Joe B. has sued Leland's (follow up to closed "beware" thread)
 

You will recall this closed thread.
https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=357851

Now a lawsuit in NY state court.

Docket is public.
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASSearch

He has also sued at the same time in Monmouth Country in New Jersey. SMH.

Win or lose I say good for him. At least he didn't come on here and post a lot of outrageous claims and not follow through.

Any intel on the plaintiff’s attorneys? Are they a serious shop for serious cases?

I see in the court documents list that there is an entry for Exhibit(s).

I wonder from which year, and if any Ruth examples will be for sale.


Brian (curious minds just get more curious each and every day)

Whatever the merits of the case, and however it all turns out, it's really sad that this guy, in declining health, is going through this much stress.

Agreed!

How do you define "unserious" when a suit is actually filed?

:confused:

Well, I suppose there are some groups that might be more on the ambulance chaser side of the profession. Perhaps they’re mostly just looking for a quick settlement. Maybe they don’t have much experience, because they’re fresh out of law school. Maybe they mostly practice probate law, or do oil and gas leasing.

Or maybe they are big guns with $3,000 per hour billing rates with clients beating down their doors, lots of experience in contract litigation, with a long and glorious record of winning every case they take on.

It was intended to be a bit vague to avoid maligning any of the counselors at the bar. But I suppose if you insist on more detail for this query, this seems like one way to frame it.

Interesting. Lots of things in the documents and motions that contradict things we've assumed or had been told.

Seems like they're on the more affordable end of things. The google reviews are....interesting.

Sounds to me as if I'd have to split hairs to differentiate the first group of ambulance chasers from the second.

;)

Something new I learned right in the first line about Joseph’s preferred pronouns, or perhaps the crack legal team’s attention to detail.

Indeed, it's a different story in several respects.

Hmmm. This from Mr. Levin's Linkedin page.

I practice real estate law almost exclusively. I work closely with real estate agents and other real estate professionals. The goal is to represent the client, while updating all parties involved in the transaction.

What new information is there?

I recommend reading the complaint. Only a few pages.

Methinks their attention to good English is also lacking.

;)

There are 25 lots in the Lelands Auction ending tonight that now show as Withdrawn. Anyone know if those were the lots for the items in question?

I entered the index # and was unable to view it. How did you view it?

Put in 605609/2025

Put in the full index number including the year.

I noticed "AS AND FOR THE FOURTH CAUSE OF ACTION:" was a copy/paste duplication. I would think a court filing would be proofed better.

It would be interesting to see a point-by-point rebuttal to the charges by the defendants, because there are always (at least) 2 sides to the story.

After you search, click the index number of the case, and then scroll to the bottom of the popup window and click "Show eFiled Documents." I couldn't find at first either.

I was the high bidder on a Tom Seaver lot with photos. Once it was withdrawn, I assumed something like this was happening.

I was bidding on two different Tom Seaver lots that were withdrawn.

I read through the complaint and the exhibit. The exhibit is the handwritten contract between Lelands and the plaintiff. I thought it was interesting that Lelands charged a 40% commission in the contract. Is that typical?

You might want to go back to the other thread to see our glorious repartee on that point. Because revisiting it here might cause an international incident.

https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=357851

More interesting was the fact that the contract is actually three pages and portions of it contradict BOTH parties.

Thanks Raulus. I missed the original thread because it was in the water cooler section. The original thread (and the original post) focused on the 60/40 split. But the lawsuit focuses on the claim that Lelands took items they weren't supposed to take. That was kind of an afterthought in the original thread.

I'll be watching to see how this shakes out, and hoping for the reappearance somewhere of the Seaver items I was bidding on.

The complaint focuses on more than just the items taken. It also alleges that the contract contained contradictory commission terms that make it unenforceable.

This exhibit purports to be the entire contract (front and back of a single page). The "Conditions" page isn't signed, but it describes a sliding-scale commission structure that differs from the "60/40" split on Schedule A.

I suppose you could argue that the handwritten term on front reflects an intention to supersede the printed term in the form on back. They should have crossed it out though. What I don't understand is how the two trucks at Joe's house became the unilateral removal of items from Joe's storage shed, unless I'm not remembering right.

On the back of the form the "Other Charges" would seem to justify the 60/40 split on the front, though I would guess that is open to interpretation. It is a bit cathcall and may be used to justify the overall compensation. I receive no benefit from this transaction so I will leave it to the lawyers.

For anyone interested in following this, Defendants' opposition to Plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction is now public, including perhaps of most interest Steve Verkman's Affidavit setting forth his version of events (entry no. 22).

Here is a direct link to document #22
https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/fbem/DocumentDisplayServlet?documentId=tKDRnC7_PLUS_68X AshSYG8sQzQ==&system=prod

Nice of the motion to give us a shout out!

Steve’s response is convincing to me. Hope the court does the right thing here, and soon.

Lot's of legal issues in that response. Judge goes by laws. The contract is gonna kill them from a judges view IMO. They didn't cover their butt's in ways I would. They set themselves up for trouble in many ways. He said, he said won't help without detailed proof. The laws will fill in those blanks.

Just to be completely off-point and irrelevant, I have to say that Steve Verkman's signature is amazing. It's at the very end of his affidavit linked in a previous post. (I tried to copy the signature directly into this post, but failed).

lol.

Sig shown ...

Could easily be mistaken for the Chinese character for person.

And maybe that’s the message. He’s just as human as the rest of us.

My uncle out in Texas
Can't even write his name
He signs his checks with Xs
But they cash them just the same.

It looks like the same signature from the poster that said he won a 40 grand Jordan card that never got delivered, but was signed for.

Plaintiff's motion for preliminary injunction denied. Evidently there was an agreement designating New Jersey as the sole forum for dispute resolution. This means the NY suit likely will be dismissed.

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/nys...REr0QK0FCT7A==

Par for the course with this plaintiff. Not a serious guy.

This one may be on the lawyer.

A lot of lawyering go on here. Defendant argued in NJ that NY case should proceed because it was filed first, then argued in NY that the NJ court is the proper forum. NJ court stayed its action pending the outcome in NY.
The decision to not have the matter proceed on parallel tracks is proper, if only to avoid potential inconsistent or contradictory results. So now we turn to New Jersey, which may or may not have publicly available filings.
Nothing of substance accomplished yet that can be seen of record, as far as I know anyway.

EDITED TO ADD I should say that there has been no decision on the merits of the claims. However, the NJ court already imposed injunctive relief. As I read it, defendant argued that they pulled lots from their auction and none are about to be sold at this time.

First reference I have seen to the separate Standard Note and Security Agreement with the forum selection clause, though I have not followed this closely. I guess I'll have to read the briefs if I really care to figure it out, but based on what Todd just said, it does seem the court could have found that Leland's waived the forum selection clause argument by previously claiming New York not New Jersey was the proper forum. Talk about a Catch 22.

That's just it-- seems the NY court is going to honor the choice of forum clause rather than waive its enforcement, and is kicking the case over to New Jersey. I am not sure how much it matters, since the choice of NJ law provision will likely hold either way. I too am not about to read the file-- I just saw a couple of letters submitted to the Court by counsel and took them at face value.