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.]
[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:
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
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.
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.
[similarly to the above]
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.
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.
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.
