Thanks…Mike. I appreciate your answer… ![[cheers.gif]](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/0/0ff9bfcdb0964982cd3240b6159868fbdf215b1a.gif "cheers"){kind=small}
Thanks Mike. Good luck.
Found at a used bookstore. Presented without comment.
![IMG_1497[1].JPG](/uploads/db3686/original/2X/8/8ced73cdae5c3af246a1c385d933381a1757549d.jpeg)
It has been strangely quiet in the case. The last filing was the “Amendment to Complaint” required by the Judge, which was filed on June 27. I expected an answer would be filed by this point. Under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the defendant has 21 days to answer from the date of service of the complaint. Unless there was some unexpected delay in getting the Amended Complaint and the Amendment to Complaint served, an answer should been filed by now.
That makes me suspect that Charlie Trotter and his restaurant initiated negotiations through counsel before the service was formally made. In my opinion, that would definitely be the wise thing to do under the circumstances.
Could be having problems with service.
That seems like a big leap. In my experience as a litigator, it was extremely common for defendants to request extensions of time to answer – particularly if they planned to test the pleading with motions – and plaintiffs routinely agreed. So I wouldn’t read anything in it.
Did the judge require an amendment in response to a motion from Trotter? If so, that suggests that the original service was effected and the defendant has made a formal appearance. In that case, amended complaints could be served by mail, no?
(Caveat: My working knowledge of civil procedure is getting pretty rusty!)
No appearance by the defendants. No certificate of service filed either. The amendments to the complaint were made because of plaintiff attorney errors.
Status conference is scheduled for October.
I think it depends on the local court, but it seems odd that the court would schedule a status conference prior to an appearance by counsel for the defendant. But then again, I’m NOT a litigator and going to court gives me hives.
I haven’t double checked that myself, but if they have (1) scheduled a status conference, but (2) not shown service on the site, then I’d expect that service was probably waived, BUT the lack of an answer would seem to shoot holes in that. The other possibility is that some Courts schedule a conference immediately on a rolling availability basis upon filing and the parties change it themselves if necessary. So again, I’d look to concerns over service, except that serving an entity defendant is typically pretty easy because of registered agents. The wrinkle here is that CT’s is no longer a going concern, right? So finding the proper party to serve could be difficult.
It’s fairly common for a federal court to put a conference on calendar after filing of complaint, before proof of service. Here, it appears that the conference is scheduled to correspond w/ FRCP 4(m): “If a defendant is not served within 120 days after the complaint is filed, the court—on motion or on its own after notice to the plaintiff—must dismiss the action without prejudice against that defendant or order that service be made within a specified time. But if the plaintiff shows good cause for the failure, the court must extend the time for service for an appropriate period.”
As far as any complexities in executing service on the corporate defendant, it should be noted that Charlie Trotter is also named as an individual defendant. Plaintiffs presumably could have served him by now.
Defendants filed their answer yesterday. They are represented by Eric Kaplan of Kaplan Papadakis & Gournis, P.C. Trotter denies that the magnum sold to Plaintiffs is “counterfeit and valueless.”
Here is the link to the Defendants Answer:
Charle is in the news for kicking some art students out of his space and exhibiting “odd behavior”
the video clip is quite telling…
All I can say is wow, hope he gets the much needed help soon!
Apparently, been drinking entire Magnums of fake DRC all by himself ?!?
Well there’s no way he’s going to admit that. shrug
The Answer not only denies the Frokajj allegations, it affirmatively alleges several times that the magnum is not counterfeit [which it clearly is!]. One of the paragraphs states that CHT’s only represenation to Plaintiffs was “that wine from the Domaine de la Romanee-Conti estate is rare and valuable because Domaine de la Romanee-Conti did not produce a large yield in 1945.”
There seems to be some petty game playing going on. The Answer included a purported counterclaim for attorney’s fees under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act. The very next day, the Plaintiffs’ lawyers file a motion to strike to most of the affirmative defenses on the grounds that they are mere boilerplate without any facts. They also filed a motion to dismiss on the Counterclaim for attorney’s fees and the seventh affirmative defense for set-off based on the counterclaim for attorney’s fees on the grounds that attorney’s fees to a prevailing defendant under the Illinois Consumer Fraud Act are paid as matter of court order at the end of the case, rather than being the subject of a counterclaim in the same action.
All of this is much ado about very little and is not likely to set well with a busy Federal judge who doesn’t want his time wasted.
Interesting that the law firm partners can trace their ethnicities to the same general neck of the woods as can the Albanians.
Maybe they know a thing or two about how the Game is played in the Old World.
Agree on that point. There is not enough at stake here tio justify the effort and the litigation costs. Somebody either has too much free time or too much money.
As to 419 scams and whether the Frokajjs knew or should have known it was fake, I have had many experienced, intelligent clients who came to me with obvious scams that they thought were real. I have had people pay me (after I advised them that it was a scam) to do the legal work on the sale of 8 used Apache helicopters, seven tanker loads of Nigerian oil in Rotterdam harbor, two urban assault vehicles to be sold to the Sultan of Brunei and 500,000,000 pounds of fertilizer on ships in the Pacific (separate transactions with different clients). I have had church ministers come to me with “Tiger Zero” US bonds that were complete forgeries and more “prime bank LC” scams than I can count. I actually gave a CLE lecture at the Bar Association annual meeting on how lawyers get scammed out of escrow funds. I would hazard a guess that billions and billions of dollars are regularly lost by those who are too gullible. The volume is so high that the FBI has told me not to even call them unless the dollar loss is more than $1,000,000.
So although the Frokajjs may have been gullible, or perhaps even stupid, I’m not so sure they knew it was fake.
All the discussion in this thread aside, I guess that’s what’s to be proven. There are some unusual things that have been noted here by a number of the involved parties. The Domaine hasn’t proven that they didn’t produce any magnums. There’s questions about the distributor and the labeling that need to be resolved. The amount of money involved may not be significant enough for these questions to get answered, but I hope they do.
I’m not sure anyone can state that this bottle is “clearly fake”, but I don’t have a dog in this fight. There are just too many contradictory statements.