Negative ANN article about Cirrus

Steve Foley said:
Anyone want to take up a collection for Cirrus' legal fund?
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Why?

His reputation in the aviation community was no secret.

They thought the value of the media exposure they were buying exceeded the risk of something like this happening.

Maybe it still has.
 
ElPaso Pilot said:
Why?

His reputation in the aviation community was no secret.

They thought the value of the media exposure they were buying exceeded the risk of something like this happening.

Maybe it still has.
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From what has been discovered so far, they are in this mess due to the actions of an outgoing CEO who created liabilities for the compay by entering into handshake deals (probably in circumvention of the legal dept.). But yes, the company is responsible for the actions of the CEO.
 
Steve Foley said:
Because he deserves it.
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I have no love for this character, but the gang at Cirrus should have been wearing their big boy pants when they asked to step up to the dance floor with this date.

This is business, not charity.

Cirrus has the pockets to clean up this mess, or at least lick their wounds if they end up slinking off out the side exit at the end of the day.
 
ElPaso Pilot said:
I have no love for this character, but the gang at Cirrus should have been wearing their big boy pants when they asked to step up to the dance floor with this date.

This is business, not charity.

Cirrus has the pockets to clean up this mess, or at least lick their wounds if they end up slinking off out the side exit at the end of the day.
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Unfortunately, the guy at Cirrus who made all these decisions was a lame-duck CEO...already knew he was being fired at the time he forced the agreement onto Cirrus. According to the papers Cirrus filed, Campbell's loan was *from the company itself*...not their separate finance company. This was a sweetheart deal, pushed through by a man who wouldn't have to live with the consequences. Now, he's developing an aircraft company intended to compete with Cirrus...which has probably spent $100,000 or more trying to deal with one of his last management decisions. Makes ya wonder, donnit?

But... for the most part, I agree with you. The information on Campbell's past behavior is out there. Any prospective customer, client, employee, or spouse should be able to find it with a brief search. I find myself with little sympathy, nowaways.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Unfortunately, the guy at Cirrus who made all these decisions was a lame-duck CEO...already knew he was being fired at the time he forced the agreement onto Cirrus. According to the papers Cirrus filed, Campbell's loan was *from the company itself*...not their separate finance company. This was a sweetheart deal, pushed through by a man who wouldn't have to live with the consequences. Now, he's developing an aircraft company intended to compete with Cirrus...which has probably spent $100,000 or more trying to deal with one of his last management decisions. Makes ya wonder, donnit?

But... for the most part, I agree with you. The information on Campbell's past behavior is out there. Any prospective customer, client, employee, or spouse should be able to find it with a brief search. I find myself with little sympathy, nowaways.

Ron Wanttaja
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It is a sordid tale, isn't it?
 
wanttaja said:
Unfortunately, the guy at Cirrus who made all these decisions was a lame-duck CEO...already knew he was being fired at the time he forced the agreement onto Cirrus. According to the papers Cirrus filed, Campbell's loan was *from the company itself*...not their separate finance company. This was a sweetheart deal, pushed through by a man who wouldn't have to live with the consequences. Now, he's developing an aircraft company intended to compete with Cirrus...which has probably spent $100,000 or more trying to deal with one of his last management decisions. Makes ya wonder, donnit?

But... for the most part, I agree with you. The information on Campbell's past behavior is out there. Any prospective customer, client, employee, or spouse should be able to find it with a brief search. I find myself with little sympathy, nowaways.

Ron Wanttaja
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I don't follow the business personalities involved sorry, could you tell me who and which company you refer to?
 
Henning said:
I don't follow the business personalities involved sorry, could you tell me who and which company you refer to?
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Sorry, it WAS a bit vague, wasn't it?

On December 18th, 2008, it was announced that Alan Klapmeier would be stepping down as CEO of Cirrus Aircraft. According to Cirrus' lawsuit against Campbell and Kindred Spirit, the loan paperwork was executed on December 30th, 2008... almost two weeks later. He now has a company called Kestrel Aircraft, which he has located right across the river from Cirrus's base in Minnesota.

However, as I researched this, I noticed that he remained as Chairman of the Board after the announcement he was stepping down as CEO, and did not leave the company for another eight months. Whether or not there were sour grapes over his departure as CEO, he would still have had reason to protect the company. My statement in the previous statement was too strong, and I apologize to Mr. Klapmeier.

But not, of course, to Mr. Campbell. Just to be clear. :)

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
My statement in the previous statement was too strong, and I apologize to Mr. Klapmeier.
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I figured he had no idea about the depth of depravity he was facing. It takes a certain realization, and he was a busy man.
 
ANN has announced its Plane of the Year as the Diamond DA40 XLS. The objectivity of the analyses is marred, however, by this comment which alludes to Campbell's spat with Cirrus.

Which brings us to the object of this year's award... a solidly built little four seater built by a trustworthy company that has weathered a fair amount of tough times without selling its soul.
 
jm0045 said:
ANN has announced its Plane of the Year as the Diamond DA40 XLS. The objectivity of the analyses is, however, marred by this comment which alludes to Campbell's spat with Cirrus.

Which brings us to the object of this year's award... a solidly built little four seater built by a trustworthy company that has weathered a fair amount of tough times without selling its soul.
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It's further marred by the fact that their winner just happens to be a frequent advertiser on their podcast! I'm sure that didn't sway them a bit in their decision, of course! :mad2:
 
jm0045 said:
ANN has announced its Plane of the Year as the Diamond DA40 XLS. The objectivity of the analyses is marred, however, by this comment which alludes to Campbell's spat with Cirrus.

Which brings us to the object of this year's award... a solidly built little four seater built by a trustworthy company that has weathered a fair amount of tough times without selling its soul.
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Pardon me! I jumped to the sentence I quoted above before reading the paragraph before it! Campbell is way less subtle than I thought.
 
Campbell probably wanted to get his mind clear before his deposition, scheduled tomorrow (Friday the 4th).

Or maybe something will come up....

Ron Wanttaja
 
jm0045 said:
Pardon me! I jumped to the sentence I quoted above before reading the paragraph before it! Campbell is way less subtle than I thought.
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You mean this?

and worse than that, there are some exceptional aircraft out there that are now built by companies that (in our opinion) have proven that they can no longer be trusted -- and as good as their products have been in the past, the current state of the company leaves us no choice to but to discard ANY consideration of their products. In the case of Cirrus Aircraft, for instance, whose problems have been extensively documented, we simply do not trust the company as far as we could throw any of their product line... and while their current products were principally developed some time ago by far more talented people (in our opinion) than are running the Chinese-owned ship at the moment, we simply believe that an aircraft that is built by a company we do not trust, can not itself, be trusted -- at least not with our family and/or friends on board.
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Yeah, wow. :eek:
 
flyingcheesehead said:
You mean this?

and worse than that, there are some exceptional aircraft out there that are now built by companies that (in our opinion) have proven that they can no longer be trusted -- and as good as their products have been in the past, the current state of the company leaves us no choice to but to discard ANY consideration of their products. In the case of Cirrus Aircraft, for instance, whose problems have been extensively documented, we simply do not trust the company as far as we could throw any of their product line... and while their current products were principally developed some time ago by far more talented people (in our opinion) than are running the Chinese-owned ship at the moment, we simply believe that an aircraft that is built by a company we do not trust, can not itself, be trusted -- at least not with our family and/or friends on board.
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Yeah, wow. :eek:
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You would think that he would want to return any Cirrus that he happened to have to the company...
 
Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe said:
You would think that he would want to return any Cirrus that he happened to have to the company...
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I think you just summarized his spin control if he loses the lawsuit. "I didn't like the way they ran the company, so I gave them the plane back and waived $700,000 in advertising fees that they owed me!"

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
I think you just summarized his spin control if he loses the lawsuit. "I didn't like the way they ran the company, so I gave them the plane back and waived $700,000 in advertising fees that they owed me!"

Ron Wanttaja
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That's not going to work for him - when you need spin control with a Cirrus caught in a lawsuit you are always supposed to deploy the parachute.
 
Jim Logajan said:
That's not going to work for him - when you need spin control with a Cirrus caught in a lawsuit you are always supposed to deploy the parachute.
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I wonder if he'd pull the big red handle just out of spite (after letting the insurance premiums lapse, of course)
 
Steve Foley said:
I wonder if he'd pull the big red handle just out of spite (after letting the insurance premiums lapse, of course)
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Been a lot of speculation about that, since the lawsuit started. Consider this section from the NTSB hearing that suspended his medical, thirty years ago:
Government Attorney Hauselt. I want to refer you to page 34 and 35, which is the letter from Dianne Stuart at Western and Piper, and ask you, what does she AA in that letter, is there any indication that Mr. Campbell has ever had a problem in flying, actually in flying situations?

FAA Aviation Inspector Taylor: Yes. Mr. Campbell would claim that he had more than one malfunction in the aircraft which forced him to make emergency landings on more than one occasion, and when inspected by the mechanics and the FAA, they could find nothing wrong with the airplane.
​
In these cases, the aircraft was able to be examined afterwards. Consider, instead, a flight off the coast of Florida. The pilot calls in a "Mayday", claiming his engine is running rough. The Coast Guard dispatches a helicopter to intercept. When the helo arrives, the pilot claims that his engine has finally quit totally, and pulls the CAPS. The plane floats down to the water, the pilot gets out (and naturally, he's wearing a floatation device just like the FAA recommends), and is lifted up into the 'copter...

...as the evidence sinks to the bottom of the sea.

In this sort of case, I think the pilot would actually be better off having the insurance in place. It's going to be up to the insurance company to prove that he HADN'T had a problem....it would muddy things up quite a bit and probably trigger a three-way-fight between the pilot, Cirrus, and the insuror. One that would probably take several more years to settle.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Consider, instead, a flight off the coast of Florida. The pilot calls in a "Mayday", claiming his engine is running rough. The Coast Guard dispatches a helicopter to intercept. When the helo arrives, the pilot claims that his engine has finally quit totally, and pulls the CAPS. The plane floats down to the water, the pilot gets out (and naturally, he's wearing a floatation device just like the FAA recommends), and is lifted up into the 'copter...

...as the evidence sinks to the bottom of the sea.

In this sort of case, I think the pilot would actually be better off having the insurance in place. It's going to be up to the insurance company to prove that he HADN'T had a problem....it would muddy things up quite a bit and probably trigger a three-way-fight between the pilot, Cirrus, and the insuror. One that would probably take several more years to settle.
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There's some problems with that strategy, of course - Hitting the water under CAPS is going to result in some fairly severe back injuries, and unless they're in REALLY deep water, the NTSB and FAA will probably want to bring the airplane up to the surface to investigate. (The one I'm familiar with was brought up from a depth of 148 feet - Not exactly the bottom of the ocean, but not wading depth either!)
 
zaitcev said:
Wrong. Don't belive the FUD that Diamond fanbois feed you.
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That's not where I got it from - I got it from the accident where the pilot suffered a seizure, pulled the CAPS, and ended up in a river. Without the landing gear collapse that is designed to break the fall on land, the impact was more sudden and the pilot had a crushed vertebra.
 
flyingcheesehead said:
That's not where I got it from - I got it from the accident where the pilot suffered a seizure, pulled the CAPS, and ended up in a river. Without the landing gear collapse that is designed to break the fall on land, the impact was more sudden and the pilot had a crushed vertebra.
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Same thing (or worse) can happen on land if the main wheels end up in holes or straddling something rather solid.
 
In most other planes, we would be wondering why he died.



flyingcheesehead said:
That's not where I got it from - I got it from the accident where the pilot suffered a seizure, pulled the CAPS, and ended up in a river. Without the landing gear collapse that is designed to break the fall on land, the impact was more sudden and the pilot had a crushed vertebra.
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Yesterday, a hearing was held on the motion by Campbell's second attorney to withdraw from the case. This was added to the docket today:

01/15/2013 Order (Generic) Recorded
to withdraw

I'm assuming the motion was granted, and that Campbell was (again) given 30 days to find a new attorney. I'm going to wait a couple of days to see if anything else is added before getting a copy of this order.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Yesterday, a hearing was held on the motion by Campbell's second attorney to withdraw from the case. This was added to the docket today:

01/15/2013 Order (Generic) Recorded
to withdraw

I'm assuming the motion was granted, and that Campbell was (again) given 30 days to find a new attorney. I'm going to wait a couple of days to see if anything else is added before getting a copy of this order.

Ron Wanttaja
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Thanks for the update, Ron. Wasn't his deposition supposed to be on Monday, too?
 
wanttaja said:
flightwriter said:
Thanks for the update, Ron. Wasn't his deposition supposed to be on Monday, too?
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Actually, it was scheduled for almost two weeks ago. Don't know if it happened.
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Looks like it didn't. Just added to the docket today:

01/17/2013 Notice of Taking Deposition
of James R. Campbell

This implies either he has another attorney lined up, or he's going into deposition without legal counsel.

I find it very hard to believe that he would go into a deposition without a lawyer. Yet the only thing in the docket...so far...is the notice for himself, not for his company. This implies he doesn't yet have an attorney who can represent Kindred Spirit (previously, two separate depositions were scheduled for himself and for a representative of his one-man LLC).

Might be that the LLC's deposition can't be scheduled until his new attorney has formally notified the court. Or....he didn't show up for his own deposition (scheduled for 11 AM on 4 January) and did show up for the LLC's (2 PM on the same date). I find that a bit hard to believe.

If neither happened, that's four times in a row (counting his previous lawsuit) that he's dodged a deposition.

Ron Wanttaja
 
You can't depose an LLC or Corporation. The only person to depose is Jim either personally or as an employee/member of the LLC. A corporate entity can have (and KSA did) have interrogatories filed against it but they'll not be answered without counsel preparing them.
 
flyingron said:
You can't depose an LLC or Corporation. The only person to depose is Jim either personally or as an employee/member of the LLC.
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The previous two depositions were scheduled for Campbell himself, and for a representive of the LLC (person not specified in the notice). Campbell can represent himself at his own deposition, but I figure he can't represent the LLC even if he's the one deposing.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
Looks like it didn't. Just added to the docket today:

01/17/2013 Notice of Taking Deposition
of James R. Campbell

This implies either he has another attorney lined up, or he's going into deposition without legal counsel.
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Or it implies that the docket management system sometimes doesn't upload all documents in the order they are filed. Th notice of appearance may already be in the inbox of some clerk but hasn't been attached to the correct docket yet. I remember some prior filings not to follow the expected chronology.
 
weilke said:
Or it implies that the docket management system sometimes doesn't upload all documents in the order they are filed. Th notice of appearance may already be in the inbox of some clerk but hasn't been attached to the correct docket yet. I remember some prior filings not to follow the expected chronology.
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You're right, I remember some little bit of problem with how they were listing his attorney a while back. Could certainly just be human error in the clerk's office.

Looks like they're getting a chance to practice, because for the third day in a row, something new was added to the docket:

01/18/2013 Notice (Generic)
of Withdrawal of Certain Interrogatories served upon Defendant, James R. Campbell
01/18/2013 Notice to Defendant
of Withdrawal of Certain Interrogatories served upon Defendant, Kindred Spirit

This is...interesting. Back at the end of October, Cirrus served a set of interrogatories on both Campbell and Kindred Spirit. Three weeks later, both defendants filed objections, stating that "...the cumulative total of interrogatories propounded by plaintiff to this defendant exceeds thirty (30), including all subparts, in violation of Rule 1.340(a), Florida Rules of Civil Procedure."

One would assume that the new filings withdrew just enough interrogatories to bring the total back to the limit. I'll request the papers next week (after giving the docket a day or so more, just in case).

But...I would assume that this "gets the clock running" as far as Campbell and his LLC responding to the interrogatories. The response will then be due just about the same time as Campbell's deadline to get a new attorney runs out (this assumes he was again given 30 days).

If Cirrus' attorney intends to file a motion for summary judgement if the deadline expires, that'd give him another bit of justification for the judge to rule against Campbell. The notice of withdrawal of some of the interrogatories could have been served last week, or even last month. But it does look like they waited until Campbell formally lost his attorney.

Be interesting to see if Campbell already had a new attorney lined up.

Ron Wanttaja
 
wanttaja said:
But...I would assume that this "gets the clock running" as far as Campbell and his LLC responding to the interrogatories. The response will then be due just about the same time as Campbell's deadline to get a new attorney runs out (this assumes he was again given 30 days).
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Wow, wrong again. Order is attached... Campbell has TEN days, not thirty.

Campbell may have already arranged for replacement counsel and thus only ten days was required. Or the judge might have figured he'd had enough warning... the attorney's motion for withdrawal stated that Campbell had been informed of the need for new counsel back in early October.

Ron Wanttaja
 

Attachments

  • order on motion to withdraw 15 Jan 2013.pdf
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Yes, but expect the attorney, if he finds one, to immediately ask for more time.
 
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