I would have given him the minimum I could if I was the judge, let Campbell pay the lawyer and staff the overtime.
May not have been much, actually. We don't know when the lawyer actually took the case; we only know when he notified the court that he was representing Campbell.
Cirrus filed the motion for a default judgement April 11th, and a 21 May court hearing on the subject was announced on the 17th of April. I'd expect Campbell would have started looking for a lawyer in earnest at that time. Assuming he had the cash, he probably had no trouble getting Mr. Lindell on retainer by the end of April...three weeks prior to the hearing date. That gives him a full month to work on the Discovery.
There was probably no rush in filing the notice that he was now representing Campbell and KSA. He might have contacted Cirrus' lawyers as a courtesy to inform them. Or he might not have, out of some perceived tactical advantage.
Keep in mind that the 1 June deadline can be satisfied with either the information required by discovery, or the *pretext* as to why the information isn't being supplied at that time. I'm sure there are standard dodges that lawyers use to avoid providing data when it is damaging to their cases. "Excessively broad," "Overly onerous," etc. Could even claim that the major portion is the responsibility of KSA, and KSA was *not* included on the judge's order.
The key data, as ever, is the #1 item in Cirrus' Request for Production: "Any and all documents and things evidencing agreements between plaintiff and defendant." Cirrus submitted their copy of the purchase agreement in their original filing...and re-submitted it last month.
Campbell claims that it's fraudulent. If he's going to stick with that, his best approach would be to produce a different version of the document. Then either sides' experts can weigh in. The obvious question to answer, of course, is why it wasn't submitted when first requested almost six months ago.
Alternately, Campbell could claim that Cirrus' purchase order is fraudulent because the agreement was strictly *verbal*. Remember that Campbell attempted to serve a subpoena against Alan Klapmeier demanding "True and correct information in the form of sworn testimony concerning the agreement...." Campbell may well intend to claim that an alleged verbal deal with Klapmeier constituted the sole agreement, and that there was no written contract.
It seems that this would be a difficult approach. Even if there WAS some sort of agreement, it hardly seems likely that Cirrus would have agreed to advertise in perpetuity with no ability to terminate the agreement (the marketing proposal Campbell submitted earlier required both sides' agreement to cancel). Cirrus claims the agreement concerns an airplane worth a third of a million dollars, Campbell has claimed on ANN that Cirrus owed him three-quarters of a million. Seems unlikely that a company like Cirrus would commit to such a liability without a written agreement.
Ron Wanttaja
