Today, the 3rd party defendants filed a new Motion to Dismiss. I have not yet reviewed it to compare it with their original motion, however, some of the arguments were familiar to me. I had predicted that the original motion would be denied, but when IH amended their Answer as required, the original MTD was mooted, and the 3rd party defendants had 14 days to refile, i.e., today was the deadline. To review the history:
0050-0_second_amended_answer (IH) includes counterclaims against 3rd party defendants
0067-0_order-on-rossi_motion-to-strike required amendment of D.E. 50
0069-0_3rd_party_motion_to_dismiss based on D.E. 50
0073-0_ih_opposition_to_69_mtd IH opposed MTD
0077.0_3rd_party_reply_re_MTD 3rd party defendants reply
0078-0_3rd_amended_ih_answer IH modifies their Answer (& etc.) per D.E. 67.
0083-0_dismissal_of_3rd_party_mtd the judge dismissed D.E. 69 because based on obsolete Answer.
0090.0_3rd_party_MTD now based on D.E. 78.
So … have the third party defendants strengthened their Motion based on knowing the IH counterarguments? The cheap thing here is to simply refile, with minimal change. But each party has an opportunity here to strengthen their legal claims. My opinion on lenr-forum was that the (previous) MTD would fail, entirely. I will review all this and see if anything changed.
Anyone looking for juicy bits, they are not likely to find them here. New evidence is not presented in these motions, the third party defendants are claiming that the IH arguments are not a legal basis for any claim or recovery, even if all the facts alleged in the countercomplaint are assumed to be true. That’s a steep hill to climb.
So IH will review this motion and decide whether or not to change their opposition.
I’ll be looking at the issues around Bass most closely. Bass is the most likely of these defendants to be relatively innocent, but we don’t know details of what Bass actually said to IH. I can easily imagine a scenario where Bass was not aware that he was being deceptive, was himself misled as to the situation. I.e., he was hired, told he would be the Director of Engineering, but first they needed to deal with this meeting and …. “here is what to tell them.”
If so, what IH needs would be for Bass to simply tell the truth, what happened.
Discussion of this document on lenr-forum.com is covered on Discussions of the 3rd Party Motion to Dismiss
