Shanahan’s Folly, in Color

Well, a little color. As covered in It was an itsy-bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot error, Kirk Shanahan digitised a chart from page 87 of Storms, The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction, even though the data was on the next page in Table 7. Ah, well, you do what you need to do.

So, today, I loaded the data in to a spreadsheet, and here it is, ODS, and if you need another format, ask. The first plot shows all the data, and looks like the Storms plot, but with a little extra and without the 23.8 MeV/He line; that is equivalent to about 2.6 x 10^11 He atoms/watt-sec.

Continue reading “Shanahan’s Folly, in Color”

Physician, heal thyself

This is just too funny to pass up. On LENR Forum, Zeus46 wrote:

maryyugo wrote:

I used to know an old doctor, now dead, who actually met and treated Papp for [redacted]. He said Papp was a flaming nut case (not his words– he said [redacted]).

Some interesting bits and pieces from California’s Confidentiality of Medical Information Act:

“CMIA prohibits a health care provider, health care service plan, or contractor from disclosing medical information regarding a patient, enrollee, or subscriber without first obtaining an authorization, except as specified.”

Note: I have redacted the medical information. (Not entirely, a doctor who treats someone and calls him a “flaming nut case,” would probably be violating HIPPA and CMIA, and repeating this could still be a violation.) I’m not a California resident, but just to make the point. CMIA prohibits any person from releasing private medical information, not only the providers listed. There are sources warning the media, for example, about publishing such information without permission. I’m reminded of the physician who accessed the medical information, particularly death certificate information, for Atkins, the cardiologist who developed the Atkins Diet, and then released it for political purposes (and it was misleading). 

Zeus46 went on to quote many relevant regulations and issues. Without doing extensive legal research myself, it looks like, on the face, the regulations set up sanctions for physicians, in particular, but also some other individuals or entities, for disclosing information similar to what maryyugo has posted.

It is possible that the original disclosure by Papp’s doctor was not a violation of regulations at the time, but this does not excuse maryyugo from the present violation. It is obvious to me that Zeus46 knows the real-life identity of maryyugo, it is not difficult to find, since he outed himself years ago, but continued using the “anonymous” identity. The real person, I’d give it more than 99% probability, is a physician licensed in California.

It appears that “Mary” is so eager to present classic debunkery, and so eager to prove it with “evidence,” that he completely ignores legal risk from his profession.

Zeus46 did not actually reveal that maryyugo is a physician, so he did not violate LENR Forum rules against outing or doxxing.


Update

I had assumed, as did others, that the CMIA rules applied to health care providers. They do, but they also apply to everyone. From LENR Forum:

THHuxleynew wrote:

maryyugo wrote:

I’m surprised you can put your clothes on by yourself in the morning. You can, can’t you? PS: dead people can’t sue for damages nor can anyone on the behalf. Not to mention that I am not releasing any of Papp’s sordid records because I never saw any. I am not even reporting facts about Papp! I am simply reporting an anecdote about what someone told me. Hear say. Also you seem to have lost track and wandered into the wrong thread. Anyway sue me. Give it a try. I am terrified.

FWIW, Abd’s comment on this related not to anyone suing you (ridiculous) but to professional disciplinary action for which no doubt the rules are different. However, I have no idea what is your profession, nor any of the details here, so what he suggested remains for me highly speculative.

I would assume that Zeus46 knows Mary Yugo’s identity. It is trivial to find. I have confirmed the identity and “Mary” has revealed, at various times, personal history that matches that of the identified person. One will see people, in various fora, calling Mary by the real name. Mary denies it, but the real person could trivially torpedo this, if different.

I was concerned that the comment here might not be from Mary, but could be a troll. This has definitely happened in the past. So I checked. The information I have as admin here is consistent with the known identification; more than that I will not say. Absent necessity, I will respect user rights.

Mary Yugo is a licensed physician living in California. He has a history of debunking (and has done real investigation, qualifying him as a skeptic in some cases). However, he is also highly opinionated and knee-jerk contemptuous of others who might be pointing something out that he does not understand, and this sequence shows it.

The risk is low, but Mary has not understood the risk. I do not know how CMIA is enforced, there might be no precedent, but the situation Mary describes is of a physician treating Papp revealing what would now be illegal to reveal (I don’t know about then). According to Mary, that physician is deceased, but CMIA also prohibits any person from revealing such information. And any person may file a report. If there are no provable actual damages, the potential fine is limited to $2500.

Mary claims it’s “hearsay.” Yes, it is. Hearsay about medical information, and it is contrary to CMIA regulations to repeat that. Theoretically, to anyone. So far, the walls don’t have ears, and in a case like this, my guess is that the courts would rule that CMIA does not trump ordinary freedom of private speech. But this was not private speech.

It was also unnecessary and irrelevant in context. Mary is a gossip.

There are resemblances, to be sure, between Papp and Rossi. And as to what is involved here, an alleged physician’s diagnosis, that merely demonstrates what was already known: Papp was not necessarily, himself, a reliable witness, and from the submarine incident, may have been capable of staging an elaborate fraud. The diagnosis, however, does not show that the Papp engines did not work, and from what I’ve seen, there is sufficient evidence that they did, in fact, work, to keep this affair in the realm of mystery. Mallove wrote an extensive article on this, and I consider some of his expressed opinions there unfortunate and not yet supported by reliable evidence, but … there are some things that we may never know. Or maybe the “Papp effect” will be confirmed in some way. What I have seen in this line is quite unconvincing.

We also know, then, that Rossi is an unreliable witness and is capable of arranging an elaborate fraud (the fake customer!). We know that Rossi was accused of various frauds in Italy; the ultimate disposition of all that remains a bit unclear to me. Rossi has claimed that all charges were dismissed and all fines refunded, but I have not seen that conclusion from any independent investigator. However, all that does not demonstrate that there is no Rossi Effect.

One statement that IH has made has raised concern for me. From the joint stipulation, IH introduces their “Statement of the Case” with:

Plaintiffs claim to have invented a technology called the “E-Cat” capable of violating the law of conservation of energy by producing far more energy than it consumes.

First of all, the plaintiffs do not claim that the E-Cat is capable of “violating the law of conservation of energy,” and the concept of “consuming” energy is scientifically defective. What is referred to is input energy, and, yes, it is claimed that the E-Cat generates more heat than could be produced by input energy. However, this does not violate conservation of energy if there is a fuel.

As a trivial example, it takes energy to detonate a stick of dynamite, but there is no violation of energy conservation just because the explosion releases far more heat than is generated by the blasting cap that triggers it. Energy “input” must include the potential energy of all system components.

Rossi did not originally provide any theoretical basis for his claims, but he was generally working with LENR, so the general claim would be that there is a nuclear transformation releasing the energy.

If the Industrial Heat investors did not think this possible, without violating conservation of energy, they had no business investing in such a claim. It sometimes occurs that skeptics dismiss LENR as involving “perpetual motion machines.” It would not be that. The energy available from a nuclear fuel is limited. It is not “free energy.” It would not be “perpetual.”

That introductory comment was just plain wrong, because Rossi doesn’t make that claim, and a working Rossi device would not violate conservation of energy. Conservation of energy is an aspect of the first law of thermodynamics, and the IH experts have pointed to violations, but that was in the testing, as to the behavior of steam, not about the claimed effect itself, which would presumably be nuclear in origin. Have the attorneys misunderstood?

If possible, this should be corrected. LENR should not be on trial in Florida.

It was an itsy-bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot error

A comment today pointed out a post by kirkshanahan on LENR-Forum.

zeus46 wrote:

KShanahan. What’s that story about the time you were trying to dispute some ‘cold fusion’ findings by showing a non-correlation between two factors, but ballsed up the analysis, and ended up unknowingly proving it? Or something. Abd used to write about it. Never heard your side of it. Maybe something about a horizontal line on a graph?

In my 2010 J. Env. Monitoring paper, there is a slight error in my discussion
of a specific figure. Abd has tried to use that to discredit everything I write
in a ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ style. I replied to him here on
lenr-forum, but in brief… Continue reading “It was an itsy-bitsy teenie weenie yellow polka dot error”

With friends like this, does LENR need enemies?

On LENR Forum, kirkshanahan wrote:

It seems Krivit has issued me a challenge (Kirk Shanahan, Can You Explain This?) but provided no way to respond. So I’ll do it here…

My first answer is: Probably, what exactly do you need explained?

That was, of course, a direct answer to Krivit’s actual question. The post is undated, but it’s the latest “Recent News Article” at this point.

Krivit takes Fig. 1 from 1993Fleischmann-Pons-PLA-Simplicity and adds some lines to it to make the displayed figure.

And Fleischmann asks the question himself:

One can therefore pose the question: “How can it be that the temperature of the cell contents increases whereas the enthalpy input decreases with time. 9” Our answer to this dilemma naturally has been: “There is a source of enthalpy in the cells whose strength increases with time.” At a more quantitative level one sees that the magnitudes of these sources are such that explanations in terms of chemical changes must be excluded.

But Krivit is asking the question of Shanahan. Why? Slow news day? We know that Shanahan has alternative explanations, and most LENR researchers and students have rejected them, but what could be useful is a detailed and careful examination of them. Krivit refers in an update to Shanahan’s response, but it is more or less as expected, and Krivit does not address the issues.

Apparently he is unable to understand why the temperature can increase and the voltage decrease over time in the cell without excess energy from LENR being the cause.

For starters, Krivit refers to the plot of voltage as if it is a plot of power input. He’s not incorrect, because the experiment is likely constant current, in which case power will track voltage, but simply showing a voltage plot will not communicate that to a reader. There are also issues of possible bubble noise that could cause an error in measuring power. That has been addressed to my own satisfaction, but the point is that the matter is not as simple as Krivit imagines. To him, that plot would be a proof — proof, I tell you — of LENR. But it’s not going to convince any skeptic, without serious study. And I haven’t seen any converts from that plot. Shanahan went on:

I would suggest he read the section of my whitepaper discussing the flaws in the F&P calorimetric method. THH conveniently posted a link (Mar 2nd 2017 post #92 in thread “Validity of LENR Science…[split]” “Kirk’s white paper answering Marwan et al: https://drive.google.com/file/…b1doPc3otVGFUNDZKUDQ/view) to it. Then think it through while chanting “CCS CCS CCS”.

Kirk does not know how to make links work. When text is copied, as he did, the link may look like a link, but it’s been munged with those ellipses in the middle. It is one of the little joys of LF software. Rather, follow the link and then copy the full URL from the browser bar. Shanahan also could have copied the link to that post 92, the date stamp is a link that can be copied. That’s what I do. The post number is also a link.

Here is his white paper.

BTW, there are other reasons besides ATER/CCS for this as well (and I suspect the cause of the drift shown in the Figure is actually not ATER, that comes later in the paper). Ask an electrochemist.

Shanahan has never successfully shown actual flaws in the Fleischmann calorimetry; rather, he has alternate hypotheses, unconfirmed. However, this could deserve careful discussion here. The LF style sequential commentary doesn’t lead anywhere but to useless smoke.

We have to assume constant current for the discussion to make sense. Fleischmann doesn’t actually say that the input is from a constant current supply, but gives the current as 400 mA.

Krivit responded to Shanahan, but didn’t.

April 28, 2017 Update: Shananah’s response: “Probably.” [That’s the extent of Shanahan’s explanation. He provided no specific details as to how the cell temperature steadily rises while the input power steadily decreases over several days in this graph. Dr. Shanahan, if you want to reply further, please send your comments to the contact page here. I will publish them so long as your reply is specific and exclusive to this graph and your response reflects professional etiquette.]

Krivit does not answer Shanahan’s question … at all.

The input voltage shows a decreasing trend, not the power, that’s what the plot shows. And this is not “steadily.” (Nor is the temperature “steadily” increasing.) But, yes, we know that this is a decreased power input. Shanahan simply pointed to his paper. Does it propose mechanisms? Well, “CCS” is Shanahan’s code word for an effective shift in cell calibration caused by unexpected recombination or a shift in where recombination occurs. Some such shift, as an example, could indeed cause an effect as shown. As well, shifts in loading could create such effects. How large is the effect?

At 4.9 V and 400 mA, the input power is about 1.96 W. The claimed XP is 115 mW by the end of day 6, or about 5.9% of input power. In an SRI series, this would be considered barely reportable. However, FP calorimetry was reputed to be quite precise, on the level of 0.1 mW.

Why is the voltage going down? With constant current, the cell resistance is going down, so the power supply lowers the voltage to keep current constant. Here is my stab at it:

Water is being split into deuterium and oxygen. That’s endothermic. Then the deuterium is absorbed by the cathode. That is exothermic initially, but moves toward endothermic as loading reaches the values necessary for the FP Heat Effect. Fleischmann-Pons calculations include these issues (or they would not be accurate; these are open cells, not cells with a recombiner where the potential energy created when deuterium and oxygen are dissociated. If there is an unexpected shift in this chemistry, the XP values would be incorrect. Ideally, the gases are measured, and loading is monitored. It’s complex. This is not a job for Steve Knee-Jerk.

And it’s not a job for me, either, unless I’m prepared to put a lot of time into it. I would much prefer to see a careful discussion here, with THH and, I’d hope, Shanahan, and others, as well; here, I’d organize this so that useful content is created. He is totally free and invited to comment here. THH has author privileges and I’d give them to Kirk as well, in appreciation for his years of service as the Necessary Skeptic.


THH wrote:

Going back to the original post. LENR advocates would I think agree that they get relatively little scientific critiques from mainstream scientists, or indeed anyone who is technically competent and highly skeptical, so interested in finding holes in arguments.

All this is symptomatic that this is debate, not scientific investigation, where “sides” are arrayed against each other, rehashing old issues, with issues never being fully resolved, with true consensus being elusive. To me, the big disappointment was the 2004 U.S. DoE review. It was superficial and hasty, like much with LENR. The review made claims pretending to be reports that were not supported by the review paper evidence (that were actually contradictory to it). The review process obviously did not include serious, interactive analysis of data, where errors would be corrected, instead they were allowed to stand.

The review did agree that further research was warranted, and half the panel considered that the anomalous heat was real, i.e., at least there is an anomaly — or collection of them — to investigate. If the DoE had actually been paying serious attention, they would have established a LENR desk. For their part, the review paper authors made no specific request. So they got no specific result. Funny how that works.

They need that. So I find no excuse for the process Kirk notes in the first posts here. Marwan et al may believe they have settled Kirk’s points. More likely (and my judgement reading the source material) they have partially addressed them.

… and possibly in a somewhat misleading way. However, the context is important. Kirk had been criticising LENR research strongly, on the internet, since the 1990s. I attempted to search for his posts on vortex-l, but that list is archived in zipfiles that Google does not search. Practically useless, typical Beatty.

Kirk’s points were answered again and again. To his mind, those answers were inadequate. I met Kirk on Wikipedia in 2009, when I first started investigating cold fusion. I saw him as the last standing major critic. I attempted to support examination of his ideas. I found him hostile and combative. I also attempted to present his ideas on Wikiversity. He cooperated with none of it.

If there are errors on Wikiversity, anyone could correct them.

The way to elucidate this is for them to defend their work against critiques of their defence – not to ignore the critiques of the defence and answer only the original points. Kirk similarly of course, but in this case I have noticed this phenomena less, he picks up on nearly all of the points made by Marwan et al.

His Letter to JEM was the last stand of published LENR critique. He has complained that JEM would not publish his final reply. This would be an editorial decision, not that of the scientists who replied to him, called the “Marwan” critique. Marwan and Krivit were the original authors, and Krivit dropped out, claiming editorial misbehavior. Vintage Krivit.

The Letter contained gross errors, so bad that the respondents did not even address them (and apparently did not understand them), and it was on a crucial point, Shanahan claiming to have analyzed data in a chart published by Storms, finding low correlation between heat and helium, when the chart actually shows quite the opposite. Shanahan had misunderstood the chart, which showed the scatter in heat/helium results, so the x-axis was heat and the y-axis was helium/heat. As the operating hypothesis is that there is an experimental ratio between heat and helium, that this may be a constant except for experimental error, what is actually shown is that as heat increases, the ratio settles, as would be expected from the lessening effect of fixed experimental errors. If the experimental data were perfect, there would be no correlation between heat and helium/heat. It took a long time before Shanahan admitted he had erred. His first response when I pointed it out to him was on the lines of “You will do anything to cling to your beliefs.” Pot, meet kettle.

That is water under the bridge.

From such a to and fro one can obtained a balanced view of the likely validity of each point. Normally both sides end up agreeing, or at least agreeing that areas of disagreement require further work. Typically what happens here is that points made are valid for a specific set of circumstances, and elucidating whether than covers the matters of interest takes time and effort.

The issue here is not primarily about who is right in this exchange. It is about how you convince independent observers that you are right.

Anyone with that goal has left science and is dwelling in politics and attachments. The assumption THH is operating on is adversarial, not collaborative. It’s also personal. Convince others “that you are right.

I prefer to set up process that will facilitate finding consensus, which may include creating new experimental results to clarify issues. There is a place in this for review and discussion of what has already been done, and I hope that this can take place here, but Wikiversity could also be appropriate.

See Cold fusion

Skeptical arguments

Shanahan

Many interested in cold fusion complain about Wikipedia suppression, but few, hardly any, would participate on Wikiversity, I found, which has standards much more like those of academia, it is not an “encyclopedia,” but more like an eclectic combination of university library, seminars, and studies, including student work.

In theory, then, Wikipedia would link to Wikiversity for “further study.” That would be standard, but was always suppressed by the dominant faction on Wikipedia. It is one of the actions of that faction that would not have been supported by the full Wikipedia community, but they got away with it because of lack of attention and clear stand, lack of unity and collaboration among supporters of cold fusion, or such collaboration expressed not in accordance with Wikipedia policies. Basically, the faction banned the editors with the editorial skills needed (such as myself and pcarbonn). They were about personal winning, and not actually aligned with Wikipedia policy.

In any case, I have uploaded the documents here:

The Marwan et al response to Shanahan

The Shanahan white paper

Independent testing <> IH must pay

On LENR Forum, Jed Rothwell wrote:

Wyttenbach wrote:

@AN: You just forget, that all useful reactors were built by IH…

Rossi claimed that he built some. He claimed they worked. I.H. tested the ones he made and the ones they made. None of them worked. But, anyway, if Rossi has one that works, he can have it tested independently. If it works, I.H. will pay up. Or, if they don’t pay up, he can easily win the lawsuit by citing the independent replication. Either way it is in his interests to have the claim confirmed independently.

As is common, Wyttenbach “reminds” us of useless and possibly misleading information. I have myself stated that IH made the reactors used at Doral, but I do not recall where that information came from, it may simply be something based on RossiSays that got picked up and treated as true. There were large reactor assemblies that might be “Big Frankies” that were transported from Italy to North Carolina. Perhaps someone will point to, like, actual evidence?

However, what Jed wrote simply is not so. Evidence of independent testing, if it existed, would still be irrelevant to Rossi’s basic $89 million claim against IH. That is based on nonpayment claimed to be a breach of contract, and to that claim requires that the contract require the payment, whereas there is ample evidence that the opportunity for a GPT was missed, through deliberate refusal to approve of the Second Amendment, on the part of Ampenergo (as well as other problems). That some Rossi device, somewhere else, “worked,” perhaps, even, a truly reliable test, simply doesn’t trigger that payment unless the Agreement conditions were met, and they clearly were not.

What is being confused here is an IH statement of intention to pay if Rossi satisfies them — voluntarily –, with an idea that they must pay.

In the counterclaim, which is distinct and different, whether or not Rossi devices work could be relevant, and evidence of independent testing could be introduced, in defense of Rossi. The original Rossi claim, though, is dead in the water — and, my opinion, very likely to be thoroughly burnt toast shortly, the evidence and facts sufficient to dismiss it being clear, and not at all vague or requiring jury assessment.

What remains and what may possibly require jury review are the counterclaims, against Rossi, and including the claims against Johnson, Bass, and Fabiani. Maybe. I have not completed my review of the MSJs.

However, it does appear that some Rossi claims, signed under penalty of perjury, have been egregiously false; so a risk for him has arisen of criminal prosecution. The “Johnson Matthey” issue is the clearest. He led IH to believe that JM was the real customer behind JMC/JMP, there can be no reasonable doubt of this from Rossi’s emails, plus, of course, there is the testimony of Darden and Vaughn, plus the emails of Johnson and Bass, and then he set up conditions to discourage IH from checking through direct communication with JM. All this makes no sense unless Rossi originally brought up JM — and wanted IH to continue their (mis)understanding.

Meanwhile, Annesser and Chaiken apparently left PBY&A and have set up their own firm, Annesser and Chaiken, PLLC. The email address provided is on a new domain, registered April 17, 2017. It’s parked at godaddy. Annesser and Chaiken are no longer listed on the PBY&A professionals page, as they were on the latest Internet Archive page showing them.

I had noticed an oddity: in the Discover hearing April 20, there was an appearance by Robert Bernstein, who is shown as a Silver Law Group attorney, and who is not listed as counsel for Rossi. Ruth Silver, the principal at SLG, has withdrawn from the case, so what was Bernstein doing there? I suspected Annesser needed some help, asked Bernstein to appear, but without Bernstein making a formal appearance in the case, as counsel for a party, (which I haven’t seen), I’m not at all sure about how that works. (Annesser is still listed as part of the SLG team. But his Linked-in profile shows this association as having ended in 2016. — and it still shows him at PBY&A. The SLG web site is obsolete.)

Actually, I just looked at Bernstein’s Linked-in page. He has been quicker to update. He is now listing himself as an associate attorney with Annesser and Chaiken PLLC. That is why he appeared at that hearing (which was after ACLaw was created as an email domain.)

So Rossi’s lawsuit has taken half the attorneys away from Silver Law Group (the least experienced ones, to be sure). Aw, Ruth, if you read this, to steal a phrase from Lenny Bruce, you betta off. 


Some more comments on LF discussion:

IH Fanboy (with his misleading and perhaps trolling username) repeats himself, over and over, on certain points. Generally, he does not actually cite evidence, but sometimes we can recognize the source. It’s typically misleading.

IH Fanboy wrote:

Nigel Appleton wrote:

Assuming this fascinating business comes to trial, I do hope that counsel for IH ensure that the idea that Rossi could could at any time have openly demonstrated a working eCat . . .

I’m going to break the rest of the IHFB comment into numbered sections.

[1] He did.

Not. NA means a an independently verifiable test, not merely some “demonstration” with Rossi in full control. Planet Rossi generally justifies Rossi secrecy based on his need to protect his IP from being stolen, but it is quite possible to do a black box test. It does require certain additional precautions, that’s all. (Such as running for substantially longer to rule out energy storage.)

[2.] Not only that, IH (i.e., specifically Dameron) built reactors themselves.

They did. They claim that they didn’t “work.” This must be understood, see below.

[3.] Darden (yes, the VC guy) apparently fueled them himself.

He did, and that makes complete sense.

[4.] They produced COPs upwards of 9.

Here IHFB simply assumes that Darden et al are lying. He has lost track of something — or willfully ignores it. Reactors do not “produce” COPs. COP is the result of a measurement analysis, and sane measurement includes the use of controls, etc. It is quite easy to calculate COPs that are wildly off, if measurements or analyses of them are in error. IH did “reproduce” Rossi claims, but then identified artifact; that is far more convincing as a negative replication than merely obtaining different results. It appears that when they used Rossi measurement protocols, they also got these elevated COPs.

Or Darden et al are lying, under oath. There isn’t much more room for middle ground here.

[5.] Dameron was still running them as late as January 2016 in the same building where Murray was just getting set up with his modified version of the reactor.

This is irrelevant. It is not clear what IHFB’s point is. I would expect IH to continue to test well beyond the ordinary “give-up” point. The essential point for IH is that what Rossi taught them to do doesn’t work. Whether the set of reactors under test in Doral “worked” or not is actually irrelevant to the suit: Rossi did not successfully transfer working IP with commercial value. Perhaps he waved his magic wand in Doral, applied liberal amounts of Rossi Grease. It doesn’t matter. The set-up to consider that a “GPT” was radically defective, on many grounds.

[6.] That is, until IH boxed everything up and closed shop, according to Murray, in response to the filing of the lawsuit.

Did Murray say “in response to the filing …”? This probably is based on something from the Murray deposition. You can find it on this page, which lists all deposition exhibits. As it happens, we have the entire deposition. It is 423 pages. Which one?

What appears to me is that IH finally gave up spending more money trying to validate the Rossi IP.

However, what did Murray actually say? Starting on deposition p. 102, he is talking about the Dameron tests (apparently IH wanted some independent testing internally, which makes sense.)

20· · · · A.· · Yeah, I remember he had a thermal imager, and
21· ·he kind of described it to us a little bit.· I recall
22· ·asking him to set up a test plan and test procedure and,
23· ·so we could document what was going on, and that just
24· ·fell by the wayside.
25· · · · Q.· · Did you set up a test plan and test procedure
·1· ·for your test?
·2· · · · A.· · Yes, we did.
·3· · · · Q.· · Do you know if that was produced in
·4· ·discovery?
·5· · · · A.· · I’m pretty sure it was.· We took the entire
·6· ·body of all the data and shared it.· So I would imagine
·7· ·it’s somewhere in there, test plans and test procedures.
·8· · · · Q.· · Okay.· And where is the device that you
·9· ·tested now, if you know?
10· · · · A.· · I can’t say today, but I know before we
11· ·closed up shop we took everything related to the
12· ·litigation under the direction of Jones Day and we put
13· ·it all together, and we boxed it up and we put it into
14· ·the locked facility in the back of the building.· So I’m
15· ·sure it’s all in there.

This does not state that the “closing up shop” was “in response to the lawsuit.” Rather, they simply are not like Rossi, who destroyed possible evidence (much more relevant to the lawsuit than what IH was doing privately). They followed legal advice, and it is unlikely that Rossi spoliated the evidence upon legal advice. If so, there might be an attorney in very hot water.

IHFB makes many claims without evidence, and is unreliable.

Alan Smith wrote:

@THH. What was the claimed input power in Lugano? A figure of 800Watts comes to mind, but that’s from memory. I can get a better insulated (and smaller) reactor to 1500C on 160W. So I would thin that 800W (if I am correct) would not need to be any kind of fiddled input measurement.

Smith is being lazy (and my memory was a power increase from 800 early on to 900 W later). It’s easy to look at the Lugano report. Claimed input power was around 810 W., then increased to 904 – 923 W. Claimed temperature from their defective camera analysis was about 1260 C at the lower power input to 1410 C at the higher power input.

Smith is likely correct in that input power measurement error is unlikely in the Lugano test. COP estimated was 3.13 – 3.74, which appears well within range of the blatant calorimetry error.

It’s been claimed that using a thermal camera for calorimetry was wildly inappropriate. I’ll disagree (as did Jed Rothwell). The problem was that they misused the camera, and botched the analysis, compounded by a failure to calibrate under operating conditions (i.e., using a dummy cell at full input power). It appears that one of the shouting matches with Rossi occurred when IH pointed out to Rossi that the cell he was measuring high COP with was a dummy cell. No fuel. Oops! At that point, I suspect, Rossi concluded they were snakes. Only a snake would steal the fuel!

(I have read this dummy cell story but have not confirmed it. Perhaps someone will point to a source. We really do have a mountain of evidence, see this page where I have collected it. I have started to prepare a timeline. If anyone wants to help, please contact me!)


And then there was this from IHFB:

Nigel Appleton wrote:

Sorry, but you’re wrong. Rossi can do anything he likes with the IP, so long as he doesn’t SELL items made using it in the territories already ceded to IH.

While I agree with you on this point, IH is (humorously) claiming otherwise in the suit. They think their territorial license somehow blocks Rossi globally.

Well, what Nigel wrote is substantially true, but not completely true. He cannot do “anything he likes.” In offering licenses, in other territories, IH has, from the Agreement, a right of first refusal. Hydrofusion and certain other pre-existing licensees are explicitly exempted from this.

As usual, IHFB is making things up when describing what IH “thinks.” He should get his mind-reading crystal ball fixed. They do not think what he wrote; but, hey, if they do, perhaps IHFB could quote the source, or at least give us calibration data on that crystal ball.

The bottom line here is that, no matter what IH “thinks,” Rossi could have continued to market his invention, IH could not stop that, except by matching any new offers, and could not stop him from agreeing with Hydrofusion, for one, and providing them IP, if they are still willing to talk to him.


This gift just keeps on giving. When we argue with b-s’ers, if we are not careful, we can get b-s all over us. Sigmoidal, normally quite cogent, wrote this:

IH Fanboy wrote:

Yes, I think the APCO inspired unable-to-substantiate-all-without-success is BS. And I think Darden and Vaughn did their best to stick to that story line in their depositions. Dewey suggested awhile back that he suspected Rossi’s team is gearing up to impeach witnesses. And it probably has something to do with deposition testimony compared to disclosed test report data.

The connection between “unable to substantiate” and APCO is a Planet Rossi trope based on the fact that an APCO consultant (later in business for himself, and who also visited the Doral Plant — or tried to, he may have been rejected, the Rossi email mentioning him and the list of visitors from IH imply that he was not allowed to visit, which would have been the first known clear violation of the Term Sheet) was on cc from the March 2016 announcement, which proves almost nothing. Darden and Vaughn would not care much about publicity, certainly not enough to perjure themselves. Darden and Vaughn are personally at very low risk here, the Rossi attempt to pierce the corporate veil is doomed, it is clearly contrary to law and precedent. However, Sigmoidal replied:

Well, not suprisingly I think your thinking is absurd, as I have implied over and over again.

But even with the extremely remotely possibilty that you are not simply seriously deceiving yourself and Rossi actually has something, there is nothing stopping him from demonstrating his high COP system, right now, this instant.

Well, if he has a high-reliability Quark-X system, nothing would actually be stopping him — other than, perhaps, his health. As to an E-Cat system, it is not at all clear that he has any devices ready to test.

This would have the effect of demolishing IH, winning the court case, awarding him over a quarter of a billion (with a ‘b’) dollars, completely destroying Darden’s reputation, opening up vast amounts of VC capital in Europe and other regions not covered by the license, result in fabulously increased quality of life for all, be the greatest discovery since fire (and that is no exaggeration), result in a virtual lock for the Nobel Prize Rossi so covets, and more.

No, it would not have that effect. First of all, the primary case is about $89 million. The “triple damages” thing is entirely separate, and a demonstration of a real device would have no effect on it, this is about a claim that Darden and Vaughn never intended to pay, and deceived Rossi about Cherokee, etc., all of which is terminally weak, with no substantial evidence having appeared other than Rossi hysteria.

Rossi already ran “demonstrations.” But let’s assume that Sigmoidal actually means rigorous independent testing by reliable experts.

“Greatest discovery since fire” is an exaggeration. Rossi did not discover LENR, nor did he discover NiH. He may have discovered a particular engineering approach, if he hasn’t been entirely a con …. but that latter possibility is looking very, very likely at this point.

No, he would not get the Nobel Prize. There is no Nobel for inventions.

However, Rossi has moved on to even better inventions. The mind boggles trying to imagine how awesome that will be!

Yes, Sigmoidal is being sarcastic, but is feeding certain tropes in doing so. Sarcasm in posts like this doesn’t come across cleanly.

IH Fanboy wrote:

sigmoidal wrote:

But if there were any doubt, we know that a dummy reactor was measuring high COP.

Yep, according to Darden’s story, he must have known as early as January of 2014 that it was all a big scam, because a dummy reactor gave the same COP as the other reactors.

This is based on a deposition, and testimony in a deposition, unless controverted, is legally “fact.” However, what IHFB says here is a conclusion from Darden’s testimony, not the testimony. This confusion between fact and conclusions is common for IHFB — and others as well. What that testimony indicates is the possibility or probability of error in measuring COP, which has already been widely suspected. This does not prove it was “all a big scam,” though it certainly raises questions of major error.

The problem is that we have these little things called facts.

IHFB should have his mouth washed out with soap for presenting implications and imaginations as “fact.”

Such as, Darden then proceeded to secure tens of millions of outside investment over the course of the next year and a half,

If Darden had done that and then threw the money at Rossi, it would have been a major problem. Rather, Darden et al continued to investigate, and the major funding raised was used for other projects, not Rossi. IHFB has pointed again and again to the quick reaction of Woodford to the draft IH press release in March, 2016 as if it proved that Woodford was really investing in Rossi and had been deceived. It doesn’t show that at all. There was a hope, obviously, that Rossi technology would pan out and the various failures would have been fixed.

and also required everyone to leave the lab in Dec/January 2016 so that he could carefully and secretively load the scam fuel into Murray’s modified reactor. Wouldn’t want the secrets of the scam fuel to get out.

IHFB is implying that this is inconsistent, but, in fact, it is fully consistent with what we know. That fuel mixture is not “scam fuel,” it would be what Rossi disclosed in 2013, and the failed test (control showing the same apparent heat as the experimental device) does not prove “scam.” It could just as easily show that Rossi had decided to torpedo the IH effort, perhaps feeling that he had not been paid or promised enough. IH simply continued with their plan (to “crush the tests”), and the fuel details divulged by Rossi (real or scam) were kept as a closely-guarded secret. IHFB is sarcastically implying that the appearance of contradiction (in his mind) proves that Darden was lying. This is how IHFB thinks, apparently. It’s not uncommon on Planet Rossi.

Rossi’s reported reaction to that no-fuel finding demonstrates that he is definitely not a scientist. A scientist would be very interested, not angry. However, if that was a no-fuel test without telling Rossi, it would have been (1) brilliant, and (2) very likely to set him off. Rossi clearly cannot stand independent testing, and a test that might show him up, proof that they are snakes.

IHFB went on and on with preposterous claims, as the LF thread on Rossi v. Darden wanders far from the nominal topic with the full collaboration of at least one LF moderator, now over 7000 posts.

JedRothwell wrote

Wyttenbach wrote:

Unluckily the burden of proof is on the IH side. They signed a foolish contract…

No, in the U.S. court system the burden of proof is on Rossi. The defendant is assumed innocent. You have to show strong evidence that the test worked, I.H. knows it, and it tried to cheat Rossi. I.H. cannot be found guilty if they have a legitimate difference of opinion regarding the test results.

Jed is confusing civil with criminal liability. “Guilt” is not an issue in civil cases. A clue is that mens rea (guilty intention) is not required to find civil fraud. The basic Rossi case was a claim of breach of contract, so for a court to find liability under the contract, the elements would have to be shown. The test “working” was not actually part of the contract, this was first noticed by Planet Rossi, which thought that the case was ironclad.

Basically, test results were up to the “ERV.” That is how it was written, Wyttenback is correct about that. However, there are some problems for the Rossi claim. First of all, the Agreement was not followed in setting up the faux GPT. To allow a postponed GPT, the Second Amendment was attempted, but that failed because of Ampenergo refusal to sign, a fact that Rossi left out of his complaint. IH only claimed, in their MTD, a technical failure, missing signatures (and then the “6 cylinder unit” issue, which simply shows that the Second Amendment, never having been completely executed, was ignored (until it came time for Rossi to make his $89 million claim). Easily, IH and Rossi could have made a side-agreement, but Rossi did not attempt that, apparently. Instead, he set up a faux customer to encourage IH to give him possession of the reactors, and arranged for Penon to measure heat — all of this without mentioning “GPT.” Far from getting the signatures of “all parties” to the start of a GPT, as the Second Amendment required, had it been valid.

If Rossi and IH had clearly agreed on Doral as a GPT, and Penon as the ERV for it, Rossi’s case would have been far stronger. Yes, IH could possibly defend on various bases, and a claim of fraud would be one of these. But the initial presumption would be as the Agreement had it: the ERV report was binding. I think IH felt safe with that because the originally contemplated GPT would have been in their facility where they could observe it very closely.

There is no presumption as Jed describes in civil cases. Rather, the judge or a jury is looking for equity, and a jury decision must be unanimous — in Federal Court — and there is no presumption at law as to which party is right. A requirement for absolute proof (“beyond a reasonable doubt” in criminal cases) could be quite unfair. The standard is merely the preponderance of the evidence, for the trier of fact (i.e., the judge or the jury in a jury trial).

(That is why O.J. Simpson could be found “not guilty” in a criminal trial for murder, but responsible for damages in a civil case.)


oldguy wrote:

By the way, can you point out to me where Penon’s deposition was under oath? I have “lost” that. I would think that it is in there but not finding it.

The attestation of the notary.

By the way, there is a list of all deposition exhibits, with a Table of Contents at the top, so that any deposition can be quickly found, and I’m going over it to list what pages are included in each copy. I may then create composites with all the pages we have.

Why scientists oppose cold fusion

This appeared on Peter Gluck’s blog. It was based on a private CMNS list conversation, I think I can reveal that. Ed Storms gave permission for Peter to publish it (as Ed normally does). If others give permission for me to publish their private comments, I will, but this is what was on EGO OUT. My comments are in indented italics.


Inspired by ALAN SMITH who will speak about “Why Scientists Oppose Cold Fusion” at a conference at April, 30 invited by Prof. Huw Price
Event already announced by this blog

LENR THINKER

Edmund Storms’ opinion/answer to Alan Smith’s presentation to come

Alan, this is a good question that needs a straight answer. New ideas are always rejected initially. Normally, this rejection is half-hearted and short-lived. In the case of cold fusion, the rejection was clearly orchestrated and has been sustained.

Ed has become cynical and often despairing. There was a level of organization to the rejection, but that was not the only factor; the rejection was natural, in many ways, and ascribing causation to a conspiracy that existed (rather openly) misses the deeper causes and, to the extent that this became a common reaction in the LENR research community, it disempowered it, because the true failures were then overlooked and what could have and — I’d say “should have” — been the community response was, for the most part, reactive instead of collaborative.

To understand this strong opposition, we need to consider how the energy resulting from cold fusion would threaten and destabilize the world-wide energy economies. This economic system is so large and so connected with the economic life of nations that the threat had to be fought. In other words, the response is based on self-interest and not on the difficulty in understanding the phenomenon. The people in charge know full well that given enough resources, science will eventually master LENR. This success would clearly result in economic chaos. That threat has not changed.

This sets up a very-likely-imaginary view of the “enemies of LENR,” and assigns them vast power as well as high motivation. Struggling against that confuses us and is a formula for failure. Instead of understanding the skepticism, and cooperating with it, taking it as a reality to be addressed clearly and with confidence in the ultimate prevalence of truth — which we have no monopoly on — we created and maintained an idea that it was all useless, because “they” would not let us succeed.

“Just because you are paranoid does not mean that they aren’t out to get you,” is not a confirmation of the “truth” of paranoia, and it does not matter what “they” do, it matters what we do. Conspiracy theories are associated with losers, not because there is no conspiracy, but because the idea that there is, if it is allowed to dominate our thinking, is guaranteed to disempower us.

Evidence for this conclusion can be found when the nations and industries that are now investigating this energy source are examined. The two countries desperately in need of clean energy, Japan and China, have major programs and the companies developing megacomputer servers are interested.

Japanese funding for LENR research is thin. This is not clear evidence for the “conclusion,” it is weak, circumstantial, and probably misleading.

These countries and industries are interested because they have a self-interest that over rides the potential threat. I predict success by these efforts will force the rest of the countries and companies to develop the energy source as a means of self defense.

A major breakthrough anywhere would lead to such effects. This is Plan A. A hope of this was behind the level of support for Rossi’s work that arose in the CMNS community. It was argument from conclusions, and we abandoned, to the extent that we did this, ordinary scientific skepticism and reserve. We abandoned the normal necessity of truly independent confirmation, some of us. Plan B, is my term for the ordinary process of science, as recommended by both U.S. DoE reviews (but not funded by them, probably due to political forces). Plan B is not reactive and is not designed to “prove” anything, but to confirm — or disconfirm –, with increased precision, what has already been reported, with a special focus on what is already independently confirmed, i.e., on research very likely to generate useful results, not speculative.

Plan B is the follow-up research, the process of replication of experimental results. It is not “replication” that is actually vague confirmation of a class of results, without being specific and measurable, i.e., “some anomalous heat” — but unreliable — or “some nuclear result” — but not correlated with heat. Plan B takes the best research and attempts to improve precision, to expand confirmation, to general results that can be analyzed and compared statistically.

In other words, rejection has put off the day of reckoning but it has not eliminated the problem. Therefore, the threat needs to be understood and solved because this energy will eventually be available on a commercial scale. Unless introduction of this energy into the system is done in an effective way, chaos will surely result. The energy industry needs to figure out how to prevent this chaos rather than reject the idea because rejection is no longer working.

This is the thinking behind the suspicion, generally among supporters of Andrea Rossi, that Industrial Heat’s goal was to destroy Rossi’s reputation, to suppress his technology, argued with a justification that some Industrial Heat investors have investments in or have consulted with regard to solar energy. This would allegedly demolish their solar energy investments. Much more clearly, though, if they were successful with LENR, and owning licenses, the profits would dwarf any possible losses with solar power. The same argument applies to oil companies: some of them have supported LENR research, which could be viewed as a hedge. Viewing a competing technology as a threat rather than as an opportunity is a formula for ultimate failure. Sane investors see opportunities, not threats, as such. (They will see how variant technologies will alter the overall economics, and will balance risks and possibilities.) I doubt that Toyota stopped funding Pons in France because of this “threat.” Rather, the results did not have the clear commercial implications that might have been needed for continued funding.

Meanwhile, the phenomenon is a challenge to understand in the context of conventional nuclear interaction.

It is not a “conventional nuclear interaction,” so, of course! We don’t know what it is, even if some of us think we do. We know what it does, but not how it does it.  If we converse with the skeptics from a position that we understand the mechanism, it better be good! and not merely a speculation with many missing pieces, details to be filled in later.

This challenge is attracting young minds who will eventually discover how LENR works.

That skips a very necessary step. Ed’s focus on “figuring out how it works,” i.e., the detailed mechanism, when the reality of the effect has not been clearly and unmistakeably nailed down and demonstrated so that those young minds are not facing career suicide through an interest in LENR, puts the cart before the horse. The horse is — or will be — fully confirmed and published experimental reality, then creating something needing explanation, even if that is difficult, even if it might take the combined mainstream scientific community decades to develop.

It is not necessary to satisfy everyone. It is only necessary to satisfy funding sources (as we have seen with the Texas Tech heat/helium initiative) and develop peer-review-published cover for academics to 

This process is being accelerated by the increasing amount of information that is easily available on the web. The conventional journals no longer have the power to control information. In fact, LENR is part of the revolution in understanding that is now underway on the web involving many unconventional ideas.

It is essential for the breakthrough that will lead to adequate acceptability for LENR research, that will open the doors for graduate students to choose LENR study, that work be published in the journal system. It is possible that if true suppression continues, this could be challenged to break the back of it, but it is not clear that true suppression continues. Many CMNS scientists stopped submitting articles to major journals. It’s understandable, but it is not helpful overall.

So the message is; change is underway, either adapt or die.

We are all going to die. Adaptation allows us to live powerfully until we die.

Blaming the skeptics (and the “enemies of LENR”) is a failed strategy. I see nothing in Ed’s analysis that provides guidance for moving forward. Ed has made some quite interesting discoveries that may be related to his theories, but that do not depend on them. It is taking years for this work to be confirmed or disconfirmed. Why? Some of it is quite simple.

For example, excess heat in the Fleischmann-Pons experiment has long been correlated — or suspected to be correlated — with electrolyte temperature. However, heating the electrolyte has been avoided because it then leads to lowered COP, if the heating is done directly. Avoiding low COP was a reaction to skepticism. In fact, raising electrolyte temperature only requires continuous input power due to losses, and this is easily controlled and the effect on calorimetry is well-known, and heat-reduction calorimetry can be used, to maintain constant temperature, and constant temperature reduces the experimental variables, leading to improved understanding.

And Ed found that if the electrolyte temperature was maintained, elevated, though below boiling, anomalous heat continued even if electrolysis current was shut down. This was actually “heat after death,” but because of the input power for heating, might not be seen as such. However, with insulation, if desired, the temperature maintenance power could be reduced and with good enough insulation and with enough anomalous power, input power might actually be eliminated entirely, requiring temperature control through cooling.

That continued anomalous power did not depend on “current density,” i.e., electrolytic power, appeared contrary to prior studies. But it is possible. Has this been confirmed — or disconfirmed? Not to my knowledge.

The ventriloquist of Miami

Peter Gluck dutifully reports all swamp gas from Andrea Rossi’s blog, JONP. So I saw this there, first. There are so many posts like this that I can’t and won’t keep up.

Napoleon
April 22, 2017 at 7:13 AM

Dear Dr Andrea Rossi:
The puppets of the so called “ventriloquist of Raleigh” are saying that IH received the 50 millions from Woodford because they had in portfolio many intellectual properties, not only yours. But I discovered that this is false! Reading the documents published by the Court, I saw that Woodford invested 50 millions in IH on February 2015 and at that time IH had only your IP in the portfolio! To make more clear the fraud of IH toward you, is the fact that Tom Darden made visits with only your IP in IH’s portfolio with senior officers of Woodford in your plant, to convince them to pay him the 50 millions and enjoyed the reference of the engineer of JM (Jim Bass) in the same day, during the visit of the same senior officers of Woodford in your plant of Doral.
Isn’t this true?
Cheers
A friend of yours of the silent majority that sustains your work and is disgusted from the dishonesty of the ventriloquist.

A “ventriloquist” is a performer who makes a puppet or other object appear to speak by suppressing the normal mouth and facial movements that allow us to identify the speaker. On this internet, this is someone who creates and writes through “sock puppets,” after the real sock puppets used by some ventriloquists. Continue reading “The ventriloquist of Miami”

Murray under fire, unflappable

On LENR Forum, Wyttenbach wrote one of his typical posts. Wyttenbach has a PhD in math, so he is likely to understand the Murray testimony — about the simulations — better than an ordinary bear. But he focuses on something that he is not highly experienced with, the human interactions, making unwarranted inferences and drawing conclusions that he’s pulling out of the air, or perhaps out of a confined, smelly, and dark space.

Why did Darden introduce Murray into this story? Continue reading “Murray under fire, unflappable”

Hearing transcripts!

Hearing transcripts are available to the public 90 days after the hearings, and I just downloaded two. These give a glimpse of the attorneys in action, and also the judges.

Here is all of them that we have so far, with the judge presiding:

09/16/2016 0048.0_Hearing_transcript O’Sullivan
12/05/2016 0084.0_Motion_hearing_and_status_conference Altonaga
12/09/2016 0088-0 Hearing transcript (no access) Duplicate of DE 84.
Newly downloaded:
12/28/2016 0097.0 Transcript of Magistrate Hearing O’Sullivan
01/10/2017 0106.0 Hearing Transcript

There are some quite interesting discussions, you get to watch attorneys make mistakes, and we find that Rossi was wearing a wig — a “piece on his head,” — December 28. Continue reading “Hearing transcripts!”

About transcripts of federal court hearings

Sometimes I have seen claims on lenr-forum.com that the public can obtain transcripts of court hearings by paying for them. I may have said this myself, here, because the filings imply this. However, during the 90 day period before hearing transcripts are published to PACER, it appears that only parties and attorneys may obtain transcripts, they are limited:

During the 90-day period (which may be extended by the court), access to the transcript in CM/ECF is restricted to court staff, public terminal users, attorneys of record or parties who have purchased the transcript from the court reporter/transcriber, and other persons as directed by the court (e.g., appellate attorneys). Also, during this time, parties may redact personal identifiers. After the 90-day period has ended, the filed transcript will be available for inspection and copying in the clerk’s office and for download from the court’s CM/ECF system through the judiciary’s PACER system.

Just as any member of the public may attend the actual hearings, any member of the public may use the “public terminal” in the court to read the transcript.

There are two obvious concerns. First of all, a hearing transcript may reveal personal information, that could be redacted. This is covered by Privacy Policy for Electronic Case Files. The court will not publish the files, other than on the public terminal — which does not allow printing, but, ah, google glass? — ; however, the concerns are to have been addressed within 31 days of the filing of the transcript. Even short of that, it is unclear that publication by an attorney (i.e., providing the transcript to media), if any private data has been redacted, would be a violation. American Bar has a discussion.

The personal identifiers to be redacted are Social Security numbers, names of minor children, financial account numbers, dates of birth, and, in criminal cases, home addresses2.

This brings up the other concern, an attempt to influence the case by “extrajudicial” comment.

Several topics presumed prejudicial to proceedings relate specifically to criminal proceedings. This reflects the comment’s recognition that certain types of proceedings, notably civil matters triable to a jury, criminal matters, and matters that could result in incarceration, are particularly likely to be prejudiced by extrajudicial statements. See Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct R. 3.6 cmt. [6]. These concerns further explain the additional limits on extrajudicial comments (discussed below) that Model Rule 3.8(f) imposes on prosecutors.

Statements Presumed Not Likely to Create Material Prejudice
While the comment sets forth a list of topics presumed to create prejudice, Model Rule 3.6(b) itself provides a “safe harbor” of statements that a lawyer can publish with considerably less concern about whether a pending adjudication may be substantially prejudiced. According to Model Rule 3.6(b), and the majority of comparable state rules, there are seven categories of information that presumably may be disclosed publicly:

the claim, offense, or defense involved and, except when prohibited by law, the identity of the persons involved;
information contained in a public record;
that an investigation of a matter is in progress;
the scheduling or result of any step in litigation;
a request for assistance in obtaining evidence and information necessary thereto;
a warning of danger concerning the behavior of a person involved, when there is reason to believe that there exists the likelihood of substantial harm to an individual or to the public interest; and
in a criminal case, in addition to subparagraphs (1) through (6): (i) the identity, residence, occupation, and family status of the accused;
(ii) if the accused has not been apprehended, information necessary to aid in apprehension of that person;
(iii) the fact, time, and place of arrest; and
(iv) the identity of investigating and arresting officers or agencies and the length of the investigation.

This list is not intended to be an exhaustive list of topics on which extrajudicial statements are permitted. Rather, Model Rule 3.6(b) is intended only to provide lawyers with a list of categories they can discuss publicly with little fear of violating the rules of professional conduct. See Model Rules of Prof’l Conduct R. 3.6 cmt. [4]. For an interesting case discussing application of the safe harbor where a lawyer effectively paraphrases statements in the public record, see PCG Trading, LLC v. Seyfarth Shaw, LLP, 460 Mass. 265, 951 N.E.2d 315 (Mass. 2011).

Is the transcript “information contained in a public record”? Any member of the public may access the transcript. The intention is to avoid revelation of private information, on the one hand, and to avoid prejudice, but this is being balanced with the right of the public to know, and of media to report on the proceedings. Media could send a reporter to the hearing, who could take notes (even verbatim notes if the reporter has that skill, i.e., the skills possessed by an old-fashioned court reporter or stenographer). See Media rules and also General Order 58.

A related concern is that transcripts may contain information that could not be presented to a jury as evidence. However, if it is public record, too bad. A party may request the court to redact anything prejudicial, it is not routine.

So to the present practical reality. It has been claimed that IH is attempting to dominate discussion of the case, while there is no evidence for that.

The argument is that IH would want to appear to the public as the “savior” of LENR. However, sending stooges to the blogs is a very poor way to do that; they could simply issue press releases with facts that are already public record. If they were interested in astroturfing — the definition of which does not resemble anything operative in Rossi v. Darden — there are other actions they could take. How about sending gobs of money to, say, LENRIA or Infusion Institute Inc.? Hint! So far, not a penny to III from IH or anyone reasonably accusable of being an IH stooge. As far as I know, no supporter of III has received any benefit other than information from IH or IH employees or contractors.

I’ll be setting up crowdfunding, though, and there would be no way to prevent such contributions, but … I would certainly disclose any attempt to prejudice my reporting.

(Setting up organizations that pretend to be grass-roots movements but that are actually under the influence and control of the master organization, for the purpose of influencing legislation, through letter-writing campaigns, was “astroturfing,” and that still goes on, but has nothing to do with LENR or Rossi v. Darden. Example, APCO apparently advised the tobacco industry, their clients, to set up such organizations, to pretend that there was a mass movement to protect the rights of smokers — to kill themselves with cigarettes without being informed about the involved science. There are anti-AGW organizations now that are reasonably considered astroturfing, but not all anti-AGW comment is from such, and, in the end, it shouldn’t matter if legislators keep their eye on the ball. On the other hand, if the legislator is corrupt, influenced by campaign donations, always a worry, and lazy, i.e., doesn’t verify the alleged public stand but uses it as an excuse, astroturfing could work.)

Any party could reveal transcripts extrajudicially, bearing in mind the limitations and rules, but, to my knowledge, no party has done so. Publishing excerpts from hearings, as evidence for motions, has been routinely done when relevant. That is not “extrajudicial.” If I were in Florida, I could go to the public terminal and take notes, it appears that this does not violate the rules.

I find it all quite odd, because notes can be inaccurate and biased, and as a non-party and non-attorney, I could not be readily sanctioned for publishing my notes. What would make much more sense would be an accelerated schedule for the public availability of transcripts. There seems to be no stated justification for that requiring 90 days.

Suppose the public sees that some party is being unfairly treated in court. The public could intervene by donating to a defense fund, for example. However, if the transcripts that might show this are not available until, say, after the trial, not to mention all the pretrial maneuvering, the right of the public, the very purpose of requiring public access, is frustrated and only useful for possible appellate review, which can be too late for some important issues.

As part of searching for sources for information on this issue, I found no example of sanctions for public review not showing some egregious violation. The case cited above, PCG Trading, LLC v. Seyfarth Shaw, LLP , involved a denial of an appearance pro hoc vice based on an alleged comment in a law review article. In the end, this denial was rejected by the appeals court, because it fell within the “safe harbor,” in the judgment of that court. Remarkable case: there what stands out is an attorney (Seyfarth Shaw) with an undisclosed conflict of interest who screwed his client over by filing a motion to dismiss a case against the other client. That motion was then used as evidence to allow a filing against his continued client.

I did find a remarkable case where an attorney was sanctioned for uncivil behavior. That was extreme behavior compared to anything I’ve seen in this case, though I’ve seen what could be called uncollegial behavior, aggressive toward opposing attorneys, accusing them of misconduct, and the ruling on that case distinguishes between aggressive promotion of a client’s interests and incivility. What I find especially remarkable in this case was that the respondent blamed others for his own out-of-control behavior. They made him do it, by being such assholes. (including all the other involved attorneys and any judge that ruled against his arguments.) I kid you not. Who could blame him for shouting, in the presence of such extreme provocation? Remarkably, a referee determined a 90 day suspension. It appears that the attorney contested it instead of entering a consent order. The court upped it to two years, more than the Bar Association had requested (one year), required that respondent appear in court for a public reprimand, set up an 18-month probation on the end of the suspension, and recommended (perhaps required) counselling. And this was two strikes, three and additional sanctions would be applied. Disbarment. I hope that the fellow took this seriously. What I know about making mistakes like his is that if one declares and stands for responsibility, it can all go away, eventually. He’d become a more effective attorney. His attempts to blame others were the giveaway that this was not some accident. This also is not just about behavior in Court, this applies to life as a whole.

I also found reference to a case regarding how an attorney is to act if the attorney discovers perjury on the part of the client. It was an extreme case.

 

 

No goal, no go, just drift

One of our best conversations here started with this commentary by THH on a blog post with a frivolous title, Touch and go at the Planet Rossi spaceport.

I’m interested in the U of Texas work. But there are many subtleties about how to eliminate mundane explanations. How sure are you that they are looking at this more rigorously than LENR typical?

Okay, one question or issue at a time. How sure am I? While Stuff Can Happen — even masters at a craft can make mistakes — there are, indeed, some masters involved, professionals, highly experienced, and fully aware of the history of LENR and, my sense, fully aware of what is needed for a LENR breakthrough. I’m a bit concerned about lack of recent communication, but this merely a reminder to self to make it happen. Continue reading “No goal, no go, just drift”

Rendsing a dead horse

Rends, of the LENR Forum staff cabal, has amazing news for us:

Rends wrote:

I want to add some facts concerning the questions if IH is somehow related to Cherokeefund or not, which is denied by Darden et.al.

There is no “question” about the connection of IH and Cherokee, and this was known even before Rossi v. Darden was filed, naming Cherokee as a defendant, based on a claim that Darden and Vaughn had misled Rossi, claiming that he was really dealing with Cherokee and that Industrial Heat was just a front or the like.

IH and Cherokee have not denied the “connection,” as Rends claims with no evidence, but only the claim of Cherokee ownership of and responsibility for Industrial Heat. So what happened? Continue reading “Rendsing a dead horse”

Touch and go at the Planet Rossi spaceport

Touch and go.

Nice place to visit but I wouldn’t want to live there.

On LENR Forum, Argon wrote:

There is not much new facts anymore to dig from court documents. Re-circling around pipe diameter (it was first claimed to be 5″ , remember), pressure and window frame paints and reflections, marks on the floor etc. is waste of time at this point. There is no clear evidence did Rossis container produce extra heat or not no matter how much we dig photo details and stains on floor.

Argon has noticed that much. But what it seems he is doing is looking for “new facts,” as if most everything is already known. Distinguishing between fact and fantasy can be … difficult. Most of us walk around in illusion and fantasy, starting with our sensory experience, which is heavily filtered and processed so that we don’t notice the artifacts, such as entoptic phenomena. We have Motions for Summary Judgment pending. These will depend on fact, not fantasy and speculative judgment. And my guess is that Argon does not discriminate, and confuses the two, routinely. It would not be surprising. In many ways, that is how most of us live, until we die and the illusions fall apart. Maybe. “Nice place to visit.”

In any case, thanks to Argon for the work involved in putting together a series of Planet Rossi tropes.

What instead has been shown plain clear in documents is that:
-Ross become suspicious on IH:s agenda, and is now proven, for a good reason.

No surprise, Planet Rossi thinks like Rossi. This is well-known in sophisticated circles: treat people with suspicion, they will come to merit the suspicion. Argon is, here, asserting “proof” for a claim of agenda. What stands as “proof” for Argon?

-IH was trying to rule LENR markets by trying to capture all relevant LENR IPR. IH business plan is so revealing and clear on this.

Argon doesn’t cite the sources. I’ve been going over and over those sources. I don’t see what he sees, what he thinks is “so revealing and clear.” IH clearly wants to be a major player with LENR. They are not, however, attempting to control the entire field, but rather to cooperate and collaborate with very much of it. They do not see LENR as a zero-sum game, unlike, say, Andrea Rossi, who has been explicitly attempting to dominate the market, to own it, he’s been very open about it.

What IH obviously wants to do is to, first, stimulate LENR progress (including by funding basic research without commercial potential in itself), and, second, to be in a position to recognize and participate in genuine commercial opportunities, if those arise. Right now, I don’t know of any, but they might know more and it is their business to know more. If they operate with lies and deception, they could easily trash their relationship with the field.

-Funding rest of the researchers they tried to control how LENR comes to market – if ever. (any research community members want to speak up?)

Most CMNS researchers will not come close to fora like LENR-Forum. This is meaningless. “Coming to market” is way premature for the field. Rossi was the only game even asserted to be close. Brillouin Energy makes some claims, but if one reads them closely, they are not close. They are merely promising, if that. Nobody really understands how LENR works, it is, at this point, a lab curiosity, unreliable, difficult to control. There are some experimental approaches working on that, but the best work at this point is fundamental science, particularly confirming and measuring with increased precision the heat/helium correlation in palladium deuteride work. This has no commercial implications and is being funded, effectively, through charitable contribution and state matching funds. IH is, of course, quite aware of this. I was told first by someone from IH that the effort in this regard was well-funded, and only discovered the source of that funding later.

What I do know is that IH has good relations with most of the established researchers in the field, if not all, and there is no sign of discontent or opposition to IH there.

-It become as big surprise to IH that Mr Rossi choose rather to fall with IH in court than let them steal and control the LENR market. For example mr Weaver learnd about problems just late February just before IH published their press release. Until that he was going full ahead on expanding IH:s smelly reach.

This is incoherent. Rossi’s action filing the lawsuit has demolished his own fundraising possibilities. Weaver knew about issues with Rossi long before last February, but held his water.

-Hiring israeli partners to do the dirty work to invalidate test report by seemingly unethical means – no matter was court sealing the doc or not. The proof is there in black on white,

There is no evidence of “hired Israeli partners.” This was Levi’s fantasy. There is no “proof,” but not only is there no proof, there is no evidence other than Levi’s rant. There is no evidence that the private investigator was working for IH, and no evidence that the investigator attempted to “invalidate” the Lugano report. Essentially, it takes a paranoid mind to read the documents that way. Argon is claiming “proof” in “black and white,” but does not actually point to it. Game on, Argon. Put up or shut up.

In some of the court pleadings, attorneys claim proof, and point to documents as evidence, and those documents don’t support the claims, and sometimes even the opposite. In some circles, that would be called “lying.” Claims in pleadings, though, are not subject to perjury for false representations, though sometimes there can be sanctions.

– Mr Weaver sending very nasty mail to Swedish professors should be glowing warning sign for any current and future business partners to stay far away from any IH-initiatives. I’m very delighted to see that Swedish companies are much more far sighting.

I didn’t find that mail nasty at all, nor did the recipient claim it was nasty. It was Levi who reacted that way, hysterically, and then Rossi claimed that this was an attempt to damage his Nobel Prize prospects. Yeah, right.

-Not signing amendment paper is just lawyer juggling and spells out loud and clear real IH skin.

It is not just a lack of signature, and it was not IH who did not sign. It was Ampenergo, Rossi’s long-term supporters, and this was not some merely technical oversight, it was deliberate. The Second Amendment, that allowed the GPT to be postponed, was invalid, and Rossi knew it. IH then said that Rossi could still earn the money, if he fulfilled the underlying purposes of the Agreement. Rossi took this as allowing him to set up a fake GPT (creating resemblances) without ever obtaining the written agreement that the Second Amendment required, if it had been valid. Rossi, being paranoid, never understood that in business, one must actually satisfy customers and investors, not merely fulfill some technical requirement. When he refused to allow Murray to visit the Doral plant, that was a bridge too far, way too far. This violated not only the Term Sheet, but also the clear intentions of the Agreement that IH would have the ability to fully observe the required tests. Rossi did not have the right to choose who would represent them, they had that right. Rossi, in his answer, explained that he believed that Murray was a spy. Spy for whom?’

And why would there be Rossi secrets at Doral, other than the Plant operation itself, which Rossi had supposedly fully disclosed to IH already?

Well, he was doing his own research there. Doral, instead of being what he had represented, a chemical manufacturing company, was entirely Rossi created, designed, controlled, and paid for. He rented the warehouse and only subleased part of it to “JMP” and all this really existed only on paper and in his mind. And he lied about it again and again.

-Big resources of Planet IH here is repeatedly and consistently redirecting discussion to some irrelevant details every time some one tries to touch some relevant subject. That is so clear pattern that this thread is very fruitful source for lots of manipulation studies to come. (see what happens quickly after this posting)

There are no “big resources of Planet IH” on LENR Forum. The closest is Jed Rothwell, who was at one time listed as a possible advisor. Jed has claimed he has not received any payments from IH; and I know Jed, for a long time, as a source of funding and support for LENR. He is not in IH’s pocket, he doesn’t need IH, but Jed supports LENR and anyone who supports LENR is, as the science, would be likely to have some friendly connection with IH. He’s visited them in North Carolina, which is not far from where he lives.

Then there is Dewey Weaver, who is not positing on LF any more and who might not go back. IH doesn’t need LF, for anything. I can guarantee that IH is not supporting coverage of Rossi v. Darden, at least not so far! I think I’d know about it!

– Have you ever wondered that IH was not willing to arrange test customers.

Liar, liar, pants on fire! Okay, he probably believes this carp. IH had a customer ready and willing, and Rossi rejected it, and this is clear not only from IH testimony, but from the Rossi email proposing the move of the Plant to Florida. Basically, Argon has believed Rossi Says, but has not modified his impressions by studying the case documents. And if he does, he will likely be searching for proof of what he already believes. That is the major way that we fool ourselves.

-Have you ever wondered why IH is not willing to give back the license if they think that Rossis conainer is expensive water boiler with COP of 1.

Why should they “give back” what they paid for? We do not know that IH has refused to return the license, nor on what conditions. This is all Rossi Says. One of the possibilities here, it is explicitly suggested by IH as one of two major possibilities is that Rossi actually has a real technology but is creating a breakdown of the IH Agreement in order to get them to return the license — as he did with Hydro Fusion before.

(Annesser ridiculed the “two alternatives,” ofensively, in my mind, as logically inaccurate. I.e., of course there are more than two possibilities, but some of them will not be ones that would be asserted by IH, such as “IH is lying through their teeth.” Logical possibility, to be sure. Not a practical one.)

As long as there is even a small possibility, I would expect IH to hold on to the license. However, if there is some consideration for return, such as a refund of their investment, they might let it go. That investment at this point is north of $20 million, I expect. Would they take less? I don’t know.

All this would be considered in settlement negotiations, if there are any, or in a court decision, if it comes to that.

Argon is thinking in black and white terms. I.e. if the technology is worthless, which he probably believes IH is claiming — I haven’t noticed that — then the license is worthless, but the value of a license like this, to a venture capitalist — and that is IH — is the probability of value in the future times the benefit if that value matures. In this case, the benefit could be a trillion dollars. What has been shown (from the IH point of view) is that Rossi did not transfer the technology to them, if it is real. So what is the probability that it is real? In this scenario, Rossi is withholding the secret, and he has done the like of this before. Rossi seems to understand that, with the License Agreement, he was not only selling the “E-cat,” but all related future development, such as Quark-X. And easily he might believe he sold it too cheaply.

But a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If there is enough cash on the barrel, IH might decide it would be better to invest that elsewhere. These are complex decisions, not the mindless “real or not” calculations of Argon. I know a lot, and I still don’t know which I would choose. To pay IH what it would take, though, would probably be more than Rossi has, so he’d need to find a new investor, if there are any left on Planet Earth who would trust him. Mostly Planet Rossi is a collection of losers, with big mouths and small pocketbooks. Still, you never can tell. How about Magnus and Hydro Fusion? Have they forgiven Rossi for what he did to them — by his account — in 2012? Hope springs eternal.

Disclaimer: No I don’t believe Rossi had anything produced in ‘customer’ container nor that ERV would be reliable, but I’m thankful for him to reveal true colors of IH:s LENR job. Someone will it as viable technology and LENR now escapes from IH:s hands – for the better of us all.

What I’ve seen of IH operations, in the court documents, actually gives me high faith in them as angel investors. I know some researchers that they have supported. Nobody is complaining, but Rossi, the one who received the most support, and IH did not stop Rossi from developing and promoting his technology, there is no evidence of that. They had a right of first offer as to licenses elsewhere, but this could not harm him, it would give him more money if they exercised it. He could have installed a high-power reactor in Sweden, years ago, if he had one. The one who has stopped Rossi, if he has anything real, is Rossi.

Rossi created the Doral test that he slaved away at. He is now claiming that it was uncomfortably hot. Did he claim that during the year? Did anyone else report that? The entire idea of a 1 MW test was Rossi’s, this is not what any engineer would want. Apparently IH offered to pay him to not do it. He refused. Rossi did not use lawyers for what they are good for, negotiations. He only used Annesser to threaten and then to sue. My guess is that Annesser encouraged that, leading his client down the road to ruin.

PS. Just wish me356 has taken a good read on this case and keep cool and stay far away of such business partners.

I see no evidence other than “me356 Says” that me356 has anything real. Maybe he does. Maybe not. I decided, by 2011 or 2012, that the future of LENR could not depend on speculations and secret commercial ventures (like Rossi), that we needed a “Plan B,” which I identified as encouraging basic scientific research.

I see IH as a partner in that effort, willing to work with other players, so far, at least. I expect genuine commercial efforts to be secret, and I expect science to be open. The two, mixed, become mixed-up, because there arise conflicts of interest. LENRIA, Nagel’s organization, may have a role to play here.

Abd on Abd as the Center of the Universe

They are talking about me on LENR Forum again. While the history of my ban there is quite open, if one studies history on LF and looks at what I wrote here about it when it happened, it’s obvious that few actually know the history. LF Staff are far from transparent, which is a major part of the problem.

Let’s start with this: the Condensed Matter Nuclear Science (CMNS)  community needs to develop what are called, in my training, Structures for Fulfillment. From the beginning, the community was fragmented and ineffective, compared to what might be seen as possible. When I came into the field in 2009, I found no evidence of sane collective decision-making procedures that were anything more than ad hoc. Fund-raising was isolated and largely individual. Factions were fighting with each other, but aside from a few highly opinionated individuals, internal criticism was mostly missing. Experts in CMNS did not criticise the work of others, they would not even comment on it (and I asked).

I saw, in CMNS conferences, no mechanisms for finding and expressing consensus. So, from a social point of view, it was all primitive, and mostly the community was reactive, blaming the lack of progress on “them,” the mainstream refusing to accept experimental reality. But how was that reality being communicated? Was it effective and clear? Were experts in communication being sought, either as paid consultants or as volunteers?

Mostly not. Something was missing, and, since I could see it, it became my responsibility to create it. So, now, to LF. This will be long, because many complex issues are raised. Part of the problem is an intolerance of complexity. Complexity is not for everyone, but what I’ve found, many times, is that those who hate complexity will act to suppress it, even though they could simply step around it. What we do not understand, we try to kill, it is probably a basic survival instinct, xenophobia.

In a sane organizational structure, complexity is channeled. In an insane one, it is repressed, censored, or at least ridiculed and insulted. Continue reading “Abd on Abd as the Center of the Universe”

About vacuum and steam/water circulation

It’s been said many times on LENR Forum, and is even stated in the infamous Exhibit 5, wherein an E-cat-supplied steam pressure of 0.0 barg (by definition, atmospheric pressure) is considered impossible, because, it is claimed, the reservoir at the E-cat, into which the water returns, is open to the air, so it is also at 0.0 barg, so steam would not flow.

The contrary claim, then, is that the pressure at the condenser is below atmospheric, which would allegedly create backflow from the return, the water would not return. Something is being overlooked. Continue reading “About vacuum and steam/water circulation”

With Rossi, an emphatic No means “I can get away with saying this.”

Thanks to LENR Calender, I noticed this question on JONP:

Alberto
April 15, 2017 at 1:23 PM

Dear Dr Andrea Rossi:
In a blog has been published that the firm USQL, of Engineer Fulvio Fabiani, belongs to the same trust that owns Leonardo Corporation (Florida Energy Trust): is it true?

Andrea Rossi
April 15, 2017 at 2:05 PM

Alberto:
It is totally false that the company USQL belongs, directly or indirectly, to any trust that owns any quote of Leonardo Corporation. If any blog has published this information, it must be clear that:
1- this information is false , therefore who published it is a fraudolent bloggist, probably paid to make a so blatant falsification. Should he, or she, be a journalist, for such a falsification this fraudster would have been fired.
2- this information gives the measure of the low level of the puppets
3- the ownership of USQL has been published in the deposition sworn by Eng. Fabiani, that has been disclosed in the pacemaker of the Court. The ownership of USQL is also very easy to verify in the published documents and in the public register of the USA companies:also such document has been published in Court.
Clearly our foes, not having true arguments to make their case better, are now recurring to false statements.
Warm Regards,
A.R

In many court documents, I’ve seen recently, Rossi makes statements that other statements are false (“disputed”) when the reality is that the statements are true, as stated, but Rossi restates them to make them arguably false. There is — or was — a relationship between Florida Energy Trust and both USQL and Leonardo Corporation (Florida). In a deposition, Rossi is unclear about who owns Florida Energy Trust, but he thinks he is the sole beneficiary. The owner of Leonardo Corporation (Florida) is Florida Energy Trust, to be sure.

That is, the ownership of LC (FL) is different from LC (NH) which was owned entirely by Rossi. This then creates some problems, because LC NH was party to the Agreement, the First Amendment, and then the proposed and failed Second Amendment, and Leonardo FL, which existed from 2010 on, i.e., at the same time as LC NH was signing with Industrial Heat, has separate ownership (even if Rossi is the beneficiary). Rossi claims that NH merged into FL, but … when is unclear.

Rossi’s response to the IH Motion for Summary Judgment is completely inadequate on this. No evidence is shown of the merger. There is other evidence to review, to be sure, but …. what do I immediately find now?

First of all, Florida Energy Trust (FET) was reported as 100% owner of Leonardo Corporation for 2012. What Leonardo Corporation? The EIN is 90- 0780933. The address of the corporation is c/o Andrea Rossi, 1331 Lincoln Road, Unit 601, Miami Beach FL 33139. We know there was a $1.5 million payment to LC (NH, from the Agreement) in 2012. This is greater than the entire income of the Leonardo reporting. The return is signed by Travis, the New Hampshire accountant.

The 2013 LC return shows the same EIN, address, and FET ownership. We know there was a payment of $10 million to LC (NH?) in 2013. This is, again, much more than the entire income reported for this Leonardo. (The original return apparently claimed about $3 million in income. The amendment reduces this to less than $1 million.) There is also a deduction for “Florida taxes.” This is not conclusive but indicates a Florida corporation.

I conclude that this return is for Leonardo Florida, in spite of the accountant being in New Hampshire, and that the IH payments went into Leonardo NH. Rossi simply continued to use the same accountant for 2012. These returns do not cover the IH payments, but Rossi claims a merger, which would merge all the income and expenses as well. If so, the merger happened after 2013. It is possible there is evidence re the merger somewhere in the mountain of documents recently filed.

Then, from that 2013 return, LC Florida loaned $35,000 to USQL. It also shows an “investment” in a MW Plant of $1,248,617. Given that Rossi sold a 1 MW plant to IH in 2013, and was not known to have another, this is very odd. In any case, the $11.5 million paid as directed by Rossi did not go to LC FL, but likely to LC NH.

Now, USQL. This is their 2013 incorporation document.  It shows the Registered Agent as Johnson. Yes, the same Johnson. Two Managing Members are shown: Fabio Fabiani and Florida Energy Trust. I understand that his is unusual for a managing member of an LLC to be an organization.

The office of USQL is the Rossi address above (including Unit 601)

This is a 2014 reinstatement for USQL. It still shows FET as a managing member. 2015, the same. The same Unit 601 address. The 2015 return was filed March 3, 2015. The Doral plant was in operation.

2016, however, FET is dropped, same in 2017. The 2016 report was filed February 23, 2016, and the address was changed to Unit 401. The 2017 report was filed about a week ago, still with the same address, Unit 401, though Fabiani is known to now be living in Russia. Johnson is still the registered agent.

Now, what Rossi wrote. It’s more or less correct, as to the present state, perhaps, but it is the “less correct” that is something so common with Rossi. From his vehement denial one would think that there was no connection between FET and USQL. However, there was a connection. It was dropped at about the time of the end of the GPT.

What happened to the $35,000 that LC (FL) loaned to USQL? The Leonardo tax returns we have — which may not be all the “Leonardo” returns — contain numerous red flags that I’d expect an IRS auditor to be interested in, and this question about USQL is of some small interest.

Not a large interest. Why Rossi didn’t just say the truth could remain a mystery, except that deceptive claims that are in some way true seem to be SOP for him. A simple response would have been “At one time, FET was a manager of USQL, along with Fabio. That was dropped in March, 2016.”

However, around this time, Fabiani’s equipment — his computer and electronics — was thrown outside at the Plant, Fabiani retrieved it from the trash. He writes to Murray, shortly, that Rossi thinks he is a spy. He’s lost his job. When Rossi filed the lawsuit, I think he saw the train coming down the track, and got out of town, even though he is still using the condo as address (apparently, it’s owned by Rossi). He is more or less screwed, but I hope that he saved enough to see him through.

Fabiani was a friend of Rossi’s wife. That’s how he got involved. He seems to have remained loyal to Rossi, and it is not clear whether or not he knew about the frauds. I think his Lewan interview that I previously reported on was sincere.

Rossi is paranoid, hair-trigger reactive. Someone on a blog mentions an obsolete fact — I had seen this and may even have repeated it, though I was not the source — and he starts frothing at the mouth.

 

Agreement written with vanishing ink

And Rends does it again, making claims with a link to a document that does not show what he claims. This one was a familiar point to it, and I thought for a few minutes that I’d made some big mistake with what I’d written before. Instead, there is another explanation.

On LENR Forum, Rends wrote: (Abd emphasis)

The heat exchanger story is a good example, as the IH expert Rick A. Smith has shown in his report by means of photographs, there was this serpentine heat exchanger, just as Rossi has described it to Wong. What sense should the installation of this heat exchanger make, if the Ecat plant does not work? Because according to the agreements between IH and JM Products, no IH personal would have been allowed to take a look into the black box. This heat exchanger makes sense only if heat is actually produced, if this was all a fake, this installation would have been completely unnecessary.

https://thenewfire.files.wordp…_1_to_15_ocr.pdf#page=136 Continue reading “Agreement written with vanishing ink”

On fantasy, fact, belief, and faith

I had recently seen a sane post from Rends and so, I thought, maybe he is learning. And then I saw this exchange today.

On LENR Forum, Rends wrote:

It is not about faith but about facts.

Great. However, Rends proceeds to mix fact and fantasies, his own or some, perhaps, shared with Planet Rossi. “Fantasy” is not a synonym for “error,” but rather distinguishes fact from what we make facts mean. Science, in general, is a collection of experimental reports (generally, “fact”) plus interpretive relationships that have been shown to be useful for prediction of future findings and experience. These are not fact, they are fantasy, and an ontological or epistemological error is made when they are considered fact. They can be highly useful, but if considered fact, they can inhibit change and growth. Rather, fantasies are useful or they are not. That, itself, is a fantasy, by the way, mine.

This ontology might seem to create an endless regression, but, in actual practice, it does not. The sky does not fall when we recognize our favorite beliefs as being fantasies, once we get over the impression that fantasy is Bad. Fantasy is incredibly useful, when distinguished.

So, the rest of Rends’ comments:

Fact is, there are several reports and expert opinions (such as the Lugano Report, the Penon Report, the Wong Opinion etc.pp.), which are mentioned in this court proceedings, from respected scientists, who confirm that the 1MW Ecat Plant works, Cherokee Investment Partner has only two technicians that make assumptions without having ever tested the system itself.

What a mess!

Fact:

There are two reports, allegedly by experts, mentioned in the Court Proceedings. The Penon Report allegedly confirms that the “1 MW Plant works.” The Wong report does not. Wong was hired to critique the Smith and Murray expected testimonies, and Wong claims to find that certain criticisms are not well-founded. He does not opine on whether or not the Plant  “worked.”

There is the Lugano Report, which is not an expert opinion, these “respected professors” — that’s a Planet Rossi trope and is common among pseudoscientists — were not expert in the necessary field, calorimetry by using thermal imaging — so behind this opinion is a set of held assumptions, beliefs, or fantasies, that are not explicitly distinguished. The Lugano report and all the other reports do not “confirm that the 1 MW Plant works.” It would not do that even if it were not riddled with errors.

Only one set of people have thoroughly tested the E-cat technology where Rossi did not effectively control the process, and that is Industrial Heat. The flaws in Lugano and prior reports (such as that by Kullander and Essen) were well-known and widely discussed, long before this trial.

Then, Rends repeats the Planet Rossi trope, part of the general conspiracy theory that Rends supported in the past, that the LENR investment and control is in the hands of Cherokee. None of the evidence supports that. Rends converts the fact that Darden is CEO of Cherokee into a claim that Cherokee is in control. It is much more “factual” that Darden is in control (of both), but as CEO, Darden is responsible to the investors who own the various Cherokee entities.

I have seen no evidence that Cherokee invested anything more than a de minimus allowance for Darden to use Cherokee facilities, such as a mail drop, and Fogleman is CFO of Cherokee and provided services to IH and IPH.

Cherokee did not invest in IH, outside of these services, and it is possible that Cherokee was reimbursed for them. (I recall some evidence to that effect, but it’s not important enough to research right now.) This was all de minimus. The Agreement was explicit, and included an Entire Agreement clause that disallowed any reliance on verbal assurances, which may have been actually misleading, or which may have been merely misunderstood, and the latter, given how we have seen Rossi interpret known fact, seems quite possible. Entire Agreement clauses are written and included, as standard practice, precisely to avoid, years later, arguments over he said, she said.

And there is Cherokee Investment Partners, Thomas Darden et.al., who by all means try to get the entire IP of LENR Technology world-wide under their control with an impenetrable network of sham companies, where they do not even know themselves, witch management position they have inside this companies.

So again Rends is building a conceptual structure based on the Cherokee fantasy. There is no “impenetrable structure,” though there is privacy. For LENR investments, there is IHHI, a U.K. limited liability company, with controlling interests in the hands of Darden, Mazzarin0 (a long-time Cherokee officer), and Vaughn, who put in personal investments. That’s about control. Woodford invested $50 million, receiving preferred stock, and apparently committed $150 more if needed (as, for example, if IH had decided to accept the Doral demonstration as real and to pay Rossi in spite of the flaws — which testimony shows was their intention. That is, if they were satisfied. If not, blood from a turnip. Without solid evidence, independent, such that IH could then present it to investors (such as Woodford) to raise the $89 million to satisfy Rossi, paying Rossi was impossible. The limit of the Cherokee friends to personally raise, absent that clear evidence, was probably about $20 million.

IHHI is the sole owner of IH. IPH is a shell, holding IP, wholly owned by IH, and operated by IH. This is not a complicated structure. IH appears to be the operating company. This all seems fairly standard to me. To those who mistrust standard social structures, it seems like some highly suspicious mystification. Darden et al are venture capitalists, but with a twist: they are examples of such capitalists who seek to create activity that benefits the world, “socially responsible investment.” It’s quite appealing. But those who distrust the entire capitalist system see it from a jaundiced perspective, and the profit motive is seen as disgusting and highly reprehensible. Unless, of course, it’s Rossi who wants to make a profit. Think of the children with cancer!

IH has not attempted to “get [under control] the entire IP technology of LENR world-wide.” However, they clearly seek to cooperate with all players willing to cooperate with them. Some of their investments are under NDA, as is common with venture capital. However, there are major initiatives that have no connection with IH, funded well by other sources.

Darden et al. wanted to prevent with restraint tactics that it comes to the long-term test and they have tried with contract trickery to get out of the obligation of paying 89 million dollars.

What Rends is claiming does not fit with the disclosed facts in the case. “Fact,” legally, includes sworn testimony, and such will be accepted as fact unless contradicted. In a Motion for Summary Judgment, how a judge handles apparent contradiction would generally, be, my opinion, to seek to interpret the testimonies such that both are true. I.e, what underlying facts would allow both testimonies to be sincere, as to underlying fact, merely, perhaps, interpreted or interpretable in differing ways. A Judge could also decide that the weight of evidence in the case is strong enough to consider specific testimony false, self-serving, conclusory, or even perhaps perjury (presenting willfully misleading allegations of fact). But this is not a criminal trial.

Rends is here presenting his own fantasies as if they were fact. We will see that he then gives “evidence.” However, there is a vast body of material now available. If one holds some conclusion as true, in such a body of evidence, one will almost always be able to find some cherry-picked piece that could appear to support the conclusion. This is why, in civil cases, the standard of judgment is not “proof,” but “preponderance of the evidence.” This requires weighing all the evidence, and, in practice, in the U.S. court system, this is an adversarial process, it being assumed that both sides are represented by competent counsel, able to present all that is relevant for their points of view. I see no sign that Rends has, in fact, reviewed all the evidence. I have briefly seen, as a minimum, all of it, within certain narrow areas of the case and intend to complete this and present comparisons between the “IH story” and the “Rossi story” — and also for the third-party defendants.

Regardless of the evidence Rends may have seen, what he is presenting here is not fact, but interpretation, i.e., fantasy or belief or faith. However, I don’t use “faith” to mean “belief.” Faith is not about fact, it is a condition of trust, and, ideally, is unconditional, not dependent on fact. It is an organizing principle for behavior and can be highly useful, as long as it is not confused with fact.

All this was anticipated by Rossi and together with his lawyers and so they staged this fake event with JM-Products, to give Rossi the possibility to fulfill the contractual obligations, ie the long-term test, because Rossi could have waited for ever that Cherokee Investment Partner presented him the promised own customer and thus he would never have been able to fulfill the contract.

Here, Rends is asserting Johnson as “Rossi’s lawyers.” And what Rends is claiming here, if shown in court, is open and shut that Rossi fraudulently misrepresented the JMP situation, converting a contemplated long-term test (under full IH control, monitored by Rossi, instead of the reverse) into a Rossi-dominated and controlled faux test. Rossi had many other options, if IH (not Cherokee) had unreasonably delayed. In fact, though, the time for the GPT did expire and the attempt by Rossi and IH to extend the time failed because Rossi’s former U.S. licensee deliberately refused to sign it, and Rossi knew that and so did IH. IH, however, would have greatly preferred that Rossi stage a genuine test, and as long as they could monitor the test, as needed, it may have been acceptable to them. Rossi’s lawyer tried to present this, questioning an IH officer, as about the closing of an opportunity to earn the $89 million, but that was never closed. Rather, Rossi wanted to force IH to pay, without actually satisfying IH, while the ability of IH to pay was dependent on actual satisfaction, not merely what had guided their former behavior, to allow a possibility of success. Rossi attempts, then, to turn this into some vaguely reprehensible behavior, that they “didn’t tell him” of their problems. That contradicts sworn testimony, in fact. Rossi knew, but demanded complete control. When he excluded the IH engineer, Murray, in July, 2015, less than half-way through the test, it was sealed: IH could not possibly accept that test, regardless of the rest.

They were, effectively, willing to allow the possibility of a “fake customer,” if the actual test was clear enough, conclusive enough. IH was operating under multiple possibilities, one of which was that Rossi had a real technology, but was failing to disclose it fully, which is actually consistent with some Rossi testimony and pleadings. So maybe if there was a demonstration showing 1 MW, at high COP, they could then put pressure on Rossi to disclose it to them, and they would then give Rossi that money, or perhaps even more.

These are my interpretations, coming from a combination of the review of the evidence that I’ve been engaged in for the better part of a year, now, as well as my understanding of the field (LENR) and how venture capitalists — the best kind, called “angel investors” — operate.

Darden et al. were never interested in working with Rossi as an industrial partner, they wanted to get his IP and, above all, the formula for his fuel as quickly and cheaply as possible and then award licenses to other contract partners from the big industry and thereby become dizzying rich.

No sane investor would want to work with Rossi as an “industrial partner.” He is famously impossible to work with. If the Rossi technology were real, yes, they would then present the independent evidence they had gathered, the clear proof that devices made by the disclosed technology worked, and use it to sell sublicenses to manufacturing companies. Without that evidence, they could be committing fraud. These guys, however, are already quite “rich” by ordinary standards. IHHI expects to spend all the investment and to need more, before they have a dime of profit. There is no evidence that IH or the related companies have made a dime of revenue, so far.

At the end Rossi would have been still a marginal figure in this game.

Rossi would lose control, of about half the world market. That’s what IH was proposing to pay for, and Rossi had said that he would sell his secret for $100 million. So that is what they offered him. Did he sell his secret? What is really strange for me to see is Planet Rossi opinion that the technology was real, but Rossi did not disclose it, because IH was a collection of snakes out to steal his technology without paying fully for it. This theory — which does appear to match Rossi’s ideas (considering Murray as a “spy,” for example) — actually would completely justify IH’s refusal to pay, and, further, their counterclaims for breach of contract. It is as if the idea of Rossi Effect Reality cancels all other considerations. Call this the Peter Gluck Effect.

THHuxleynew wrote:

[a sober analysis of the Rends post. It contains a minor typographical error, obvious, referring to IH counsel as “Rossi’s lawyer.” THH mentions much of what I wrote above.]

Rends wrote:

[a clumsily edited presentation of a piece of evidence. Rends is an LF moderator, but does not have high forum editing skills, or isn’t careful about quotation.] What he gives is this, and I have corrected his misuse of the LF quotation facility:

THHuxleynew wrote:

The points above are not facts.

Quote [I.e., this is Rends’ presentation not that of THH]

“Our primary work now focuses on intellectual property development and on developing business partnerships. We want to acquire other technology rights and to find deployment partners that can implement. We want to see LENR technologies developed by larger, more sophisticated companies. We have visited two large technology-based manufacturing businesses to discuss limited, research-based licenses. We have traded drafts of such an agreement with one, and it appears they will sign something acceptable to us. Under the discussed terms, they will assess our technology both theoretically and through testing. They will have no rights to the technology, or very limited rights, and they will have to create a limited internal group with restricted access to information. That group will not share their knowledge or work on other LENR projects. IH will get their data and engineering work. Either of us can stop the process at any time. We have been contacted by several of Rossi’s unhappy licensees from outside our geographic territory. We generally have avoided such conversations. But this is happening because people see us as an aggregator of LENR technologies and a friendly supporter, which is consistent with reality and helpful to us. Our long term goal is to gather these technologies and researchers and get the technology out to others who can implement and do further research.” (Thomas Darden)

https://thenewfire.files.wordp…nd_3_exhibits.pdf#page=17

The link does not visibly reference the case document number (though it is in the fiull URL), but it does — kudos to Rends — at least give the page number, but that won’t work, because the file automatically downloads (at least for me.) This is a 8.2 MB file. I have started to warn users about large files on the Docket. They are crazy large, and I’m not sure why. I consider that sloppy legal work, slowing access to documents. In this case, though, thenewfire has combined smaller documents to make a large one. The actual file quoted is 167-2. (Rends’ page 17, of course, refers to the combined pdf page, not the page numbering within the file, . Every case document has headers giving the file access name and, if relevant, the attachment number and specific page number.)

page 17 in the file Rends provided is not where the quotation is taken from. Rends’ quote has been mangled, pieces are put together without indicating this with ellipses, and it is out of sequence.

This is the original case document in our archive:

0167.2_Exhibit_1 Email from Darden to Sloan, 3/7/2014 (OCR’d version)

We happen to have an OCR’d version. (Many Rossi documents are pure image, one reason why they are so large.) This, however, doesn’t have page anchors, so from our actual court PDF:

From PDF page 6:

Conclusion

We are all feeling anxious these days because we are in the middle of a very public test. The early results have been positive, which is a relief especially when compared to how we were feeling about the probability of success right before the test began. However, we are completely reserving judgment regarding the output, waiting to see the data and the Swedish professors’ conclusions.

Our primary work now focuses on intellectual property development and on developing business partnerships. We want to acquire other technology rights and to find deployment partners that can implement. We want to see LENR technologies developed by larger, more sophisticated companies.

Please reach out with any questions or comments. I would like to meet with any of you to discuss IH at any time, and I would enjoy getting the benefit of your insights. Thank you for your support.

This document was largely about the Lugano test. What Darden wrote in the bolded paragraph, with which Rends begins his quotation, as to “intellectual property development” was building and testing devices as instructed by Rossi — and with their own modifications, it appears, on occasion. They did not want to become a major manufacturer, nor even a major research organization. They wanted to develop business partnerships, which makes complete sense, given that facilitating business relationships is what venture capitalists best do.

Above that, though, was

PDF page 3

Licensing

We have visited two large technology-based manufacturing businesses to discuss limited, research-based licenses. We have traded drafts of such an agreement with one, and it appears they will sign something acceptable to us. Under the discussed terms, they will assess our technology both theoretically and through testing. They will have no rights to the technology, or very limited rights, and they will have to create a limited internal group with restricted access to information. That group will not share their knowledge or work on other LENR projects. IH will get their data and engineering work. Either of us can stop the process at any time.

… [then there is lengthy material in this line, not quoted by Rends, but making it clearer. This is about how to protect intellectual property while encouraging and creating broader cooperation, something that Rossi never figured out, and hated. To Rossi, this was all considered disclosing his secrets to “competitors.” Such as Texas Instruments.]

We have been contacted by several of Rossi’s unhappy licensees from outside our geographic territory. We generally have avoided such conversations. But this is happening because people see us as an aggregator of LENR technologies and a friendly supporter, which is consistent with reality and helpful to us. Our long term goal is to gather these technologies and researchers and get the technology out to others who can implement and do further research.

By cherry-picking, changing sequence, and then by highly biased interpretation, Rends seems to imagine that what he quoted supports what he had claimed, as if no explanation is needed, it’s obvious. I don’t doubt his sincerity, what I doubt is his competence. This kind of quotation would never be tolerated in academic writing, it would be a career-killer.

Do this on Wikipedia, one could be warned, and if this was repeated, one’s account could be blocked or banned. But on LF, Rends is a moderator and was protected against frank critique by Alan Smith.

THHuxley wrote:

Rends
Would you care to extract the part of your post supported by that quote from the rest? I’d agree with it then…

I think you can support:

And there is Cherokee Investment Partners, Thomas Darden et.al., who by all means try to get the entire IP of LENR Technology world-wide under their control with an impenetrable network of sham companies, where they do not even know themselves, witch management position they have inside this companies.

And directly contradicting the implication you make, from your own quote:

Our long term goal is to gather these technologies and researchers and get the technology out to others who can implement and do further research.” (Thomas Darden)

IH has a long-term goal of breaking LENR out into the mainstream, it’s obvious. They have a plan that would place them in a prime position to profit from it, as well, but this is highly speculative, and they know that. From the scope of their investments, and from their relationship to other serious supporters of LENR, there is nothing in the business report written by Darden to indicate the kind of greedy agenda that Rends is promoting, though I also find the attempted condemnation IH for greed — because they were considering careful IP protection — while tolerating Rossi’s obsession with secrecy for the same reason (to keep it for himself) — to be hypocritical. IH Fanboy, at least, recognizes that part of the equation. Rossi was a terrible business “partner,” and even if he has a real technology, may have created conditions for rejection or worse.

However, given the pattern of lies that has been uncovered, most of the evidence for reality has vanished. It used to be that the strongest evidence for a real Rossi Effect, as assessed by the LENR public, and especially the LENR scientists involved, was the IH investment. What happened to that?

Apparent rule on internet fora: never admit error, even if it is completely obvious. On Planet Rossi, this is totally routine, and we can see this in the lawsuit, in the arguments over “Statements of Material Fact.” IH states Fact A, which is plain and clear and incontrovertible. Rossi replies “Disputed.” And then actually confirms Fact A, but adds alleged Facts B and C. The goal is to avoid implications from Fact A. There is a complete loss of distinction between fact and interpretation. Lawyers are trained to understand the difference (as are scientists, if the training is good).

So, Rends keeps arguing that he’s right, not admitting one single point, and it is behavior like this that makes LF weak compared with what it could possibly be.

THHuxleynew wrote:

And directly contradicting the implication you make, from your own quote:

Our long term goal is to gather these technologies and researchers and get the technology out to others who can implement and do further research.” (Thomas Darden)

Quote

“They will have no rights to the technology, or very limited rights, and they will have to create a limited internal group with restricted access to information. That group will not share their knowledge or work on other LENR projects. IH will get their data and engineering work.”(Thomas Darden)

By quoting out of context, Rends makes it appear that this “they will have no rights” is about general activity in the field. This is actually about a specific conversation with one specific research partner, a company that could possibly become a competitor, and this is classic, as to how to broaden cooperation while preserving IP rights. Rends is not presenting fact, but interpretation, and warped interpretation to boot. Understanding the distinction between fact and opinion or interpretation is crucial not only to law but to science and even to understanding life and living powerfully.

That is the strategy of Cherokee Investment Partners and it is all about Cherokee Investment Partners, when Thomas Darden acts it is for Cherokee Investment Partners even if they build up dozens of mocking companies structures in US and overseas (which he himself loses the overview), to hide it:

No, there is a clear distinction, legally and practically, between the acts of an individual as an individual and the acts of that same person as an officer of a corporation. It appears that Rossi may not have understood this, though there is a paradox: he seems to believe that it mattered what hat he was wearing, i.e., Rossi the person, Rossi the owner of Leonardo Corporation, or Rossi the Director of JM Products, and, in fact, Rossi seriously blurred all these roles. Darden did not, apparently. The interest in LENR appears to have been personal. Darden’s Cherokee partners tolerated it and perhaps even supported it, but Cherokee was kept separate, and, in spite of diligent effort, Rossi’s attorneys were unable, so far, to show any Cherokee investment in IH or IHHI. It was personal money from two Cherokee officers (Darden and Mazzarino), plus Vaughn (who is not a major Cherokee officer, in spite of some claims), and people like Dewey Weaver. Majority control of IHHI, the current corporate parent, is with those Cherokee people, but not Cherokee as a corporation, which is responsible to all its investors even if controlled by Darden.

There is no understanding of how corporations work, here, and that is typical of Planet Rossi, it follows Rossi’s ignorance, an ignorance that resulted, even under the best assumptions, in his being powerless in Italy against opposition. There were apparently major corporations that wanted to support him, but he rejected them because he did not trust them. Deja vu all over again.

Quote

Q:You say you’re currently working for Cherokee Investment Partners; is that correct?

A:Yes.

Q:Is there — are you an owner of that company?

A:Yes, I am an owner of that company.

Q:What percentage ownership do you have?

A:I think it’s 56 percent.

This is true, and completely irrelevant. This was all known, at least in approximate outlines, before Rossi v. Darden. Cherokee has a set of owners, i.e., shareholders. IH had a different set of owners. And IHHI is likewise different. Cherokee does have a practice of starting independent LLCs. It will invest, according to sources, about $25 million to start one, and then the LLC will raise additional capital. In that case, Cherokee becomes a part owner of the LLC. These are generally risky investments in environmental remediation. Many of them fail. When they fail, Cherokee loses their investment, but is not on the hook for debts beyond that. This is how corporations work, “limited liability.” Shareholders are not generally responsible for the debts of a company, and anyone doing business with a corporation must understand this. Any attorney would have told Rossi this, if he’d consulted about the Agreement with IH. If IH makes no money from the Rossi investment, if the technology is not actually transferred, and if IH cannot attract additional investment, Rossi would not get his $89 million even if the “GPT” were perfect and properly done.

IH was not a Cherokee LLC. It was distinct. Cherokee did not invest in it. Individuals, some of whom were investors in Cherokee, or officers, did invest. This is all utterly unsurprising. Darden raises capital from friends, initially.

In the legal arguments, Rossi attorneys are arguing that technology transfer was not a requirement of the Agreement. That’s a narrow and disengenuous argument, as IH counsel is showing. In a practical sense, technology transfer, successful, was essential or the Agreement would fail, IH would be unable to pay. Darden and Vaughn and Cherokee were not on the hook, at all, and this was simple standard corporate business practice. Rossi’s attempt to pierce the corporate veil was actually quite premature. If Rossi had prevailed on a simple breach of contract claim, then, if IH had been unable to pay, he might have sued anyone who unjustly profited — except nobody profited, and finding investment is not profit, legally. It is similar to borrowing money, which isn’t profit.

https://thenewfire.files.wordp…_1_to_42_ocr.pdf#page=210

The page number doesn’t survive into my system. I suspect that Rends might be reading those files from within his own blog. That is a combined document, 16.9 MB. These page references do not distinguish the original source files, from PACER and could become useless if the blog copies disappear. The page references here will work for any copy of the court pdfs.

The source is 214-10 page 12 which would be cited, in case documents, as DE 214, Exhibit 9, and the deposition page is 16, and this is all totally routine and unsurprising.

…and for an owner of such a big investment company is there a lot of “I don’t remember” in this deposition!

That’s an interpretation, not a fact. (It’s a comparison between a summary fact and some kind of expectation of what would be normal, though how Rends would know what is normal for the CEO of a $2.2 billion company is beyond me. It seems he expects every detail to be clear. If Rends actually wanted to look at fact, he would compile a list of all the “I don’t know” or “I don’t remember” references for Darden, and then compare them with the depositions of others. The underlying facts here are public record. There were no “I don’t know”s on that page. Rends is terminally sloppy, and not a serious writer.

And then Rends has, with no explanation:

https://thenewfire.files.wordp…_1_to_42_ocr.pdf#page=199

Page 99 of that combined OCR document is the License Agreement, so … WTF?

And then Rends brings up the Chinese trip of Darden, as if this were new and relevant. It’s all part of the Planet Rossi trope, reflecting Rossi himself, that the Chinese invested hundreds of millions of dollars in IH. They certainly did not. There is some possibility, I would imagine, that a Chinese company was started, with IH cooperation, but it would be owned and controlled by Chinese, almost certainly. This is total fluff, completely off-topic.

THHuxleynew wrote:

[similarly to the above]

Rends wrote:

 

THHuxleynew wrote:

if you read your quote carefully:

I would advice you to read the court papers carefully:

He might take his own advice. He is projecting his own meanings all over them. They are not there with any clarity, and some are directly contradictory to established fact. Once in a while, someone debating like this on LF will actually look again and say “Oops!” Somehow we have it in our heads that this is defeat, because we think of the discussions as battles. In fact, saying “I was wrong” actually makes us, to the people who count, look good. So often we have it all backwards. And then we have the opportunity to thank someone for pointing out our mistakes. That makes us look really, really good! Even if the person who did it was being a total jerk. Take this from a 30-year on-line discussion veteran.

Quote

Q.· ·By whom are you currently employed?

A.· ·I work for Cherokee Investment Partners. I also work on behalf of a number of the different venture deals that we’ve invested in.

https://thenewfire.files.wordp…_1_to_42_ocr.pdf#page=203

Again, this is 214-10 pdf page 5, document page 9. Rends, here, misreads the meaning. Who is “we”? Here he is speaking for Cherokee, which has created many ventures. IH is not a Cherokee venture, that’s quite clear. I will, below, explain what likely happened that led Rossi to think he was dealing with Cherokee. It’s understandable, but any attorney would have set him straight. And what is truly shocking is that Annesser did not set him straight, but fed the flames. For fun and profit?

One of these Investment is IH or better the mocking parade (Industrial Heat LLC, IPH International BV, IPHBV Holdings, IH Holdings International) “It’s a complicated structure” (Thomas Darden)

No, that was not what he was referring to, because Cherokee did not start them, Darden and Mazzarino did, using their own money, apparently. (Even if Cherokee money was transiently used, which I have not seen, that would have been a loan to the partners, almost certainly, for which they were personally responsible to Cherokee, not an investment by Cherokee in IH, which was a venture entirely outside of ordinary Cherokee business, and other partners would then have had a cause of action against Darden. Not something he would want to do!

Quote

Q.· ·Do you have several e-mail addresses?

A.· ·Yes.

Q.· ·Can you please provide those.

A.· ·Tdarden@industrialheatco, tdarden@cherokeefund.com, tfdarden@aol.com, tfdarden@yahoo.com.

And this is meaningless, it only shows that Darden has email addresses at these companies, which is utterly no surprise and which has no legal significance other than showing involvement.

So if you as an owner of an investment company are working for your own investment what do you call it?

It is called having one’s own life and investments in addition to working for a company. An officer on the level of Darden may have many such involvements, and if the other partners are okay with them, there is no problem. If the other partners are not okay with them, then there may be a problem to be resolved, between them. Only if there is, say, tax fraud, would there be a larger legal problem.

A company is not obligated by the actions of an officer if these are maintained as distinct, and by creating the Agreement as between Rossi, AEG, Leonardo, and IH, with an Entire Agreement clause, Darden clearly protected Cherokee, and the shocking thing here is that Annesser filed a lawsuit disregarding these legal basics, and that continued because fact was misrepresented in the Complaint. That’s gonna cause some damage for Rossi, for sure, and possibly for Annesser and Silver Law Group.

THHuxleynew wrote:

Could you define mocking parade?

I accept that Darden works for both Cherokee and IH, and that Cherokee have invested in IH. As have Woodward.

Darden does work for both Cherokee and IH. However, Cherokee has not invested in IH. Woodford also has not invested in IH, but closer: Woodford invested in IH Holdings International, Ltd (IHHI), which is the sole owner of IH, having bought all the IH shares, paying with IHHI stock. THH, be careful. This is actually an important point in the lawsuit. Rossi claimed that Cherokee owned IH, even claimed it was the sole owner, but this was never true. There is some evidence that I have not yet reviewed about how payments were actually made. However, Cherokee owns no IH or IHHI stock, there is a complete list of investors on the U.K. corporation site. Rends thinks this is all hidden, but it’s actually quite open. I first started discussing the situation when Sifferkoll commented on LF with a completely incorrect analysis of the UK corporation figures. He did not understand the documents correctly. (Woodford bought preferred stock, valued at $45 per share, whereas other stock had a par value of $0.01 per share. Woodford was not buying control and clearly trusted Darden et al. They were investing in a long-term project, and not expecting any quick profits, if any profits at all.

The business purpose of IHHI is not much understood. It is really getting feet wet, becoming active in a field that they are betting will eventually become profitable. They would want to be ready, they would want to make any mistakes now, with relatively small sums at stake, instead of later, when it might be billions of dollars at risk.

Would you like to answer my point about external research companies? Without such restrictions, how could IH validate LENR technology? It is far from what you interpret, and sort of necessary for anyone except Rossi who does not validate technology.

THH keeps trying to create a sane conversation.

Rends wrote:

THHuxleynew wrote:

Could you define mocking parade?

Formation of a company braid to for pretending of size and cover-up of responsibilities.

That’s incoherent English. He may have meant “charade” (third meaning). There is no cover-up, and no pretense of size. IH was created and funded with an initial stock offering that raised an immediate $11.5 million to be paid to Rossi, with a total stock offering apparently at $20 million. “Cover-up” of responsibilities could possible be based on a claim that Cherokee was “really” responsible, but that is a dead claim that only survived in the lawsuit because Rossi had claimed (or at least implied) that Cherokee was the sole owner of IH, which was far from the truth. This was an ordinary setup of an LLC for a specific venture. What is shown by the Planet Rossi tropes around this, the Sifferkollian conspiracy theories, is the ignorance of the denizens of that planet, including Rossi himself, who, if he was sincere in his claims, showed radical ignorance of legal and business basics.

THHuxleynew wrote:

I accept that Darden works for both Cherokee and IH, and that Cherokee have invested in IH. As have Woodward.

This is quibbling!

And this is spit.

THH attempts to be conciliatory, and Rends complains. What Rends is doing is continually moving the goalposts, it’s called. Rends claims A. THH points out a problem with A. So Rends claims B and C, not addressing the problem with A. So THH addresses those alleged facts, and then Rends alleges D and E and F. This is how fanatics argue. This is not the behavior of those who seek learning and cooperation. It is how Rossi thinks, in fact, and is very much how Rossi’s counsel is arguing his case, in the MSJs.

There is a vast universe of possible points to be made, but if one never focuses on specifics, all that is created is confusion. Rends shows no sign of following the arguments in the case, but only his own ideas and reactions to details he thinks important, and mostly these are about impressions confirming his belief that IH is a bunch of scuzzy thieves. Even if the bulk of the evidence in the trial, admissible evidence, shows something quite different.

THHuxleynew wrote:

Would you like to answer my point about external research companies? Without such restrictions, how could IH validate LENR technology? It is far from what you interpret, and sort of necessary for anyone except Rossi who does not validate technology.

Now, notice that Rends does not actually answer, other than a misunderstanding of the point. I would express “validate” as “obtain independent validation,” which would need to be validation independent, not only of Rossi, but of IH as well. In order to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars without risking investment fraud claims, they would need that. And they appear to have taken steps to do that, with Rossi generally complaining about it.

The plant was, so to speak, in its possession, on Cherokees land in Raleigh North Carolina.

Yes (though I don’t know about “Cherokees land,” the Plant was in the possession of IH, but Rossi was there, working for them for a year. It is not clear that Rossi was doing what the agreement contemplated, i.e., ensuring technology transfer. Darden complains about this in one document.

The indications are in what I’ve seen so far that Rossi refused to start the test, or a meaningful alternative, and wanted to focus on improvements.

Why did they do not perform a long-term test there, as foreseen in the agreement with Rossi and instead try to develop other devices, that are of no value to Rossi, but only for Darden et.al. (see above, how they tread other partners)?

Again, Rends has not realized that the “above” comment was only about a specific situation, with a commercial partner who could possibly be a competitor. What happens in Rends’ mind is that all this is mashed up and fit into a mold in which he believes.

Notice, again, the moving target. Instead of focusing on one issue, where resolution and at least some kind of agreement might be possible, Rends keeps asserting more alleged facts. The case documents explain why that “long-term” test did not happen. Maybe Rends would benefit by actually studying them and learning. How would IH answer the question? If one doesn’t know how a major party would answer a question like that, one doesn’t know the case. Any neutral analyst — or partisan analyst who wants to also see matters from the other side, which any good attorney would want to do — would know that Rends is telling the story from one side only, mostly the Rossi side, though he does stray from that below.

Because they have not found a customer? Ridiculous!

Of course. But they did find a customer and Rossi refused to cooperate, and instead argued that the “customer” he’d found in Florida would be much better. And he obviously created the impression that this was Johnson Matthey, based on many, many evidences, and on that I have seen what is the strongest evidence of perjury that I have noticed in the case.

Darden et al. did not want to pay the 89 million, that is the only reason.

That is a fantasy contrary to all the evidence in the case, other than the obvious fact: given the conditions that had arise, for many reasons, they were not going to consider Doral a GPT and pay. That is not a reason why they didn’t run the GPT. Rossi has made a big fuss over them not explicitly, in writing, telling them that Doral was not the GPT, until the beginning of December, 2015, but Rossi never told them, in writing, that it was, much before then. Nor did Rossi ever demand that the GPT start in North Carolina. We have seen no documents where he complained about the delay.

The entire concept of the GPT, though, was Rossi’s, and all the difficulties with the Validation Test and the later GPT were created by his crazy idea of a megawatt plant based on a hundred units that were not, themselves, thoroughly tested. One device design, tested exhaustively and independently, generating ten or twenty kilowatts, would have been worth the $100 million or more, and IH showed, over and over, that they were seeking that, and the Rossi claim of fraud, that they never intended to pay, is entirely contradictory to the evidence available in the case.

They had it long time in their hands to test the plant under self-chosen scientific criteria, with self-chosen experts, extensively according to the agreements and have not done it.

We do not know what they did, whether they fired up the plant or tested individual reactors from it. Perhaps there is evidence in one of the depositions, but it appears that IH attempts to test the technology did exist and, in spite of some initial results that more or less followed Rossi’s demonstrations (and probably used similar heat verification technology, they found no confirmed excess heat, or certainly, if any, far less than required.

What seems likely at this point is either that Rossi was a fraud from the start, or that he found ways of measuring power, and fooled himself with them. The possibility of the system being “flooded” was pointed out in 2011, so this was not new. So if we want to create “why not”s,

Why was the Rossi Doral test not explicitly designed to address that and other possibilities?

Why was it necessary to create a secret customer process, so that there could not be independently verified measure of plant output, by seeing how the power was dissipated?

IH was claiming inability to confirm performance. Why did Rossi not work carefully with them to insure that they were applying the technology correctly? Were there differences of opinion about how to measure heat? We know that Rossi and socks still claim that the Lugano test was correct. It would have been trivial to address those problems with independent measures. Why was this not done?

Rossi’s test in Florida is, of course, not a clean thing in the sense of a proper business deal, but under the given circumstances, at least an explicable organizational act that is even not denied by Rossi in his deposition in court.

It was denied until the evidence became overwhelming and he’d have had to perjure himself to continue his own charade. Rossi clearly lied to obtain the agreement to move the Plant to Doral. Rends may think this “explicable,” and it is, but only if we imagine an utterly incompetent and greedy Rossi who thinks like Rends. Rossi does actually state that he was desperate to get a test going. The consequence of deciding to lie in order to accomplish that goal is that the scheme fails badly, he could lose everything.

But here we have to separate precisely, between the business on the one hand side and the test results of the plant and the evaluations and the report of Penon on the other.

Who is “we” and why do we “have to” do what Rends suggests? Rossi v. Darden is the subject of the LF thread. Rends wants to talk about the plant performance, but the data we have on the Plant performance has all been contaminated by the participation and control of Rossi, now known clearly to be willing to mislead and deceive.

And Rends is avoiding directly engaging with THH, but instead keeps adding new considerations. This kind of behavior is why many LF discussions go nowhere. It’s terminally fuzzy thinking. THH knows, and wants something better. He is welcome here.

To say that the report must be faulty, or even preposterous, is not the solution, because with the means available to us from the outside, we simply do not have the possibility to produce evidence and therefore it is all but a presumption.

Rends is neglecting fact, when he began this excursion by claiming to point to it. We have facts, now, about the Doral circumstances and conditions, and many facts that do, actually, relate to plant performance, but absent a willingness to do the work of careful analysis — distinguishing established fact from merely claims — agreement will be elusive.

The discussion went on, and may, indeed, go on and on. However, I promised to give my theory of how the idea arose that IH was Cherokee.

Back in 2012, Rossi apparently tossed Darden out of his office, not interested in talking with him, but then found out that Darden was the principal officer of Cherokee Investment Partners, a $2.2 billion corporation. That got his interest.

Darden spoke of “we” without being very specific. Cherokee had gotten him in the door — and this was reasonable, this was not some random bozo with merely a few million at most to invest. Darden took no steps to distinguish his activity from “Cherokee.” However, it is quite possible that he never represented that it was Cherokee that would be investing. Rossi simply assumed it.

This would be an example of what goes around comes around. Rossi has often set up situations were he would say something that was interpreted in one way, but where he could later point out that the reality was different and he had not actually lied and the errors were made by others. He’s attempting to do this with the Johnson Matthey issue, which is not going to fly, because there are so many evidences and comments from Rossi, and the Bass emails nail it. Bass believed that JM was involved, and where did he get that idea from? He only dealt with Rossi, outside of a few conversations with IH people and investors (all heavily laced with instructed pretense).

However, definitely, Cherokee was not going to invest. Nevertheless, Darden is a principal at Cherokee and this fact would mean that Darden has access to massive investment resources, some of which might be tapped later, if necessary. So Darden being involved with Cherokee could be relevant to an ability of IH to voluntarily pay Rossi the full $100.5 million. Not as Cherokee being legally obligated, but as a matter of business connections. Darden may have made some assurances to Rossi based on that concept, and Rossi remembered it as if it were a promise on behalf of Cherokee, and that’s what he told Annesser. “The snakes lied to me!”

What Rossi believed, if he is telling the truth on that, was legally preposterous. If Cherokee was the sole owner of IH, with effectively full control, then Cherokee could become responsible for the debts of IH, I think. But this was not the case, ever.

IH owns IPH and thus the distinction between them is not crisp. Why was IPH set up? Some have suggested tax motives, and that seems possible to me. There is nothing wrong with this, and this was especially in order if other IP was being purchased or developed. LLCs are pass-through organizations, as I recall, and their profit is taxable to the owners, but, by the same token, their losses will reduce the income of the owners, so they are a kind of tax shelter. If the losses are real, those deductions are clearly allowable and not tax evasion. One way to look at this would be that if investment in LENR is actually a charitable donation, it becomes fully deductible, and immediately as soon as the losses are booked (that tax year). I’m sure that Darden et al would thoroughly understand all this and much more.

By selling the IP to IPH, a large deduction was taken as a loss, based on some estimate of actual value, probably. The $10 million investment was mostly expensed, I’d think, but I am not at all sure.

Fanning the flames

The December 2015 letter from Annesser, Andrea Rossi’s attorney, to IH counsel Jones Day, I find of high interest. Instead of attempting to negotiate a settlement of a rapidly-escalating dispute, Annesser fanned the flames.

He was, it’s true, advocating Rossi’s positions, but including Rossi’s gross misunderstandings and errors, and apparently not doing his own due diligence.

It appears that Annesser either did not understand the issues or was unwilling to distinguish between fact and interpretation. He treats the Rossi opinions and claims as established fact, and the IH opinions and claims as “disengenuous.” He pretends that matters are completely clear but, when it comes time to establish fact with sworn testimony and documentary evidence, are thin to non-existent.

It was always a puzzle, as soon as we saw the Complaint, why there was no allegation of the Second Amendment required written acceptance of the start date of the GPT, but only vague and indirect evidence, such as participation of Darden in reviewing the test plans of Penon. We did not learn until recently that Ampenergo never signed the undated Second Amendment, something that was obvious from the document included with the Annesser letter.

I had wondered if Annesser had noticed the problem. I also wondered if Annesser had accidentally included the Johnson OFAC document with the License Agreement, which revealed the customer identity. The lawsuit, and Annesser responses to the IH Motion to Dismiss, showed me that this was not a sophisticated attorney; rather, he was more like a hired thug, whose job was to attempt to intimidate the opposition.

So, anyway, here is a paragraph by paragraph analysis of that letter.

Page 1, paragraph 1, terms the IH claims “misstatements.” The difference is one of interpretation, and the fact here is that IH’s interpretation of facts differed from Rossi’s. Calling them misstatements rather than variant intepretations was slighly pugnacious; I personally wonder if Annesser understood the issues, or if he was merely proceeding based on Rossi’s rants. (We get to see Rossi Rant in some of his depositions.)

Paragraph 2 “There is no merit whatsoever” simply denies the IH position, ostensibly about the ERV and the GPT, confusing the use of Penon as an Engineer Responsible for Validation, who could be engaged for such entirely distinct from a “Guaranteed Performance Test.” A case may be made, it’s reasonable, that IH either directly supported or allowed Penon to be “engaged.” The legal question, what we used to call ages ago the $64,000 Question — it is now more than $64 million — is whether or not the power installation is a GPT. In all the documents asserted by Annesser, now, there is no evidence that Darden or IH ever accepted Doral as a “GPT,” and certainly they did not do so as a written consent. The strongest comment I have seen so far, dug up from an email to a Texas Instruments engineer, was a reference to the upcoming plant move as being a long-term test, required of Rossi. Required for what, though, was unclear. There are reasons for an agreement to specific written agreement, it is precisely to avoid controversies like this.

Page 2, Paragraph 3. Contrary to Annesser’s assertion, there is no assumption that the ERV is the same for both tests. The way the Agreement was written, there is the possibility of a continuation, it seems to be a default; however, the Second Amendment, allowing postponing the GPT, covered this with the requirement for written agreement on the start date. Any party could decline to sign, thus requiring further negotiation — and that withholding of agreement could potentially be for any reason. Because of this, many on Planet Rossi have claimed that the Agreement was unfair to Rossi; however, if IH, as an example, had unfairly defeated the purpose of the Agreement by unreasonably withholding consent, the matter could have been arbitrated or adjudicated before starting a “GPT” without a clear agreement.

It is common for business agreements to be unclear in ways that can lead to difficulties later, if the parties cease cooperation. What is apparent is that Rossi, before the December letter, had ceased cooperation, and Annesser apparently does not recognize this; at the same time, Annesser was supporting the refusal of access to the Doral Plant by IH as specifically requested, as allowed per the Term Sheet that Rossi and Johnson had signed. By refusing access, Rossi was effectively guaranteeing that IH would not accept the “ERV Report.”

It appears from documents that, while IH considered that the time had passed for the agreed GPT, they were still willing to pay for performance, but this would clearly mean “performance satisfactory to them.” Rossi did not seem to understand the importance of that, but was attempting to force IH to pay even if the conditions created by Rossi behavior made it impossible for them to raise the funds to pay. A good attorney would have explained this to Rossi and would have negotiated with Jones Day, especially in determining the basis for the Jones Day positions.

Paragraph 4. Annesser quotes the “agreed to in writing between the parties” clause, but, remarkably, does not point to or claim any written agreement on the start date. And he refers to the attached Second Amendment, which is not “agreed to in writing between the parties.” Did he notice what was missing?

Paragraph 5 has it that agreement was “unambiguous and clear that the current testing is, and always has been, being conducted as the Guaranteed Performance validation. Any claim to the contrary by your clients is disengenuous.”

For something allegedly unambiguous and clear, hard evidence has been elusive. By taking a pugnacious stance, with this mail, Annesser was sealing the rupture between Industrial Heat and Rossi. It may have been inevitable, if Rossi has been a fraud from the beginning, but if Rossi was not a fraud, the Annesser intervention probably guaranteed that Rossi would never again be able to raise substantial funding. No sane investor would risk it. And if Rossi really had something, a good attorney would have encouraged and facilitated finding ways to show that, to enable IH to raise the funding needed to pay Rossi and continue development. It’s obvious: if Rossi could not or would not show IH how to actually make devices that pass fully-independent testing (no compromises with Rossi’s paranoia), Rossi was doomed to business failure.

Paragraph 6 was Annesser’s joining Rossi in his patent paranoia. The position taken was completely incorrect. That patent was filed, I’ve understood, because the Lugano report was about to come out, and would have taken the IP into the public domain. Rossi did not write the patent, it was filed by IH, as something the Agreement allowed them to do, to protect the IP. The Dameron co-inventor issue was a choice made by IH, as IH made the Lugano reactor and Dameron may have made some contribution, even if very small, and that was merely a necessary legal precaution. Nothing was taken away from Rossi’s property; but it injured his fantasies. As a result, Rossi refused to assign the patent as required, thus violating the Licence Agreement. Way to go, Annesser, encouraging your client to violate an agreement, creating one more prior breach.

(Rossi has often claimed that IH only objected when it was time to pay. That was just another lie by Rossi, one of a stream of them. IH, in fact, objected many times, in many ways. By December, 2015, still two months before the end of the test, and over three months before the alleged “time to pay,” IH was formally objecting, and clearly because the Rossi claim to “GPT” had also become explicit. When that happened, exactly, is not yet clear to me. But the first action by Rossi that began the clear rupture was the refusal to admit Murray to the Plant in July, 2015. At that point, I imagine that IH was scratching its collective head, wondering how to deal with this bridge too far.)

Page 3, paragraph 7 continues to call “clear” what is not. The aspects of the lawsuit that covered this “Dameron co-inventor” issue were dismissed as part of the IH MTD (dismissing four out of eight counts in an MTD prior to discovery was a remarkable success rate), so we have not seen evidence on that. However, just as that patent was precautionary, so too the co-inventor issue was precautionary. Annesser, however, goes further to deny any right to “underlying IP” or “further developments,” which appears directly contradictory to the License Agreement.

Paragraph 8 goes into the issue of patent applications outside of the “territory.” This was, again, legally incorrect. Patent applications are never patent infringement, and all those applications, if I am correct, listed Rossi as inventor. Again, IH whacked that claim with their MTD. This was all fueling the fire, helping convince Rossi that he was right, that IH was attempting to screw him over.

Paragraph 9 deals with an alleged restriction, based on the language of the License Agreement, section 1, but … Annesser has missed the next words in that section, providing for the right to grant sublicenses, and also, the Right of First Offer, providing contingent rights in other territories, thus giving IH an interest in proper patenting outside of the licensed territory, and, as well, the Agreement granted rights with respect to any future developments.

Paragraph 10 is an argument over language. What is clear is that the License was granted upon the payment of $1.5 million and then $10 million. The GPT set up a conditional additional payment, but because it was possible that the GPT would not occur, that cannot be said to be truly the “price.” Rather, it was one of the considerations of the Agreement. Yes, the IH communication could be considered an “anticipatory breach,” so the legal concern is obvious. However, it would be rare, in good-faith business dealings, that a letter like Annesser’s would be appropriate. Rather, what would be crucial would be to open up communications, to seek common ground and mutual benefit. Annesser did the opposite.

Page 4. Annesser proposes a meeting with between his clients and Jones Day and their client. That would likely have been a waste of time. However, Annesser and Jones Day meeting could have been a great idea. On the other hand, by encouraging Rossi to authorize him to file the lawsuit, he created a huge pile of billable hours. It may have seemed like a great career move. Even if his client ends up being totally effed.

Who made the decision to include as defendants Cherokee, and Darden and Vaughn personally? That almost fell to the MTD, but Altonaga took as fact the Rossi claim that Cherokee was owner of IH. That decision guaranteed that Cherokee funding would be available for defense, and it also probably guaranteed that even if Rossi somehow won the suit, no corporate money (or money from those involved with major corporations) would ever again touch him. Maybe he could crowd-fund his future projects.