Hello, Marco,
I've been debating for the last 24 hours whether to respond to this post of yours and, if so, how, especially since Mr. Holland has explained that the SSG's remaining directors are now looking into the various issues concerning SSG's status. I have no wish to belabor anything relating to SSG unnecessarily, especially since Mr. Price is no longer the President nor a director and, even more especially, since resolving SSG's situation pertains now only to its own members, not to the wider community (although I feel it was necessary and appropriate to have disclosed in my prior post what I had unexpectedly discovered about SSG, so as to alert everyone here to the continuing pattern of Mr. Price's misconduct and to alert SSG members and the other SSG instructors as to their potential peril).
I've decided to respond, after reflection, because I believe your well-meant caution to folks goes so far as to potentially encourage the kind of passivity that predators rely on, as Louis de Leon so accurately pointed out, above:
Louis de Leon wrote:This is how predators function. They count on their victims to think exactly this. That is what allows them to move with impunity to their next victim.
Marco-borromei wrote:For the rest of us not directly party to a lawsuit, there is a lot of risk for BOTH sides of this argument in treating anything here as "evidence." I fall for it sometimes, too, and I sometimes deal with investigations for a living. These accusations, while brutal, are not necessarily "evidence."
I think what you meant to say here is "
admissible evidence," since "evidence" is by no means restricted to the courtroom: I've grounded my teenagers from time to time on the basis of "evidence" that wouldn't necessarily meet the standards of the Federal Rules of Evidence. I've similarly chosen not to have dealings with people based primarily on "hearsay" about their characters from people whose judgment and character I
do have reason to trust. This is how families, friends and communities
function: on evidence that is considered reasonably persuasive by the individuals making the daily judgments constitutive of ordinary life.
Marco-borromei wrote:Anyone can register an account as Price or Tobler and say whatever they want.
Presumably, by now, the poster to this thread identifying himself as "Christian Tobler" would have been revealed to be an impostor by those who know him face-to-face, and those who've dealt with him principally online could satisfy themselves as to his identity by checking to see whether, for example, the email address attached to his account in this forum is the one he is regularly known to use.
A judge, however, doesn't have that kind of knowledge or familiarity with the individuals who appear before him, so other measures are required under the rules of evidence, but that doesn't mean that everyone else must necessarily await a judge's verdict to reach their own informed judgments.
Marco-borromei wrote:Courts will determine the quality of evidence, not make a decision based on this thread.
Not this thread alone, no, but individual posts could meet the standards of "admissible evidence" by authentication by means of testimony or affidavit by the poster, and where a poster was unwilling to authenticate his own post for some reason, a party could easily obtain sufficient supporting evidence through the discovery process to substantiate its authenticity under the applicable rules of evidence as that poster's statement.
Marco-borromei wrote:The records on the Texas web site could be out of date or in error.
Given that it's a governmental website, all of its records are
self-authenticating under Federal Rule of Evidence 902(5). Moreover, had you
looked at the Secretary of State's website rather than immediately suspending belief in the accuracy and timeliness of its records, you would have learned that all third-party
paper filings are processed and accessible publicly within 3-5 business days, and electronic filings are processed, typically, by the close of business on the following business day.
When I'd checked the filing history of SSG at the close of business on the 22nd (prior to making my post of that day), that meant it was complete as of
no earlier than the close of business on February 14th. However, since any possible "update" of a forefeiture of existence would have to reflect
state action, it was easy enough to ascertain whether any
legally effective change of status had occurred more recently by double-checking SSG's status with the Texas Comptroller of Accounts
here, which the Secretary of State's website informs users they can do and to which it provides a convenient link.
I'm belaboring this point because checking the corporate status of a corporation is something that
anyone relying on said corporation's insurance policy should be doing -- as a matter of course -- to ensure that its insurance policy will be valid and enforceable if and when the time comes to make a claim against it.
As to whether a corporation's forfeiture of its status is due to an error on the government's part, while that's
possible, it's highly unlikely if the person responsible for making the franchise tax payment and filing the return (or obtaining an exemption) has been
duly diligent. As the State's Tax Forfeiture filing makes clear, a delinquent party has 120 days after the franchise tax was due to make the late payment and avert such a consequence (which is typical in other states, too), and the government office that issues the annual franchise tax bill typically does so 30-45 days
before it's due, then issues
repeated reminders and warnings once the payment becomes delinquent before taking such drastic action as filing a forfeiture.
What this means is that even if "the check got lost in the mail," the designated recipient for the corporation of governmental notices (typically the registered agent) would have to ignore notice after notice after notice indicating that that had occurred.
I'm belaboring
this point because if one fails to be proactive, it's all too easy to be snookered by a negligent registered agent who claims a variant of "the dog ate my homework"!
I'd described in detail in my prior post how to verify the status of a corporation -- and provided links -- in order to
educate people on how
not to get snookered in such a manner!
The
**last** thing that you or anyone else should do concerning the status of a corporation that affects you individually in such a manner is to "wait for the litigation" to be over OR or to take the word of the person accused of dropping the ball in the meantime. The
REASON states are required to make this information easily and publicly available is so that individuals
CAN verify it and thereby
PROTECT themselves.
Please understand that this is by no means intended as a dig at the current board of SSG -- who seem to be diligently taking corrective action -- nor at you, but we
all have responsibilities for
ourselves when we join an organization on whose insurance policy we rely and
this is one of them:
Trust but verify.
Marco-borromei wrote:I have never personally seen Internet Wayback Machine results accepted as evidence by a court. I've only seen two occasions where an attorney tried. Maybe a different court and a different case would.
Their archived pages are submitted as evidence in courts so often that the staff at the Internet Archive finally had to publish
a policy and start charging parties for authenticating copies of such pages by affidavit:
Before asking the Internet Archive to authenticate your documents, we ask that you please seek judicial notice or simply ask your opposing party to stipulate to the documents' authenticity. Of course, the best source of such information is the party who posted the information on the URLs at issue, and the second-best source of such information is someone who actually accessed the historical versions of the URLs.
However, if you are determined to obtain an affidavit authenticating printouts from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, we will do our best to help you in accordance with this policy.
Marco-borromei wrote:Even comparison of texts, while damming, may or may not be actionable.
If you're referring, here, to the plagiarism claim, I'd say that purchasers of the Chivalry Bookshelf edition would at least have a consumer complaint for product misrepresentation.
Marco-borromei wrote:Wait for the legal action to finish.
I feel no need to wait: I'm quite comfortable that I now possess more than adequate, reliable "evidence" about both Mr. Price's exploitative pattern of conduct toward others as well as his character.
YMMV.
Lady Charlotte
