Justice Elucido Well, now that Chief Justice Elucido of the Bullboard Court has spoken, I guess we can now dispense with the trial and move immediately to give AMK title to their share of Treaty Creek and throw in, um, maybe another $2 million for their trouble! I say: Tell it to the Judge, folks and let the chips fall where they may and work can resume on the Treaty Creek project.
As many of you know, I was a court reporter in State Supreme Court in NYC, and though it is decidedly not the Canadian justice system, there are similarities. The filing of amended pleadings, motions, amended defenses....STANDARD. As discovery progresses, things are -- you guessed it! -- discovered that bring about these moves. Claims may be dropped if the other side demonstrates credible evidence during pretrial proceedings and/or document demands that allegations made in the early stages were incorrect. Common sense tells us that when suits are initially brought, less is known then than after months of discovery.
If what Elucido says is true about Teuton's dropping the "missing documents" claim, it still may be a matter of controversy that the documents produced, if any, are full, complete, accurate and responsive to the underlying questions raised in the litigation. And it's also possible that the documents were delivered only years after they were requested by Teuton. But I won't prejudge the matter because these are issues to be decided in the courts, not by me or Elucido or anyone else typing feverishly on bulletin boards.
Mr. Roulston, again, discussed the Treaty Creek property in the context AMK's partnership with Teuton; he then went on further to make comments about the suit that -- like my comments and others' -- don't amount to a hill of beans because Mr. Roulston will not be rendering the final verdict in the litigation.
To his credit, I do not think that he has prejudged the case in any way; he only made general comments about litigation benefitting the attorneys more than the companies, which is a well-known cliche but not true here because Treaty Creek -- and I think AMK shareholders will agree with this -- is potentially worth hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions. So legal bills of a few hundred thousand dollars are a fraction of the ultimate prize.
As was pointed out in a post that reached a different conclusion than mine, Mr. Roulston did say the following:
"It seems to me that normal industry practice would hold that if a partner has spent the required amount of money in accordance with the terms of the earn-in agreement, then that should be adequate. However, it is dangerous and futile to try to guess the results of litigation."
WELL, DUH!!!! That IS the issue that has been joined and is now before the Court.
RR180