I actually wasn't claiming either, the legal case is still proceeding and no indication to the contrary has been given. I'd mostly been biting my tongue and biding my time but since someone seemed confused with OS leap from logic I decided to provide context. You may call that what you will.

Addendum AH: Both your links are borked.

I'd call it disingenuous, since your explanation was pretty much an attempt to undermine otakusensei and his post without actually addressing anything he was talking about.


Weird, they work at my end.

According to the legal paperwork for setting up an LLC (business, not person. @=), Members *are* Owners. There's a fine distinction, actually. Owners was never quite the correct word to begin with for this type of company. But it's a legal thing having to do with percentage of investment (not necessarily monetary investment) and therefore share ownership. Go to your local bookstore, check out the business section. You can find plenty of books on setting up these types of businesses, some of which give more detail. Also, the IRS codes for LLCs might help you understand the difference.

But, for the purposes of this discussion? Members and owners are essentially the same thing.

If you're talking about his Pacer links, all three worked for me just fine.

Otherwise, I have no clue what links you're referring to.

We know that - you're the one completely missing the point.

There are supposed to be more members than just the pair of colemans - kid Chamelon for example. So if the colemans are the only members, what is up with that?

Uh, not meaning to be argumentative, but I didn't know that at least. The comments about how IMR can be listed as only having two owners when more than two people have paid to have stock in the company is interesting to me (and strange).

K.

A situation that we're all aware of and see no need to seek legal remedy at this time. Despite all the accusations that have been thrown out, you might notice that the only people bringing up the 'stock sale scandal' are people totally speculating about it. Really the license is the most enjoyable thing to speculate on, it's the next great adventure. Can Catalyst's people pull off the run? Will the opposition stop them? Will Topps make their own decision or will a great dragon buy them out, rename the venture Mustache Twirling Games and make the whole thing moot? Stay tuned!

For $1000 I'll tell you all about it.

Thanks for going! I was considering going but getting away from work can be problematic.

Oh yeah, the number of members is the point - not whether they are called owners or members or partners or stockholders etc - it does point to some pretty shake corporate governance.

This thread needs some of that love. It's so depressing.

Otakusensi's quote of the legal document doesn't actually say they are the only members (though I admit to missing the word "the" in that legal statement). And the way that his (her?) question was phrased, I assumed it meant that he didn't understand the comment about "member", not that he was questioning the lack of other member/owner names. Since he hasn't responded to my post otherwise, I will continue to assume this until I hear otherwise.

Urgru, who's knowledgeable about legal matters, explained it like this...



In other words, the counsel's statement was meant to state for the record who he talked to and when. The intent of the passage isn't to accurately enumerate all of the owners of IMR.

That known co-owners have not started freaking out is a sign that Urgru's interpretation is probably accurate.

Yeah, but I found this bizarre



Rather than what I expected was 'seems like a drafting error'

Sorry I'm a little late to the show, but what's with the unprovoked cheap shot? What I see here is more in line with pointless negative posts out of the blue than anything I see from otakusensei. Why don't you work on checking yourself before pointing the finger at others.

Edit: Ya know what, nevermind:

Shit is getting cyclic again, so how about those unicorns?

They need some help in the bullpen, the starters can only do so much. And their hitting is so inconsistent.

Forget the Unicorns. I want an update on the belly button ring!!

Preferably with confirmation pictures...

Keep the Faith

Make your own thread about unicorns, please, and do not derail this.

So, what exactly is up with the membership question? How many members does that LLC have?

16 or 17 are the numbers I've heard.

And are they members, or just people without an actual member status? Or former members?

As a general rule, you're either a member or your not. Sort of like being a shareholder or not.

Which is why it's interesting to see a lawyer refer to the colemans as "the members" in an official document. That's not the kind of "Mistake" a lawyer should make at court.

It depends on what the meaning of the "the" is.

The declaration's discussion of the rights relationships between Topps, Microsoft, Smith & Tinker, IMR and the various sublicensors was also a bit muddled, and it suggests Topps holds computer game rights. It true that the ownership and nature of the rights isn't publicly clear, but conventional wisdom has been that the bulk of the electronic rights lie with Microsoft and/or S&T.

Between the owner ambiguity and the license discussion, it seems like the declaration was drafted quickly and with an eye towards conveying important points relevant to the motion at hand - when the attorney spoke with key figures, the general nature of IMR's business (scifi and fantasy publishing), etc. There may not be much value in overparsing the discussiothor either issue at present. Either the same statements will be made in future filings made with more opportunity for review or they'll be refined for clarity. Wait and see.

The registration detail for IMR is available here. It lists both the Colemans as "Governing Persons," and nobody else. You can order some of the documentation about the company if you're really curious, but I'm not sure that'd contain the names of all the members. You don't file operating agreements with the state, so no way to get that.

I'm mostly posting because I'm hoping someone more curious than I ponies up the fifteen bucks or so to get copies of relevant information.

The lawyer has done a shitty job then. A legal statement is meant to be parsed.

The difference between "the members" and "members" is clear.

Sorry, next time I will use [sarcasm] tags.

You shouldn't use sarcasm on the internet, especially when talking about legal matters.

I take it you have a fair bit of experience with American motion practice? No? You're a European who has no practical experience with the American legal system? Ok ...

I don't claim to know what's going on in this case, but I know motion work often requires ridiculous turnarounds and, for better or worse, often lacks the precision of briefing. Paralegals do a lot of it, sometimes w. little more than cursory attorney review. I'm not going to call a Continental lawyer like you "shitty" without some working knowledge of practice norms in your legal system. You should consider showing a similar amount of respect and restraint. If he's "shitty," IMR will surely replace him.

I do not think expecting a legal statement to be both precise and correct in all points is too much to ask for from a lawyer. Unless we are talking about verbal replies during a cort session they do have enough time to check their statements before mailing them off. If they have paralegals work for them they still are responsible. And it's not as if this was some easy mistake either. One reason you hire a lawyer is so they can word your statements in the best way possible. Sloppy wording is not something you expect, especially since - and doubly so in contractual matters - a single word can make or break a case.

In the interest of brevity, I'll just say this: you know far less than you think you do. Motions are wrong factually, grammatically, and legally, all the time. As uguru said, they are drafted by paralegals who don't really know anything other than what they've been told to do.

Motion's aren't meant to be read as closely as a statute or a court opinion. Everyone here needs to chill out about this phrase "the members" being stated in a motion to deny summary judgment. Those things are 90% boilerplate, 10% plugging in factual information.

Fuchs, please do not attempt to do the job of the moderation staff. If you have a complaint, please report it to the moderation staff like everyone else does.

People would probably by less sensitive to this if part of the moderation staff (Bull) hadn't stated, in the thread, that they were throwing stuff that included sexual harassment into the thread explicitly to derail it or get it shut down.

Huh?

Besides, I was under the impression that Bull was no longer an Administrator, by his own admission...

Keep the Faith

Don't forget Virtual World Entertainment.

1) I'm no longer a moderator. Haven't been for a couple months now.
2) It wasn't sexual harassment. It was, arguably, sexually explicit however.
3) I myself got 2 official Warnings for those posts.
4) As I've been having an incredibly shitty week (Capped off by someone vandalizing my van and smashing out a window), I'll log off now before I earn a 3rd warning and get a couple days of suspension.

Bull

At the time I assumed that the brief would contain the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I understand now that the "whole truth" isn't exactly a rock solid number of debtors or members. That's cool, I can see wanting to keep those numbers private and only releasing to the public that information that is pertinent, i.e. you need at least 12 debtors so you say you have 12 even if you have more because having more isn't important to the situation.

It's been implied that Coleman may have done some back handed things in the formation of the LLC and I was curious about that and what this brief said about it. I see now that it's effectively neutral as far as shedding light on that situation. Besides, the folks involved may not want to information to be public for perfectly legitimate reasons.

Why the frag not? Jesus, I can get people are upset, I can get some people even lost money or jobs in this affair. I'd like to think that when this all shakes out one way or another things will get back to normal around here and folks can go back to fighting about possesion mages or even sliding TN's, but this kind of rhetoric, this boggles the crap out of me. I can put myself in AH or Sensei's shoes or see why their upset. Fuchs I can't get your baseline and why you seem to come around to be nothing but pissy.

Back off Caine! He's not stepping on your toes, he's making a polite request. I, personally would rather have a polite request made to me than someone call The Man down on me.

Reading this thread makes me sad. I'm not sad about all the hot words and egos thrown around. I'm sad that the game I love is currently being controlled by someone who doesn't pay freelancers when he is perfectly able. I am sad that I would rather abandon Shadowrun entirely than support him in any way. If IMR keeps both the license and Loren L. Coleman, I'm out.

I'm thinking the number 8 will be relevant soon.

I'd say the same, more or less. If I'm having a big old conversation about Unicorns with Belly Button Rings (and I started the Unicorns!) in the thread, I'd sooner someone approached me directly than decided to report me for something. The former way is called communication. The latter way called annoying me. Maybe we can all keep roughly to the topic. This is the 32nd page of the seventh thread on this subject. It's hard enough to keep up with all the information and discussion without wading through two pages of requests for photos of Jennifer's belly ring.

IMO.

K.

Well the thing that is true the thing that matters completely is this. An LLC (the legal Limited Liability Corporation no the Person) function on the fact that taxes, pay all of that is done by what is called "pass through" taxation. So you don't really have to worry about "much" ( by that statement I mean you have to worry less then if you are set up as a "C" Corp!) about what the company is holding as much as you need to worry about who is taking what. Now when that is the case it can be problematic for the members of the LLC if they feel that something that a person did with the till is taking more then the terms of the LLC, or that was more then their "share". So this of course has all be spelled out over time, but since people are back to asking about it that is kinda the run down.


So the statement of AH is right, we are now moving to the evidential hearings... so now there will be more talk back an forth between the parties talking about why one is more legally right then the other. You might get some talk about why they (IMR) don't actually have 12 creditors, of course that would be after the books for the company are requested as proof that it is or isn't the case, blah blah blah...

So in other words this has at least another 6 months of legal wrangling, which really comes to a halt for IMR if they don't get the license. Cause as soon as they don't, they have no other licenses (whether in house or licensed from others) and thus really lose the case based on the fact that they will have no income and thus will lose on a stand motion to settle based on the limited to no incoming cash flow, while if they get the license they really the parties on the other side will probably settle the dispute. This to me just sounds like a good legal maneuver by those still owed money. Its an end around to be the first inline should they lose the license, and who shouldn't make that move I know I would have!


EDIT: I just want to remind people that this is just my view I am in no way able to make legal advice nor am I truly qualified to do so

Except they do - not the Big Four - BT, SR, EP and CT - but they still have the casual games and Euro-licensed games. Have no idea regarding how well those lines do, but just wanted to make clear they do have other games, plus the possibility of shopping in-house stuff like Leviathans to interested parties.

Sucks. Sorry, man.

Question? for anyone?

I thought Leviathan was also licensed to them?

IP like SR and BT but just from someone else who owns it.
Does anybody know?

Rojo

From Monsters in the Sky, the Leviathans web site.


It's developed in-house.

How about somebody remove Bull from the Admin group so the issue with his moderator status doesn't keep coming up.

Mesh