierce Bainbridge still did not agree to the conditions to mediation, Lewis moved forward with the filing of his complaint.

Conley, however, deceived Lewis’s New York counsel by continuing a charade of settlement negotiations in bad faith. Conley – by e-mail – asked Lewis to withdraw his complaint in New York so that the parties could continue negotiations, thanked him – by e-mail – for doing so, yet four hours after it was withdrawn, Pierce Bainbridge filed a complaint in California against Lewis and, most incredibly, alleged that Lewis filed and withdrew his action in New York as “part of a scheme to extort.”

Even worse, three months later, Lewis learned that Pierce Bainbridge and Conley were not only being deceitful to beat Lewis to the court with a sham complaint in California, but on that same day, Pierce Bainbridge was also filing a lawsuit in New York under seal; a filing in which firm partners Denver G. Edwards and Christopher N. LaVigne, according to Lewis, both demonstrably lied in supporting affidavits.

Lewis said:  “The deceit, dishonesty and outright lies over a three-day period – by Christopher N. LaVigne, John M. Pierce, S. Jeanine Conley and Denver Edwards are actually incredible.  Like I said in my complaint, stuff like this does not happen over the course of most lawyers’ careers.”

The White-Collar Partner Exodus

As for the financial misconduct that Pierce Bainbridge sought to cover-up, interestingly, the firm itself has conceded that the financial misconduct alleged by Lewis (which has been validated by recent events): “if true….would amount to criminal activity.” LaVigne, according to Lewis, made a very telling statement months after Lewis was no longer with the firm:

“John hired a bunch of white-collar lawyers; he thinks they’ll help when the Feds come knocking; they will be the first one’s out the door.” ~ Christopher N. LaVigne

Since LaVigne’s purported statement, at least eleven white-collar partners have hit the Pierce Bainbridge escape hatch:

Caroline Polisi (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Deborah Renner (Renner Law, formerly of BakerHostetler)

Eric Creizman (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Franklin Velie (formerly of Sullivan & Worcester)

Jeffrey Alexander (Wachtell Missry, formerly Kasowitz Benson)

Jonathan Kortmansky (BraunHagey & Borden LLP, formerly of Sullivan & Worcester)

Joan Meyer (Thompson Hine, formerly of Baker McKenzie)

Melissa Madrigal (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Michael Winograd (Brown Rudnick, formerly of Ropes & Gray)

Susan Winkler (Winkler Law, United States Attorney’s Office, Winkler Law)

Thomas Frongillo (formerly Fish and Richardson)

We are reminded of an attorney who warned Pierce in Fall 2018:  “Trying to do what you are doing – build a major NYC firm overnight is hugely risky. . . The last person who tried it in NY was Mark Dreier.  He ended up in jail.”

Brazen Lies and Brazen Deceit

Christopher N. LaVigne

Notwithstanding LaVigne’s blistering written criticism of firm founder John Mark Pierce as a “lunatic,” “bully,” and “snake,” who “loses track of his lies,” “talks out of every side of his mouth,” and is “probably deep into the sauce [alcohol] and coke [cocaine],” LaVigne, according to Lewis, “lied under oath” to protect Pierce.

In court filings, Pierce Bainbridge claimed Lewis – who has played ice hockey socially with LaVigne for over ten years – never played with LaVigne from November (when he was ousted) until April (when LaVigne claims Lewis extorted him during a conversation after a game).   The clear objective was to create a (false) narrative of Lewis going out of his way in order to allegedly “extort,” LaVigne.  Hard evidence supports that Pierce Bainbridge and LaVigne were untruthful in court filings.

Below are photos from a February 13, 2019 championship game at Chelsea Piers Sky Rink Arena; LaVigne and Lewis are identified in the first, in the second they are side-by-side in the middle. In addition, a screenshot from a March 6, 2019 exchange between the two about another game is below.  “OMW” means “on my way.”

Both February 13, 2019 and March 6, 2019, fall between November 2018 and April 2019.

Denver G. Edwards

Denver G. Edwards is on the Board of Trustees at Middlebury College.  He has previously worked as a partner at Bryant Rabbino LLP and Bressler, Amery & Ross LLP.   Edwards claimed in court filings and a sworn affidavit that Lewis blew confidentiality by publicly naming the firm’s litigation funder Pravati Capital LLC.  To the contrary, the relationship was already the subject of media coverage, a press release from Pravati (the firm’s original name was Pierce Sergenian) and, even worse, publicly filed UCC lending documents in Denver Edwards’s own name, disclosed the relationship.  (Below is an image from a March 8, 2019 UCC  filing.)

The Conley “Withdrawal Stunt”

The third musketeer, Conley, is, according to Lewis: “as deceitful as the others.”  The “Withdrawal Stunt” covered earlier, is detailed below.

Lewis Withdraws the Complaint at Conley’s Request, She Thanks Him

May 15, 11:40 a.m. – Lewis filed his complaint in New York.

May 15, 12:12 p.m. – Conley e-mailed Lewis’s counsel to request that he withdraw the complaint stating: “[PB] could get to Lewis’ number if you provide more time.”

May 15, 2:12 p.m. – Lewis’s counsel withdrew the complaint, Conley wrote to thank him and ask for a copy of the withdrawn complaint with the filing-stamp affixed.

May 15, 6:12 p.m. – Pierce Bainbridge filed a complaint in Los Angeles against Lewis which was never mentioned during the Conley-led negotiations.  The complaint included the filed-stamped copy of the withdrawn complaint Conley requested.

Pierce Bainbridge Says Lewis Withdrew as “Scheme to Extort”

Incredibly, Pierce Bainbridge then alleged in LA: “[Lewis] deleted the filing as a tactic, furthering his scheme to extort [PB].” Seeing what had happened, Lewis’s counsel immediately took Conley to task:

Conley avoided these pointed questions,  Pierce Bainbridge then labeled Lewis an “extortionist” and “terrorist,” S. Jeanine Conley failed and, eleven months later, continues to fail to come forward with the truth.

Know When to Hold ‘Em, Know When to Fold ‘Em

For months, Pierce Bainbridge has been on a downward spiral towards full implosion.  Thirty-five lawyers have jumped the sinking ship.  Pierce was finally stripped of his Managing Partner title after his alleged Ponzi-Like financial foul play, which Lewis reported to the partnership well over a year ago.  Now Pierce Bainbridge’s own attorney, Marc Mukasey, citing ethical concerns, has asked to withdraw as outside counsel.  Attorneys who were or are with Pierce Bainbridge have apparently broken the wall of silence, as Lewis recently reported to the court, and reportedly have divulged information concerning Pierce Bainbridge manufacturing and destroying material evidence, and engaging in fraud on the court.

With respect to his former partners, who largely only started leaving when the firm was already in meltdown mode, Lewis says, “they are like rats fleeing a sinking ship; each of them turned a blind eye to issues I pointed out in written communications over a year ago; they did not care; their greed outweighed their integrity.”  Lewis continued:  “It is crystal clear to any reasonable person what has happened here, yet none of my former partners has ever reached out to apologize or attempt to make this right; they remained concerned with themselves only, fueled by selfishness and greed.”

The reports of substance abuse, the lies, the illicit financial dealings, the misogyny, Mukasey filing to withdraw, thirty-five lawyers quitting Team Pierce: none of this, however, has deterred Conley, LaVigne and Edwards.   They remain committed to John Pierce and the firm, like the musicians on the Titanic.   Beloved country western singer Kenny Rogers recently passed, but his lyrics in “The Gambler” are timeless words of wisdom; perhaps it’s time for the “Three Pierce Musketeers” to pay them heed.

The post Pierce Bainbridge and Littler Mendelson: Two Law Firms in the Same Deceitful Pod? appeared first on Legal Desire.

Pierce Bainbridge and Littler Mendelson: Two Law Firms in the Same Deceitful Pod? published first on https://immigrationlawyerto.tumblr.com/

[marymosley]

Pierce Bainbridge and Littler Mendelson: Two Law Firms in the Same Deceitful Pod?

Christopher N. LaVigne (Pierce Bainbridge), S. Jeanine Conley (Littler Mendelson) and Denver G. Edwards (Pierce Bainbridge) have been accused of dishonesty and deceit in the lawsuits filed by Don Lewis, an ex-partner at Pierce Bainbridge Beck Price & Hecht LLP.  Littler served as outside counsel for the firm, until compelled to withdraw when Conley and the firm became defendants themselves.  Lewis claims he blew the whistle on illicit financial activity, and, in response, Pierce Bainbridge, a slew of its partners, along with the firm of Putney Twombly Hall & Hirson LLP (Michael D. Yim) weaponized the #MeToo movement to demonize and discredit him. According to Lewis, Conley and Littler were hired by Pierce Bainbridge to finish the job against him, and in doing so employed deceitful litigation tactics more typical of their client.

The impact of the lawsuits, and related revelations of a bevy of ugly realities about firm founder John Mark Pierce, certain of  his partners, as well as firm operations, has turned the Pierce Bainbridge carousel into a “not-so-merry” ride; thirty-five attorneys have quit in the last several months. Be that as it may, the firm apparently continues to represent a high-profile clientele: Rudy Giuliani, Michael Avenatti, Lenny Dykstra (two of them convicted felons; the third with potential criminal headaches of his own), Tulsi Gabbard, as well as one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world Kraken, Inc. d/b/a Payward.

The conduct of Conley is particularly odd, however.  Through events at the Federal Bar Association, the NYC Society For Human Resource Management, and the Metropolitan Black Bar Association, Conley has advocated for the “elimination of bias,” “lawful investigations in the Wake of #MeToo,” and “interrupting racism and inequality within the profession.”  Lewis says:  “S. Jeanine Conley has supported the deeply depraved and misogynistic John Pierce, race-based discrimination led by Pierce and a sham #MeToo investigation conducted by Michael D. Yim of Putney Twombly who flatly stated I was not entitled to ‘due process.’ Conley’s conduct, particularly given who she publicly holds herself out to be, was shocking to me.”

It appears, that Conley “bet on the wrong horse.”

Deceitful Litigation:  “The Norm, not the Exception at Pierce Bainbridge”

Boasting About Violating the Ethical Rules

Lewis provided the quote above, but there seems to be a good deal of history lending support.  It apparently starts right at the top.  As a glaring example, the recently departed long-time Managing Partner of the Pierce Bainbridge New York Office, David L. Hecht, foolishly boasted publicly about violating the ethical Rules of Professional Conduct.  It was not just a garden variety violation; Hecht was found to have violated Rule 8.4, which the federal court noted:  “prohibits conduct involving dishonesty and misrepresentation;” the opinion invoked the words “trickery” and “deceit.” Hecht apparently took pride in the decision, because the court stopped short of disqualifying the firm.  Indicative of the Pierce Bainbridge culture, other so-called leaders “liked” the post:  Firm Managing Partner John Mark Pierce and Los Angeles Managing Partner Amman Khan.

$27,500,000 Malpractice Claim and Accusation of  Intentionally “Bungling” a Client’s Case

Khan’s reaction to Hecht’s post is arguably unsurprising; he is no stranger to controversy concerning his litigation practice.  A Law360 report indicates that while a partner at Glaser Weil, Khan was a defendant in a $27.5 million malpractice suit.  Khan was accused of “intentionally bungling a legal action,” “breaching his fiduciary duties to his client,” and forming a “plan, scheme and conspiracy,” to foul up the litigation.  The case dragged on for almost three years, before an apparent resolution was reached.

New Managing Partner Tom Warren:  Sanctions and Violation of Ethical Rules

Thomas David Warren was chosen to succeed John Mark Pierce as Pierce Bainbridge Managing Partner, and it appears the firm intends to not skip a beat on its unethical litigation conduct. Warren, who has had his own recent ethical issues with courts, is named as a defendant in a proposed amended defamation complaint Lewis filed in October 2019.

******************

Additional new current and former partner defendants in Lewis’s proposed complaint are Brian Slater (formerly of Kramer Levin), ex-partner Conor McDonough (formerly of Paul Weiss) Christopher N. LaVigne (formerly of Success Academy Charter Schools), ex-partner David L. Hecht (Hecht Partners), Gregory Sephton (formerly of Kramer Levin), Jeff Alexander (Wachtell Missry), Jonathan Kortmansky (BraughnHagey & Borden), Michael Pomerantz (formerly of Grais & Ellsworth), Susan Winkler (Winkler Law LLC) and Ted Folkman (Folkman LLC). The nature of the claim is a conspiracy to defame. 

Pictured below are the four new defendants who Lewis says: “conspired with Pierce in one of the most heinous defamatory lies one could make about a person; it is disgusting; Kortmansky, Warren, Pomerantz and Hecht all endorsed and promoted the most depraved of Pierce’s misconduct, as well as his outright public lies about the firm’s relationship with litigation funder Pravati and litigation funders generally, as well as Pierce’s baseless public attack on Bloomberg Big Business Law reporter Meghan Tribe.”)

*****************

In September 2018, while Warren was a partner at BakerHostetler, his client was hit with a motion for sanctions by Dostart Hannink & Coveney LLP.  The sanctions request accused Warren and his client of “scurrilous accusations,” engaging in “totally improper” conduct, and deploying a “motion-by-ambush tactic.”  The court granted monetary sanctions against Warren’s client for over $20,000.

Warren joined Pierce Bainbridge three months later, and it did not take him long to get back to unethical work.  Just months after Hecht’s fiasco, Warren – while representing convicted felon Lenny Dykstra – was found by Los Angeles State court judge to have violated the ethical Rules of Professional Conduct, with the judge noting that such issues are “simply the purview of the State Bar . . .”

Yet Another Sanctions Motion

Incredibly, shortly after Warren took the Iron Throne for House Bainbridge in late February; the ethical problems for the firm seamlessly continued.  On March 5, 2020, in a case where Pierce, Jim Bainbridge, ex-counsel Matt Rand (formerly of McKool Smith) and Michael Eggenberger appear on the signature block, Pierce Bainbridge was on the receiving end of sanctions motion to “avoid further fraud upon the court.”

Fraud on the Court and Destruction of Evidence

The “fraud on the court” motion dovetails well with recent events in the Lewis lawsuits.  As Legal Desire previously reported, Marc Mukasey, of Mukasey, Frenchman & Sklaroff LLP recently filed to withdraw as counsel for Pierce Bainbridge citing ethical concerns with continued representation.  In response, Lewis’ counsel filed an affidavit which states:  “we have strong reason to believe — based on information provided to us by former and current employees and partners of PB — that PB . . . has corrupted these proceedings”; and continues: “we have been led to believe . . .that the PB Defendants have destroyed pertinent and material evidence; have manufactured false ‘evidence’. . . and mislead the Court as to when they were aware of the arbitration provisions that were part of the recent motions before the Court.”

The pairing of Littler and Pierce Bainbridge was perhaps a match of kindred litigation spirits; Littler has a history of sanctions of its own.  Indeed, it is exceedingly rare that a reputable law firm receives monetary sanctions for “frivolous” court filings and “violations of rules”.  Lewis says: “a quick review reveals that Littler has been a culprit at least four times, and at least twice the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals supported such sanctions.”

John’s Pierce’s Three Musketeers of Dishonesty, Deception and Deceit

The apparently troubling issues surrounding Lewis’s ousting from the firm, with Michael D. Yim of Putney Twombly riding shotgun with Pierce Bainbridge, have been well documented.  Conley appears to have been brought in to help finish what Yim failed to accomplish, silencing Lewis or destroying his credibility through lies.  Conley, along with Pierce, Edwards and LaVigne are alleged to have hatched a conspiracy to defame Lewis on a nationwide scale to mute his soon to be filed complaint.

Lewis had provided Pierce Bainbridge a deadline to agree to private mediation.  It appears that in order to buy more time, Conley claimed she misread a one-page letter with the deadline.  Lewis gave her the benefit of the doubt and extended the deadline, but when two days later Pierce Bainbridge still did not agree to the conditions to mediation, Lewis moved forward with the filing of his complaint.

Conley, however, deceived Lewis’s New York counsel by continuing a charade of settlement negotiations in bad faith. Conley – by e-mail – asked Lewis to withdraw his complaint in New York so that the parties could continue negotiations, thanked him – by e-mail – for doing so, yet four hours after it was withdrawn, Pierce Bainbridge filed a complaint in California against Lewis and, most incredibly, alleged that Lewis filed and withdrew his action in New York as “part of a scheme to extort.”

Even worse, three months later, Lewis learned that Pierce Bainbridge and Conley were not only being deceitful to beat Lewis to the court with a sham complaint in California, but on that same day, Pierce Bainbridge was also filing a lawsuit in New York under seal; a filing in which firm partners Denver G. Edwards and Christopher N. LaVigne, according to Lewis, both demonstrably lied in supporting affidavits.

Lewis said:  “The deceit, dishonesty and outright lies over a three-day period – by Christopher N. LaVigne, John M. Pierce, S. Jeanine Conley and Denver Edwards are actually incredible.  Like I said in my complaint, stuff like this does not happen over the course of most lawyers’ careers.”

The White-Collar Partner Exodus

As for the financial misconduct that Pierce Bainbridge sought to cover-up, interestingly, the firm itself has conceded that the financial misconduct alleged by Lewis (which has been validated by recent events): “if true….would amount to criminal activity.” LaVigne, according to Lewis, made a very telling statement months after Lewis was no longer with the firm:

“John hired a bunch of white-collar lawyers; he thinks they’ll help when the Feds come knocking; they will be the first one’s out the door.” ~ Christopher N. LaVigne

Since LaVigne’s purported statement, at least eleven white-collar partners have hit the Pierce Bainbridge escape hatch:

Caroline Polisi (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Deborah Renner (Renner Law, formerly of BakerHostetler)

Eric Creizman (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Franklin Velie (formerly of Sullivan & Worcester)

Jeffrey Alexander (Wachtell Missry, formerly Kasowitz Benson)

Jonathan Kortmansky (BraunHagey & Borden LLP, formerly of Sullivan & Worcester)

Joan Meyer (Thompson Hine, formerly of Baker McKenzie)

Melissa Madrigal (Armstrong Teasedale, formerly of Creizman LLC)

Michael Winograd (Brown Rudnick, formerly of Ropes & Gray)

Susan Winkler (Winkler Law, United States Attorney’s Office, Winkler Law)

Thomas Frongillo (formerly Fish and Richardson)

We are reminded of an attorney who warned Pierce in Fall 2018:  “Trying to do what you are doing – build a major NYC firm overnight is hugely risky. . . The last person who tried it in NY was Mark Dreier.  He ended up in jail.”

Brazen Lies and Brazen Deceit

Christopher N. LaVigne

Notwithstanding LaVigne’s blistering written criticism of firm founder John Mark Pierce as a “lunatic,” “bully,” and “snake,” who “loses track of his lies,” “talks out of every side of his mouth,” and is “probably deep into the sauce [alcohol] and coke [cocaine],” LaVigne, according to Lewis, “lied under oath” to protect Pierce.

In court filings, Pierce Bainbridge claimed Lewis – who has played ice hockey socially with LaVigne for over ten years – never played with LaVigne from November (when he was ousted) until April (when LaVigne claims Lewis extorted him during a conversation after a game).   The clear objective was to create a (false) narrative of Lewis going out of his way in order to allegedly “extort,” LaVigne.  Hard evidence supports that Pierce Bainbridge and LaVigne were untruthful in court filings.

Below are photos from a February 13, 2019 championship game at Chelsea Piers Sky Rink Arena; LaVigne and Lewis are identified in the first, in the second they are side-by-side in the middle. In addition, a screenshot from a March 6, 2019 exchange between the two about another game is below.  “OMW” means “on my way.”

Both February 13, 2019 and March 6, 2019, fall between November 2018 and April 2019.

Denver G. Edwards

Denver G. Edwards is on the Board of Trustees at Middlebury College.  He has previously worked as a partner at Bryant Rabbino LLP and Bressler, Amery & Ross LLP.   Edwards claimed in court filings and a sworn affidavit that Lewis blew confidentiality by publicly naming the firm’s litigation funder Pravati Capital LLC.  To the contrary, the relationship was already the subject of media coverage, a press release from Pravati (the firm’s original name was Pierce Sergenian) and, even worse, publicly filed UCC lending documents in Denver Edwards’s own name, disclosed the relationship.  (Below is an image from a March 8, 2019 UCC  filing.)

The Conley “Withdrawal Stunt”

The third musketeer, Conley, is, according to Lewis: “as deceitful as the others.”  The “Withdrawal Stunt” covered earlier, is detailed below.

Lewis Withdraws the Complaint at Conley’s Request, She Thanks Him

May 15, 11:40 a.m. – Lewis filed his complaint in New York.

May 15, 12:12 p.m. – Conley e-mailed Lewis’s counsel to request that he withdraw the complaint stating: “[PB] could get to Lewis’ number if you provide more time.”

May 15, 2:12 p.m. – Lewis’s counsel withdrew the complaint, Conley wrote to thank him and ask for a copy of the withdrawn complaint with the filing-stamp affixed.

May 15, 6:12 p.m. – Pierce Bainbridge filed a complaint in Los Angeles against Lewis which was never mentioned during the Conley-led negotiations.  The complaint included the filed-stamped copy of the withdrawn complaint Conley requested.

Pierce Bainbridge Says Lewis Withdrew as “Scheme to Extort”

Incredibly, Pierce Bainbridge then alleged in LA: “[Lewis] deleted the filing as a tactic, furthering his scheme to extort [PB].” Seeing what had happened, Lewis’s counsel immediately took Conley to task:

Conley avoided these pointed questions,  Pierce Bainbridge then labeled Lewis an “extortionist” and “terrorist,” S. Jeanine Conley failed and, eleven months later, continues to fail to come forward with the truth.

Know When to Hold ‘Em, Know When to Fold ‘Em

For months, Pierce Bainbridge has been on a downward spiral towards full implosion.  Thirty-five lawyers have jumped the sinking ship.  Pierce was finally stripped of his Managing Partner title after his alleged Ponzi-Like financial foul play, which Lewis reported to the partnership well over a year ago.  Now Pierce Bainbridge’s own attorney, Marc Mukasey, citing ethical concerns, has asked to withdraw as outside counsel.  Attorneys who were or are with Pierce Bainbridge have apparently broken the wall of silence, as Lewis recently reported to the court, and reportedly have divulged information concerning Pierce Bainbridge manufacturing and destroying material evidence, and engaging in fraud on the court.

With respect to his former partners, who largely only started leaving when the firm was already in meltdown mode, Lewis says, “they are like rats fleeing a sinking ship; each of them turned a blind eye to issues I pointed out in written communications over a year ago; they did not care; their greed outweighed their integrity.”  Lewis continued:  “It is crystal clear to any reasonable person what has happened here, yet none of my former partners has ever reached out to apologize or attempt to make this right; they remained concerned with themselves only, fueled by selfishness and greed.”

The reports of substance abuse, the lies, the illicit financial dealings, the misogyny, Mukasey filing to withdraw, thirty-five lawyers quitting Team Pierce: none of this, however, has deterred Conley, LaVigne and Edwards.   They remain committed to John Pierce and the firm, like the musicians on the Titanic.   Beloved country western singer Kenny Rogers recently passed, but his lyrics in “The Gambler” are timeless words of wisdom; perhaps it’s time for the “Three Pierce Musketeers” to pay them heed.

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