Rossi v Darden – Page 2 – Cold Fusion Community

RvD trial day 3 (Jury selection and Opening Statements)

Summary: Jury selected again. Opening statements again, by all parties. Continue reading “RvD trial day 3 (Jury selection and Opening Statements)”

RvD trial day 2 (Mistrial)

See Mistrial.

Official Transcript

Summary: Due to loss of jurors who realized that they had other commitments during the expected four or five more weeks of trial, a mistrial was declared. Continue reading “RvD trial day 2 (Mistrial)”

RvD trial day 1

June 28, 2017

Official Transcript

Summary: Jury selected and opening statements by Rossi and Industrial Heat. Continue reading “RvD trial day 1”

Mistrial!

I posted on JONP June 27

I wrote:

Bob Belovich, perhaps I made that call, I did publish this on coldfusioncommunity.net at 9:20 AM Monday. I was informed, last week, of the change to Wednesday, so it is odd that Dr. Rossi apparently did not know. (His comment here is why I checked, first thing Monday.) Judge Altonaga’s office told me that Jury selection would begin at 12:30 PM.

I waited until comments after this were approved. This comment was, then, likely “spammed.” Recent comments approved after Rossi said he would not be attending to the blog (but someone would be approving posts, or spamming them Continue reading “I posted on JONP June 27”

The study of Rossi v Darden provides an endless supply of flabber.

The Quark-X is powered by quantum accelerated coherent collapse (quacc) of Meshe Gas with itself. E-cats are fueled with liberal applications of Flabber Gas and Rossi Grease. Rossi v. Darden provides a limitless supply of flabber, enough to serve the needs of sarcastic writers far into the future.

Every time I look at Rossi’s blog, or at the case documents, there is no shortage of material, the question is always where to begin.

Mike Dunford of The Fogbow was flooded with flabber, reading the License Agreement. I am told that Fogbow is flooded with lawyers. I’ll agree, it seems that way, but … it takes all kinds. In any case, Mike reported that he had to read the Agreement more than once, because he wasn’t believing what he was reading. It couldn’t be that stupid.

Of course, Mike has not been following Rossi. It could be that stupid, and routinely is. So, then, the koan: if Rossi has the reverse Midas touch, that whatever he touches turns to shit, why did Industrial Heat, which has a long history of engaging with risky ventures, and which certainly would afford counsel and indeed, had in-house counsel handling IP issues, go ahead and agree, and pay Rossi $1.5 million for the Plant and $10 million, based on a very shaky “Validation Test”?

That is a koan for advanced students. The answer I came up with is counter-intuitive, but few of us would have the intuition needed to cope with Darden’s primary business, Cherokee Limited Partners, an LLC that creates many LLCs, each one taking on some risky project. If these projects fail, they will lose up to $25 million or so of Cherokee Funding.

Normal thinking Is that if a risky business fails, the investment was a mistake. However, nothing ventured, nothing gained. The business of Cherokee would not be in avoiding risk, as such, but in estimating, perhaps quantifying it, and comparing that to possible gains. CIP projects might fail more often than not (though I don’t think they do), but if CIP invests in projects with sufficient possibility of success multiplied by the probability of success, it cannot be said that an investment was an error, merely because it failed.

If Darden et al’s sense of possibility and risk is, in general, more likely to be right than wrong, in mercato veritias. If they are losing money on every transaction, but trying to make up for it with volume, they would not be running a $2.2 billion investment fund, apparently successfully.

In 2011 and 2012, Rossi enjoyed massive publicity in the LENR world. He was commonly discussed on the private CMNS list My sense of the majority opinion was that it was possible he had something, but his rejection of sound scientific approach (“I don’t need controls, because I already know what a control will do: nothing”) was very visible. The errors of Kullander and Essent were obvious. But those errors did not prove that Rossi had nothing, only that their conclusions were flawed. And that Rossi was “eccentric.”

It appears that by 2012 Darden et al had decided to enter the field of LENR research and development. It appears that their first investment was a modest one, in Brillouin Energy. However, all other LENR working groups were working with modest levels of power, at best. Clear XP at a watt is often considered a significant result.

Who would want to invest in technology that is so far from commercial feasibility, when Rossi was claiming many kilowatts? They decided that they needed to know the truth of Rossi’s claims, and they needed to know either way, because the uncertainty was causing harm to the field. There is an IH deposition where they stated that if there was any possibility of a reality underneath Rossi’s bluster and even obvious deception, if this was as low as 1%, it would be worth continuing. In 2011-2012, I would have estimated the possibility of Rossi Reality (i.e., a real LENR effect, generating significant power, as would be known with conclusive tests), at perhaps 10%. (90% he was mistaken or creating fake demonstrations.)

Given that functioning LENR at the power levels claimed (say 10 KW per reactor, at a COP of 6) could be worth a trillion dollars, a 1% chance of success could be worth $10 billion (but investors would’t cut close to those values, unless the buy-in is truly cheap.) They were obviously willing to risk about $20 million. I would assume that they knew it would be difficult to recover that investment if Rossi were insane or even a deliberate fraud, unless actionable fraud could be shown, and if Rossi had let matters stand as they stood before the fraudulent Guaranteed Performance Test, he might have gotten away with it all.

It didn’t work out that way. That Rossi took IH to court has to stand as a major mystery in this case. I explain it with insanity, which more or less means “it doesn’t make sense.”

However, I have called the IH investment “brilliant.” That’s because it created desirable results. Confining desirable results to commercial success with the Rossi technology will miss that they wanted to find out, and to find out they needed independent testing, fully under their own supervision, and validated by others. To do that they needed to buy the IP. So I assume that they had already decided to accept the Validation Test, no matter how much it stank.

Rossi wrote the Agreement. It’s bonkers in many ways. It gets even worse to see how Rossi interpreted it and the Second Amendment. IH could see this, I’m sure, it was immediately obvious when I saw the Agreement, and more than one lawyer has opined in this direction. Mike saw this, from the Agreement, section 16.18.

Any controversy or claim arising out of or relating to this agreement, or breach of it, shall be settled exclusively by the Court of Miami, Florida, USA.

Rossi did not have a lawyer draft the agreement. As Mike points out, this is a $100 million agreement, secured with an immediate $1.5 million payment. In case anyone doesn’t notice, there is no “Court of Miami.” This usage is common on Planet Rossi. Given that the specified court does not exist, for it would necessarily be referring to a specific court, this was a major flaw. However, the entire thrust of this provision is something that no ethical lawyer would recommend. IH certainly had fallen into a “controversy,” but lawsuits are a last resort. Before then, instead of jumping into Court to settle the issues, the parties will attempt to settle the issues, by negotiation. Instead of attempting negotiation, before the end of the “test,” where IH raised their lack of agreement to GPT and ERV — which is very well supported, possibly enough for summary judgment — Annesser threated to sue them immediately for anticipatory breach. Pugncious in the extreme. Lawyers like this create losing situations for their clients … but more legal fees.

However, it is possible that Annesser was just following orders. The lawyer had a fool for a client.

Another little tidbit from Rossi’s blog:

Yrka
June 23, 2017 at 9:39 PM

Dear Mr. Andrea Rossi.
I wish you success in court.
You will win! Serious interference in your work will be eliminated.
Advise where you can follow the course of judicial supervision.
Yuriy Isaev
engineer
Russia, Tyumen

Andrea Rossi
June 23, 2017 at 10:46 PM

Yrka:
Thank you for your sustain.
I think the official pacemaker is the source for information on internet, but I am not sure.
Warm Regards,
A.R.

There is common opinion that Rossi is many of those who comment on his blog. For some of these, evidence is reasonably clear. However, in this case, the question may be sincere. Rossi’s answer, again, shows his lack of clue. There is at least one follower of Rossi who has acknowledged the value of this blog, and especially of the Docket page here.

The “official source” is PACER. See our introduction to the docket page. “pacermaker” or “pacemaker” is a complete error We have also seen “the pacermaker of the Miami Court.” Or variations. PACER is the document retrieval system of the U.S. Federal court system. It happens that the United States Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida is currently located in Miami.

Pacermonitor is a site that sells access, and that, for a short period of time, shows the Docket entries. They charge roughly twice what PACER charges (Pacer is being sued over the fees being illegally high, at ten cents per page, with no limit for some documents, like the docket itself, they charge to show a subscriber the index to the documents.)

So if the questioner is sincere, Rossi misled his supporter. Someone with a conspiratorial mind might think that he doesn’t want his supporters reading the actual documents. Some have bailed after reading them.

Rossi also says that the trial begins June 26, tomorrow. Maybe. The information I have is that it begins Wednesday June 28. I will be talking with the Court tomorrow, and, obviously, I will be checking. Rossi also treats “one month” as a fixed length of time. He’s naïve. However, it may not matter.

i have confirmed, this morning (Monday) with Altonaga’s office. 12:30 PM Wednesday, June 28 starts jury selection. I knew this last week (I.e., I had information, and I was told it was public.) So why didn’t Rossi know it?

How does estoppel work if all parties do not agree?

On LENR Forum, oldguy wrote:

And how would estoppel work if there are three parties that were to agree to any changes. It is unclear that Ampenegro gave any indication of approval of any changes to the agreement.

An essential legal fact in Rossi v. Darden. There is no doubt that Ampenergo (AEG) deliberately rejected the Second Amendment. This is so clear that it’s a bit of a tragedy that the Judge did not take this on board and rule for Summary Judgment on what depends on this Amendment (like the entire initial Rossi case). However, that’s not the question here.

The Agreement was quite explicit about full agreement of the parties to amend it, and Ampenergo was a party. Payments were due to AEG per the separate agreement between IH and AEG. As a very interested party, then, AEG would have had standing to sue IH for failure to pay the $89 million, if they believed it was due. It appears from the record that they did not believe that, and, unlike Rossi, they are not greedy and insane. They obviously trusted IH, and do not believe that this trust was violated.

Rossi wrote in an email to Cassarino (AEG) that the Second Amendment was “cancelled.” That was Rossi-speak, commonly imprecise. It failed, it was a draft that was never completed. It could have been completed at any time, it did not have a time limit in it. It did contain two signatures out of the four required: a signature for IH, and of Rossi, who neglected to sign for Leonardo Corporation. That latter defect would have been of little consequence because, with everything else in place, a party will be estopped from asserting some minor technical error, and given who Rossi was with respect to Leonardo, Lenardo would not have later been able to successfully claim, “No we never signed it. Go after Mr. Rossi personally.”

(Notice how Annesser and Chaiken have argued quite the reverse with respect to Cherokee. The Agreement did not contemplate a relationship with Cherokee, and was obviously created as an Industrial Heat agreement to avoid that. Darden was not about to approve an agreement with a contingent liability of $100 million, which is about four times the standard Cherokee investment in a project, and this project was far outside of normal Cherokee investment. Investors could have sued them. The agreement contained an integration clause, but that didn’t stop Annesser from asserting the legally impossible, and it worked, because their pleadings had asserted or implied that Cherokee was a sole owner of Industrial Heat, which was never true, it was only true that officers of Cherokee were involved.

It was also possibly true that Darden and Vaughn assured Rossi that if the payments became due, they would be able to raise the money. After all, look at Cherokee! Rossi tends to interpret everything as what he wants it to mean, but any attorney would have told him that, no, read the Agreement. There is no Cherokee guarantee unless you have it in writing. Oral representations (which can easily be misunderstood or misremembered) are not valid for actions to take place more than a year into the future, and an integration clause makes them explicitly invalid from the start.

We also know that the Second Amendment was a draft only, because the date was never filled in, and there is the matter of the “Six Cylinder Unit,” obviously an idea from 2013.

So, what the Second Amendment draft shows, however is that IH was willing to set aside the fixed timing of the original License agreement. To use technical language, that agreement was really dumb ab initio, the problem was easily anticipated. My assumption is that Rossi wrote this; regardless the stupidity is moot. The timing failed. At that point there was no liability of IH to pay the $89 million.

However, because there was obviously a (proposed) agreement between Rossi and IH, and because IH and Rossi were free to make separate agreements (and did, vide the Term Sheet with JMC), and if the conduct of the parties shows that they behaved as if the Second Amendment were valid, it is possible that IH would be estopped from claiming that there was no agreement. This is the legal theory Annesser is operating on.

The evidence of such an agreement is very thin. Key question: what were the terms of this unwritten agreement? When would the Guaranteed Performance Test begin? The Second Amendment was explicit that it would begin as agreed upon in writing by all the parties. If we are going to reduce the Amendment to a separate agreement between IH and Rossi, no such written agreement has been found. It appears to me that Rossi decided to create a GPT, but to avoid asking IH to agree. What he did was to set up some of the conditions of a GPT: an installation that would monitor the operation of the Plant, as supervised by a person who was previously the Engineer Responsible for Validation, and it would last, as a test, for 350-400 days. To encourage IH to agree to this, Rossi lied about the “customer,” repeatedly and plainly, it is not deniable. He avoided any confrontation over “GPT,” but blames IH for not objecting to a “GPT” to what he did not claim until much later.

He attempts to convert a lack of objection, when the issue was not ever raised, into an agreement to accept.

Rossi has diligently searched for and has found evidence that IH knew that a test was under way, and apparently called it a 350 day test in one email. This was not an email sent to Rossi, and he could not have relied upon it. The existence of correspondence between Darden and Penon over a test protocol shows that Darden knew that there was a test aspect to Doral. But a “test aspect” does not equal “GPT.” The conditions of a GPT were never anything other than explicit, and a major one was agreement of the parties as to start date (which would allow them to effectively object to any aspect of a proposed GPT that was not satisfactory to them.) IH would have reasonably believed that they were adequately protected.

I don’t know that anyone anticipated just how insane Rossi was. The steps IH took to protect themselves appear to be reasonable within ordinary business practice, even dealing with frauds. In my study of the evidence, it appears to me that Rossi has perjured himself, directly contradicting clear documentary evidence. That’s insane. It is a puzzle that Annesser and Chaiken have allowed this, and may speak volumes about what those two attorneys are up to.

So, in theory Rossi and IH could have separately agreed on an equivalent to a GPT. If so, AEG would have rights, pursuant to the original Agreement, if a payment to Rossi were of the nature of royalties or licensing fees (and it is easily arguable that, if this was the equivalent of a GPT payment, that AEG would have a right to payment.)

However, there is a lack of evidence that there was such an agreement, only some vague noises or hints. This was not a GPT as contemplated. In the contemplated GPT, IH would have physical control of the reactor. It is not clear if Rossi would have any right to touch it, but if his being kept away from the reactor could have arguably caused it to fail or to not function after a failure (or at all), he could have argued, fairly, that he should have the right; IH would then have, I assume, provided for tightly managed “interference.” Really, to be careful, Rossi would have not touched the controls, but would have instructed someone from IH what to do (and this is how the Lugano test might have been accomplished to keep it relatively independent).

It would have been insane for IH to agree to what Rossi actually set up as a “GPT.” What evidence exists shows that IH was reluctant to directly challenge Rossi, preferring to follow a long-term strategy, a necessity ab initio, of “give Rossi what he wants.” Without that strategy, there would have been no continued agreement, it would have failed in 2013, if not earlier. IH would not have answered the critical questions that they had: whether or not, in spite of all the obvious appearances, Rossi actually had, underneath the blatant bluster and deceptions, something real.

They did not find out with complete certainty, that could be impossible (unless we learn more than we presently know). Even if Rossi totally faked the GPT, he might have had something previously, Storms has opined that Rossi had something, and lost it, which, given the history of LENR, has to be considered possible. He kept trying to improve it! This is not science, it is rather primitive engineering. Given something as poorly understood as LENR, one would properly hold on to positive results until they were thoroughly documented and examine, not keep working to “improve” them before knowing in detail their reliability (measured!) and such matters as ash (if the heat is as Rossi claims, there should be abundant ash, increasing quantitatively with accumulated energy release).

(That error, though, is common in the history of LENR.)

However, IH created enough evidence by the interaction to know, and for the world to know, that Rossi is utterly untrustworthy, that he has fooled scientists into issuing reports that are blatantly in error — and that cannot be published under peer review. Given that Rossi’s claims were entirely outside the envelope of what existed before, there is no reason to believe him, and to have high skepticism of any test where he was present and at all active. We know without doubt that Rossi has faked tests. IH took a risky path, seeking to develop deeper knowledge, deeper than simply repeating fact or innuendo about Rossi’s past. They gained that knowledge, and it is now available to the world, regardless of the outcome of Rossi v. Darden. No sane investor will touch Rossi with a ten-foot pole, not because of any alleged IH campaign to denigrate Rossi, but because of his own very obvious actions. It was actually obvious from his Complaint: his attempt to pierce the corporate veil would put off any investor using corporate forms for liability protection, his inclusion of Cherokee as a defendant, the major activity of Darden and Vaughn and their cash cow, and his willingness to file a blatantly deceptive Complain and to tenaciously defend the indefensible in it, and his claim of fraud based only on an alleged failure to pay and Rossi suspicion, all would mean that an investor would be risking more, perhaps much more, than actual payments, starting with high legal fees to defend against and insane and highly persistent inventor.

There is more in the crazy results from the “ERV,” the claim in them of steady power of 750 or 1000 KW, without any evidence of necessary heat exchange (and Rossi’s public deceptions about this, until he finally claimed a “second floor heat exhanger”). If I saw that a jury was convinced by this, I would still think it ridiculously unlikely, given all the known facts.)

Of course, I have not yet seen the presentations in a trial. Nobody has. Lawyers will point out that everything could shift, which is true. But we have seen the better part of a year of diligent efforts to discover and present evidence for the Rossi case, with the best result, from a Rossi point of view, being that the contrary wasn’t considered proven yet. Rossi will have to prove his claims to the satisfaction of a jury to prevail on any point. The motion re spoliation failed, but a jury could still decide spoliation, and one of the first words I heard from an attorney about this cases was one word: “spoliation.” This was about the removal of the test instrumentation by Penon.

I can see many possible Jones Day errors, such as not vigorously objecting immediately to that spoliation, such as not requiring Rossi to keep all evidence in place (like the piping or anything else necessary for reactor operation) — or to allow full documentation by IH if anything relevant was to be removed, and, in the pleadings, failing to lean on the absence of the written agreement required by the Second Amendment. They barely mentioned it. That was a much stronger and clearer argument than the matter of signatures and “Six Cylinder Unit,” which can easily smell like technicalities, readily estopped. Written agreement was fundamental.

If it is said enough, does it become true?

Certain ideas are repeated over and over, in spite of obvious correction. One particularly egregious example is what Paul Lamacraft of Woodford allegedly wrote when Industrial Heat gave him a preliminary copy of their press release in March, 2016, at a point where Rossi was claiming to his public that there was no problem with IH. This is commonly misquoted in a way that allows an interpretation that is weak or impossible with the original Lamacraft comment, pursuing a Rossi theme, and this began with Rossi making the claim in court, with that misquotation. This is so bad that a misquotation ends up as “agreed” by the parties. Essentially, a subtle difference can sometimes be overlooked.

On LENR Forum, SSC wrote:

oldguy wrote:

It makes perfect sense – They (Peter and Henry) traveled around the US visiting most of the researchers supported by IH. It would be hard to say they could not visit Rossi. Your assertion that Darden used Doral as a showcase is not correct. I think the “showcase” was elsewhere (possibly the work by Cooper and that by Miley).

You keep on discounting all the other work and the visit on the same US trip by the Woodford group to all the other places. Rossi (I think) was the last place the visited on the way back to the UK.

You assume way to much.

You are assuming too much when you say that the showcase was the work of Cooper and Miley. Everyone knows that the most famous name in the LENR world has long been that of Rossi and it was Woodford (or rather McLaughlin, if I remember the name well) to say that Rossi was their core business. So it is far more likely that Darden has focused above all on the Doral plant to attract investment.

As is common on LF, this is all unsourced. There were two visits by Lamacraft to Doral, one in February, at the beginning of the “test,” and before there was any preliminary Penon report, and one in August, after Rossi had rejected the Murray visit and IH was definitely on edge, and shortly to explicitly deny that Doral was the GPT and Penon the ERV.

Oldguy often writes as if he has inside knowledge. I am not aware of evidence on the “Woodford” visits to other researchers or inventors. However, Oldguy might well have some kind of private knowledge — or I have missed the evidence. However, SSC then cited something he “remembers” which is misleading. This has been brought up many times by IH Fanboy, as alleged “truth,” always with misquotation, so here is, once again, the reality:

In reply to J.T. Vaughn, Paul Lamacraft wrote:

This is clearly very disappointing, given that Rossi’s technology was a core element of the initial investment.

Rossi, having obtained this email in Discovery, presents it as evidence to support a claim, but reinterprets it (by adding an “explanation” in brackets — which explanation then, if Lamacraft had actually stated that, would be proving his point. This is an example of what I found in reviewing the Rossi arguments: the manufacture of evidence through creative interpretation. He wrote this:

On March 4, 2016, Woodford Funds explained that “Rossi’s
technology was a core element of the initial [$50 million] investment.”

Was Lamacraft referring to their $50 million? It would be strange, in context. “Explained” is supplied by Annesser; this is actually Lamacraft commiserating with Vaughn, a principal at the company that actually made the “initial investment,” in 2012-2013. It would be odd for Lamacraft to refer to their own investment in IHHI — which didn’t go to Rossi at all — as “the initial investment.” If he meant what Annesser is claiming, he would have referred to “our investment.” That investment was apparently, from the Ampenergo notes, committed in 2014, before the Doral test began — and what was committed was up to $200 million, also covered by the Darden deposition, as I recall. That IH owned a Leonardo license, would be important for reasons I have explained many times. However, Woodford did not invest in “Rossi technology” as such, that’s obvious, they invested in LENR research, so oldguy is essentially correct. Rossi has distorted reality to make him and his technology the center of the LENR universe.

Yes, Woodford would want to see the Doral plant for themselves. However, Rossi’s claim is that Darden and Vaugh touted the Rossi technology in order to induce Woodford to invest. It’s actually not his business, this is all part of a Rossi smokescreen to create some sort of appearance of impropriety, whereas IH did not actually receive any money from Woodford, directly. Woodford invested in IHHI, insulating their investment from all things Rossi. IHHI can decide to pay IH expenses, or can let IH fall into the gutter. It’s a choice. They own it.

Rossi, in his Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, has:

55. In May of 2015, during the course of the GPT, Defendant IH closed on a $50 million investment by non-party Woodford Investment Funds. See Composite Ex. 3 at 170:9-14, 204:25-205:5; 206:6-207:6; IH-00021986 (4/21/2015 IH memo from Darden to P. Lamacraft); IH-00080193
(5/15/2015 email chain between Darden and J. Spear, S. Hartanto, P. Lamacraft, N. Woodford, and S. Saha); IH-00099714 (3/4/2016 email chain between P. Lamacraft and Vaughn); IH-00112920 (11/2/2015 IH Business Development memo), appended hereto as Composite Ex. 34.

56. Woodford Investment Funds later claimed that “Rossi’s technology was a core element of [this] investment.” See IH-00099714 (3/4/2016 email chain between P. Lamacraft and Vaughn), appended hereto as Ex. 35.

It is true, apparently, that the Woodford investment “closed” during the Doral test. But that it was based on the Doral test is quite unlikely, given the timing and known facts. Woodford committed about $200 million in total funding, in 2014, as shown by the Ampenergo notes. The initial payment was to be “$25-50 million.” Lamacraft visited the Doral plant in February, 2015, as the Doral test was just beginning, there would have been no report from Penon. The investment apparently “closed” in May, 2015, i.e., that is when the $50 million shows up in IH Holdings International, Ltd, the company set up, at Woodford request, to receive it.

This quotation in ¶ 56 of the Lamacraft statement is again misrepresented, to make it appear to refer to the $50 million. In the other quotation Rossi counsel did at least have the full quote and only added an interpretation. Here, they eliminate the word “initial,” replacing it with “this].”

In the Joint Pretrial Stipulation, this is listed as agreed fact, though it is incorrect. The brackets have been dropped.

89. In May 2015, IH closed on a $50 million investment by non-party Woodford Investment Funds (“Woodford”). Woodford claimed that “Rossi’s technology was a core element of this investment.”

It is possible that IH attorneys did not notice the shift.

In fact, what Woodford thought is not really relevant to Rossi v. Darden: this was a casual comment in response to the coming IH press release (not any kind of official Woodford statement; it was private email, a personal note).

The context here presents the conclusion that “this investment” — which is not what Lamacraft actually wrote — was the $50 million. If Woodford actually thought that (I cannot consider it impossible, though that is not consistent with continued IH and IHHI behavior after May, 2016), it still has no legal relevance. If IH used the fact of the “Rossi investment” for some kind of gain — in this case to raise money for other research — this would not be unjust enrichment, it would merely be a consequence of their very risky investment.

How not to address summary judgment

My free subscription to Law360 expired, so I can’t easily read the whole article there. However, it reminds me to examine the Altonaga decision, which at the time struck me as woefully uninformed.

My guess is that Altonaga did not read and consider the evidence and arguments, but, instead, simply took the word of one (or both) parties that the alleged facts were “disputed.” She was overwhelmed by verbiage, claiming “dispute,” where the underlying facts were not, in fact, disputed. Rather, the disputes actually alleged were over possible interpretations or implications of the facts, and by taking a dispute as being “factual,” she was left with nothing to judge. Continue reading “How not to address summary judgment”

Unspecified “they” is always a figment of our imagination

T is for Them :: U is for Us

Joshg is one of the most coherent writers identifiable as Planet Rossi.

On LENR Forum, he wrote:

JedRothwell wrote:

I had high hopes that I.H. would fund research. I think they would have, but they have been derailed by the lawsuit. They fired the technical staff. They may be funding a few studies, but I doubt they will contribute significant amounts of money.

So that R&D center they opened up near Raleigh headed by Antonio La Gatta is just a figment of our imagination?

This is common on Planet Rossi: “they” is fuzzy and amorphous. Genuine questions:

Is there an “R&D center” opened “near Raleigh”?
If so, who opened it?
What does this have to do with Industrial Heat and their plans?

First of all, see this LENR Forum report, posted by Alain Coetmeur, in May, 2016. The company in question is HMRI R&D, Inc. The Registered Agent is Paul T. Winter, very likely this CPA. This is largely meaningless, CPAs often serve as registered agents with very little involvement in the actual business. The business office shown is 13000 Weston Parkway, Cary, NC 27513, which appears to be a 57,000 sq. foot office building, that was for sale and for lease in 2015. Other companies have the same address, so HMRI — or their accountant — may only have a small — or larger — office.

The creation filing, August 12, 2015, shows an “incorporator,” who is merely an attorney, Byron B. Kirkland with a Raleigh address, and then two initial Directors: Antonio La Gatta and John T. Vaughn, with the same address shown as is shown for the Registered Agent. These are the persons of interest.

Antonio La Gatta. La Gatta was working with R&D at TSEM, a sponsor of ICCF-19 in Padua in 2015. His sister is a manager of that company. She told the interviewer this, in May, 2015: “my brother Antonio will travel to the US to direct the new US operational units in Texas, in collaboration with MIT, Texas Tech University, Indusrial Heat [sic].”

This was a plan in May. While there may be a correct substance to it, it’s a confused rumor. “Collaboration” with MIT is meaningless. MIT is not involved with LENR. Peter Hagelstein, a professor of electrical engineering there, is. “Operational units” of what? TSEM? Perhaps HMRI is a “unit” of TSEM? As to Texas Tech, again, this would likely be a reference to the Duncan et al group there, which was announced at ICCF-19.

While a connection between Texas Tech and HMRI is certainly not impossible — they were looking for additional labs to work on the heat/helium project, beyond themselves and ENEA (Violante) in Italy — I have no information about such a connection. Industrial Heat is not connected to the Texas Tech project, which was independently funded.

However, Vaughn is an initial director. This is JT Vaughn, an officer of and investor in Industrial Heat — and a defendant in Rossi v. Darden. This news, however, does not establish that Industrial Heat “opened up a research center near Raleigh.” Cary is indeed close to Raleigh, about twelve miles. What is HMRI R&D up to?

There is some information in the Murray deposition, for which we have the full transcript. IH had a research operation, investigating various LENR approaches, and Murray reports on some of that. He testifies:

·1· · · · Q.· · Of all the systems you tested in Industrial
·2· ·Heat, were there any that you were able to validate and
·3· ·verify?
·4· · · · A.· · No.

This is thoroughly discouraging, for many. However, this, or most of this, may have been seeking to find a way for Plan A: rapid commercialization. Plan B was my name for retrenching, going back to the most basic science and nailing it. For Plan B, small results can still be very significant, even more so of the “small results” show correlations. Heat/helium is the quintessential Plan B project, because there are many supporting reports, and the vast bulk of the evidence confirms the correlation first reported by Miles in 1991. This has practically nothing to do with NiH research, which, if NiH effects are real and not artifact, would surely have some different ash. Murray goes on:

15· ·[…] And in many cases the heat that they were
16· ·producing, the excess heat, the anomalous heat was very
17· ·small.· They, they had amounts that were very small.
18· ·And so any small errors in their sensor systems or small
19· ·errors in their assumptions would mask that level.
20· · · · · · · So we went through and carefully analyzed
21· ·their data, and in a few cases we actually reproduced
22· ·their experiments.· We had two groups that in the
23· ·validation verification phase we came up with what I
24· ·would describe as nebulous results.· They weren’t
25· ·positive, but we certainly just couldn’t say here is a
·1· ·major problem that has to be overcome before we could
·2· ·legitimately verify and validate it.· And so in those
·3· ·cases we worked very closely with the inventors and
·4· ·organizations to help them do independent reproduction
·5· ·in our lab.
·6· · · · Q.· · Okay.· And those were successful
·7· ·reproductions?
·8· · · · A.· · No.· Ultimately, the reproductions, yeah, we
·9· ·didn’t find anything that had excess or anomalous heat.
[…]
15· · · · A.· · The first one was Dr. Mizuno in Japan.· That
16· ·was a plasma-based system.· And the second one, which
17· ·was very much at arms length, I did not have privy or
18· ·access to this one, was HMRI.· It was a, it was only a
19· ·partial investment into it.· And so I was kind of, me
20· ·and the rest of the engineering team were kept at arms
21· ·length.· We weren’t allowed to have access to all of
22· ·their data, so I just got summary reports and briefings
23· ·on some of the things they had done.
24· · · · Q.· · I thought you were able to reproduce their
25· ·experiments in your lab.
·1· · · · A.· · So, yeah.· No, we, what we did was, based on
·2· ·the limited knowledge we had of their system, we
·3· ·reproduced an electrolytic cell that to the best of our
·4· ·ability looked like what we had understood they were
·5· ·doing.· And we could not achieve the same results that
·6· ·they were giving us at this kind of arms length.

There is a little more description of the HMRI relationship:

25· […] Likewise with HMRI, the way the contract was
·1· ·structured, we were kind of at arms length, so we only
·2· ·got a little bit of information, and the information we
·3· ·were able to receive, we structured some experiments to
·4· ·understand it.· That was actually very late.· That was
·5· ·probably June of 2016.

There is more about HMRI, some misc findings, on Misc Mash. There is an indication that I could not confirm that an HMRI “proprietary process” was being “moved overseas.”

Back to Joshg’s claim, essentially that “IH” established HMRI “near Raleigh.” From what we have, HMRI is independent and the collaboration expected (from La Gatta’s sister) was arms-length, and limited. While there was likely some IH investment in HMRI, it was limited and it cannot be reasonably said that this Cary lab shows IH’s continued commitment to LENR research.

On Planet Rossi, though, extremely limited information is interpreted and extended and reports as fact, and then others repeat it and it becomes “well-known,” like the alleged $200 million investment by the Chinese, and then the question becomes “where did that money go,” rather than the question that would reasonably precede it, did it exist at all?

A brilliant example of all this arose on LENR Forum, it’s mentioned on the Misc Mash page. March 2, 2016, David Nygren wrote:

Now we need to dig deeper! It is valued to over 1bn dollars?

IH HOLDINGS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09553031/filing-history

This is not my field so please help. For you who are good at counting, do these tasks!
23M shares * $ 45 = weather over $ 1bn??

Here we have 20 companies listed (59 page / 8 Jun 2015)
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/09553031/filing-history/MzEyMzczNDg0OGFkaXF6a2N4/document?format=pdf&download=0

Indeed, not his field. However, he does not show where the $45 came from. He links a listing of companies on a signature page for an authorization to issue Series A shares, i.e., ordinary shares, valued at $0.01 each, some for cash and some for other consideration. The total value to be alloted, I read as $11,098.78 plus $25.907.15, total $37,005.93. A tad short of $1 billion, eh?

Barty asked David what this meant. The blind leading the blind.

AlainCo provided some correct information (the $50 million investment by Woodford a few days later), but did not actually correct the Nygren error. AlainCo noted the use of different classes of shares that can allow company founders to retain control even when receiving a large investment. AlainCo’s other post on this, Mar 3, was much better but still confusing and inaccurate.

June 30, 2016, I came across the discussion, researched it, and corrected it, giving sources for everything. The Woodford investment has been incorrectly reported by news sources that apparently did not look at the original documents. Woodford invested exactly $50 million US. To be precise, Series A shares (not the original Series A, apparently, later called “ordinary shares”) were preferred shares, issued at $45.049996 per share, and two Woodford trusts bought 1,109,878 shares, which works out to $49,999,999.50. My guess is that they actually paid $50 million, so inquiring minds want to know where the extra fifty cents went.

sifferkoll immediately exploded:

are you playing stupid again Abd? I said $1bn valuation, which roughly means Woodford bought 5% of IH with $50M.

Later, I remembered the $1 billion error was sifferkoll’s, probably because of this post. My guess is that Siffer had written this on his blog — I’m not researching that now — and that Nygren had picked it up from there. Maybe. What Siffer is showing is a total lack of understanding as to how a company is valued, and what that means. Had Woodford purchased ordinary stock for $45 per share, this would have made some sense, though it would still not have created a billion dollars for Darden to somehow “disappear.” But Woodford did not do that.

My point here is that LENR Forum and those who write for it have no habit of correcting errors. We can see people coming up with false information years later, because they read it in a post, perhaps, in this case, a post by the Founder of LENR Forum. There is a reservoir of held ideas about IH and this case, based on what was stated back then based on assumptions from shallow research. “Toilet paper stock,” mentioned by Sifferkoll, is a common idea. “Shell corporations.” (But the only genuine shell corporation here is JM Products, Inc.)

Siffer wrote “Darden simply pocketed the money and made it dissappear [sic].” But what money? A billion dollars? In fact, Woodford invested $50 million and, while IH Holdings International doesn’t broadcast much detail, much of the money still exists, as cash or other holdings of IHHI (including some valuation for the Rossi License). Siffer has in mind a billion dollars that he made up, that never existed. And then there is the alleged $200 million from the Chinese, that apparently also never existed, or if it existed, it had little or nothing to do with Industrial Heat, it was Chinese money, invested in a Chinese project with very little connection with LENR, if any.

Derricut on investment flabber

Simon Derricut, as a comment here, wrote:

(and I comment).

One thing about the money that is being talked about is that every year IH (and all the other players) will need to produce accounts and pay taxes. That means that people who do some digging will find out the truth or otherwise of all the rumours. There are legal implications for lying about the money.

Indeed. Darden and Vaughn have high experience with Cherokee, making risky investments, where some fail, and would be thoroughly aware of the possible pitfalls of failure to fully disclose risk to investors, and knowing that fraud would likely fail to escape detection. In the attempts by Planet Rossi to show that Darden and Vaughn are crooks, examples are dredged out of Cherokee history; but, when examined closely, none of these have held up as evidence of fraud or deceptive behavior; the fact that reporters have strongly implied fraud and that investigations have been started is used by Planet Rossi as if it were proof, but the lack of conclusions is actually evidence of the opposite. The worst thing found, so far, was an accounting error, an understandable one, arcane, where a particular expense was, by securities regulations, not to be charged to investors, whereas IH did make that charge. No wrongdoing was found, only error.

Similarly, if IH did get Rossi’s IP to actually run, and later try to sell it without acknowledging (and paying) Rossi, then he will have legal redress. They can’t “steal” the IP and get away with it.

Right. Again, Planet Rossi must imagine that somehow the IP would be hidden, disguised. I can only imagine that as possible if the IP were not actually patentable. Further, to pull off this scam, IH would be risking billions in legitimate profits, all to … what? Take some secret payments under the table from some other company, perhaps Brillouin, where they have only a relatively small and old investment? They would be risking that some whistle-blower would reveal their perfidy. Rossi tried hard to find evidence along these lines and apparently failed, though we may not have seen everything.

The point about VCs (Venture Capitalists) is that they are gamblers. Where most investors want to get a certain return on investment, VCs estimate the risks of losing their money and calculate whether the possible gains outweigh the risks so that, on balance, they gain more money than they lose, but it is known that since the investments are high-risk then a certain proportion will in fact fail and they’ll lose their money on those ones. In fact, if not enough projects fail then the VCs are not earning their money, since they ask a high percentage of the profits of those that succeed. No-one would take a low-risk project to a VC, after all – it costs too much.

This accords with my understanding. VCs are gamblers, but in a game where they can act to play odds that, overall, favor them. This all is dependent upon their ability to estimate those odds. Typically, there are not betting the farm on a single project, but engage in many projects, distributing risk, increasing the potential gain, or hedging it.

(That is, they might bet on exclusive possibilities. This is the simple answer to why IH was not immediately offering to return the License. After all, what if Rossi actually has something? What are the odds of this? And … what would Rossi be offering in return? He seems to have imagined that he could just unilaterally cancel the License “for nonpayment,” but the Agreement was certainly not written that way, this was just another Rossifiction. IH has a License until and unless they give it up or a Court takes it away — which is unlikely unless their investment is returned, at least the original investment.)

Analysing the risks correctly requires that the truth be told by the receivers of the VC backing. At least the truth as far as they know it. IH of course knew that Rossi tended to not tell the truth, which raised the risks somewhat, but the payback if Rossi had actually had some real technology was sky-high and a 1% probability of that was deemed to be worth the risk. Dewey states that 1% probability as their cut-off point.

They will, if sophisticated, include the possibility of lies in their estimations. Humans lie.

1% is actually conservative, if the loss can be sustained. I estimate the value of a practical LENR technology, something like what Rossi was claiming, at about a trillion dollars. So 1% would, in theory, be worth about $10 billion. However, straight game-theory play is not how humans actually operate. We want better. We also have alternatives, other ways to invest, and may seek maximization among choices, not merely some absolute average return from one.

I think that all of the above should be pretty self-evident to most people who have been watching, and that most of these points have been made at various times. Everyone (IH, Woodford etc.) should have been aware of the risks of backing Rossi. There’s also an obvious risk in backing LENR in general, since the main scientific consensus is still that it is a measurement error.

Yes. The risk involved with LENR, however, may depend on time-horizon. Short-term returns in LENR are very unlikely. Longer-term profit is much more likely, even probable. But “longer-term” might be in excess of twenty years. I assume that IH and Woodford were quite aware of risk, and quite aware of the extensive criticism of Rossi. They certainly knew about Krivit, and we see McLaughlin taking Krivit (mispelled) into consideration in February, 2015. I would assume they had read everything Krivit had written. Krivit, however, is a yellow journalist, and draws firm conclusions from evidence that is less than conclusive. And WTF does a certain unfortunate figure’s child molestation prosecution have to do with Andrea Rossi? Is Rossi responsible for every reprehensible action taken or allegedly taken by everyone who supported him?

Krivit wrote about the obvious, so I’d assume that IH knew all this, likewise Woodford. This was all extensively discussed in the CMNS community, which was mostly very skeptical of Rossi.

Still, the big profits go to the people who correctly bet that some fringe science can be turned into a technology. Of course, the profits can be even bigger if you can get the government to put the initial research money in and you then utilise that research, but that’s another story….

Right. So part of an IH strategy might be to encourage and support governmental and other non-business investment in research. That is where APCO might shine. I see a sane long-term IH approach as being an observer, ready to act quickly if the opportunity arises, but not routinely spending a large budget. Probably maintaining a lab but only engaging substantial staff for specific and vetted projects.

As I see it, IH began with a fairly low estimation of achieving success, and during the Doral test that estimation went down (below 1%) because of the way Rossi ran his operation, stopping any verification of his process. It seems unlikely that Tom Darden would have kept such estimations secret from Woodford or anyone else who intended to invest, since that would open him to being sued for fraud by such investors. Since we haven’t seen Woodford suing Tom Darden, it stands to sense that they must have been happy, and are still happy, with his honesty in telling them what he knew of the risks.

For reasons that others have stated, we cannot conclude from the absence of a lawsuit that Woodford is happy with IH. However, there is no sign that they are unhappy, so far. There is no sign that they have attempted to withdraw their investment. I’m sure they are unhappy about so much being spent on lawyers, but it is possible that this, or some of it, might come back from Rossi and Johnson. I don’t expect Bass and Fabiani to be big sources of recovery. Sad cases, in my opinion. I doubt criminal indictments would stand there, but … if one through carelessness aids a civil fraud, one can be held liable, and this could be “joint and severable” liability, where the total liability can be collected from each.

Though we’re not privy to what went on between IH and Woodford, that lack of any legal proceedings implies strongly that there is no problem with that relationship and that Woodford are happy with the information they received from IH. They may be annoyed with Rossi, though.

Though we may not be able to trust what people say, what they do is a reliable indicator.

The operative word is “indicator.” So often in internet discussions, indications are taken and presented as proof.

More on the investment flabber

On LENR Forum, Eric Walker mentioned a post by joshg. While the link was incorrect, I did some searching for joshg (LF), and Josh G (ECW). I found comments I had overlooked.

joshg, himself, overlooks timing. It’s easy to do this when one is defending a thesis, looking for proof. One will come across some evidence that seems to prove the thesis, but events have been collapsed, and what happened later, in fact, can be asserted as a cause of what happened earlier.

4/21/2017, joshg wrote

I have frequently been challenged to substantiate my claim that Darden et al. basically defrauded investors by using the 1MW test to raise $50 million from Woodford (plus some kind of joint research endeavor with the Chinese plus who knows what else).

Josh is not promoting the $200 or $121 million Chinese investment in IH meme. However, was the 1 MW test “used” to raise the $50 million?

Continue reading “More on the investment flabber”

The Troll’s Playbook

The Secret Playbook of Internet Trolls. ‘Disrupt, Misdirect and Control Internet Discussions’

It’s ironic — or is it? — that Planet Rossi routinely accuses the “Ventriloquist of Raleigh” of spreading FUD, of paying people to attack Rossi. At the same time, IH Fanboy claims that those who claim others are lying are likely to be liars themselves. Many are eager to find fault with others, to toss any garbage they can find or invent, and this does happen on all “sides,” — but Planet Rossi is organized around Rossi Thought, as expressed for years on his blog, JONP.

A common troll tactic is having a series of Favorite Topics, arguments, sometimes based on something resembling a fact or which can be claimed to be fact, that are then raised to avoid discussing something else, such as any losing issue. Ele did that with the claim that IH had raised $250 million (as if this proved Rossi Reality, if it were true) and I covered it on

… and that second post goes into some detail on origins of the “$250 million” story.

Eric Walker, on LENR Forum, confronted ele over this (as previously mentioned). ele came back:

ele wrote:

Cite and quote the court document that has this number and I’ll move your post back to the Rossi v. Darden thread. Eric

Ele normally does not provide accurate citations, has no academic habits (which is like Rossi, who has not worked in academia for a very long time). What ele quotes here was not written by ele, but was a comment added by Eric Walker when he moved the off-topic comment to the Playground. Before going on with the ele response, here was that original ele post, what Walker moved:

oldguy wrote:

250M exists only in “Rossi says”.

No. is written in the documents of the trial. This figure was cited many times here and no one from IH have never negated it.

Darden’s visits to Doral with investors are alo [sic] documented.

Cite and quote the court document that has this number and I’ll move your post back to the Rossi v. Darden thread. Eric

I’ve looked and have not been able to find one. But there are thousands of documents and some of them have hundreds of pages. However, I have found what appears to be the original claims. It was very likely Rossi Says.

ele responds with what does not address Eric’s challenge. He claimed a court document, that’s what Eric dinged him for, not for the $250 million itself. He then provided some “evidence” for large numbers, but not $250 million. Not the court document number that anyone can check.

Basic troll rule: make claims difficult to verify. Waste the time of those who might disagree with you, burn them out with repetition. This is not mere disagreement, people may disagree and then collaborate in finding reality. Trolls are about provoking upset, which can include irritating others through repetitive, unresponsive claims. While insulting them as having nothing, as ele did in this sequence, even though those others were simply stating what is obvious from court documents and community discussions.

I would assume that Eric would want to see the original post edited to make it potentially useful. Not another post adding “more evidence,” never checking or confirming the original claim.

This is like the repeated claims of Dirt in Cherokee history. These claims have been tracked down and analyzed many times, there is very, very little there, essentially nothing surprising for a company that works as Cherokee works — which is legal. Evidence is cited that, if one actually follows it (most people don’t follow evidence, take the time to read court documents, etc), shows Cherokee as a victim of fraud, not a perpetrator of it. But the fraud was an officer in a Cherokee company! So it looks bad. This would be like condemning Cherokee for fraud because they engaged with Rossi. In fact, the trolls do that. They should have known better, and, obviously, they only wanted to impress investors to extract money from their pockets. Yet the documents don’t show that, not at all. IH only dealt with investors who knew and were willing to assume the risk. Woodford has a different class of investors, to be sure, but Woodford has only a small percentage of those funds invested in LENR, through IHHI, not IH, and, while Rossi’s alleged technology is part of the full IHHI portfolio, the Woodford money didn’t go there, which probably pissed him off no end.

IH did visit Doral with investors and others. However, we know from the Ampenergo memo that Woodford, in particular, was not terribly impressed, at least according to Vaughn, speaking privately with Ampenergo well before the Doral test was over, and with no reason to lie to him. The timing of investments and the documents we have on them do not support the Rossi claim that investors tossed in funds based on being impressed by Doral. Definitely not Woodford, that investment was planned before Doral started up. Another visitor was Pike, who may have Chinese connections, but Pike was already an investor (a fairly large one).

ele went on:

Dear Eric,
The big amount of money raised from Darden is also a public information.
Just as an example please have a look to this page: Donbot.com

It is rather easy to notice that this is not a court document. It is rather easy to notice that the page doesn’t source most of the information. However, it was taken without credit from another page that does give more sources, on Hydrofusion.com, the web site of Rossi’s licensee for a few countries.

One of the sources is a Huffington post article, Interview With Andrea Rossi, LENR Energy Pioneer, October 6. 2015. Full of errors — and Rossi lies, including Stuff and Nonsense about the “customer,” the monitoring systems in Doral, etc.

Quote
WIM, or Woodford Investment Management, had said earlier in the year that they had invested in Industrial Heat. At the
beginning of October, they revealed that they had performed due diligence for 2.5 years, and their investment came to $50
million USD. [….]

While this is not precisely correct, it’s true in round outline. Woodford did not invest in IH. They invested in IHHI, which bought all outstanding IH stock, exchanging it for IHHI stock. Woodford received “preferred stock,” which doesn’t give operational control (Woodford doesn’t have voting power commensurate with the value of their investment) but which does have certain other special rights. It is reasonable to claim that Darden raised this funding; Woodford apparently trusts Darden. This money, however, did not come because of the visit by Woodford reps to Doral. There were actually two visits, one very early in the “test,” and the other after relations had actually broken down, after Rossi refused to allow the IH engineer, Murray, to visit the Plant. Woodford did not invest because of these visits; they were apparently not impressed. A plant with a steam outlet running through a wall into an inaccessible area, and no visible signs of generating a megawatt, but only the say-so of the inventor or the puppet Bass — now there is a legitimate usage of “puppet” — would not impress any intelligent observer. Unless they like seeing all those blue boxes, Rossi did, indeed, put on a show!

But this isn’t the point. Where’s the beef? The other $200 million or so?

Tom Darden, CEO of Industrial Heat, signed a cooperation agreement with a newly created strategic financial center in
Beijing. The “Technology Ministry of Science and Innovation Park” will participate in technology transfer with 20 companies
from the U.S. This sparked rumors that the E-Cat technology recently patented in the U.S. would somehow become the sole
property of the Chinese government. However, these ideas were assuaged, and China invested the equivalent of $121 million USD in LENR technology.

This is copied from Hydrofusion. I’ve added a link that was there. The link is to Google translate for a document on that Park. While Darden is CEO of Industrial Heat, he is also CEO of Cherokee Investment Partners, and many organizations are (or were) involved with that Chinese project. There is no sign that LENR is a major part of it, though it’s certainly not impossible, and Darden may have spoken about LENR in China.

Where were the “rumors” “sparked”? I can think of one likely place, where Hydrofusion might get their information. There was this, about the Park. I followed the link to the article in Chinese. No cheese down that tunnel.

It is clear, though, that Darden was in China representing Cherokee and possibly Research Triangle Park, not Industrial Heat.

And then this E-Cat world article cites Hydrofusion for the $121 million figure. While ECW, following Hydrofusion, speculated that the $121 million was for LENR, the research Park would be a huge project, with probably billions involved. And the plot thickens. From that ECW article:

Alain asked Andrea Rossi if he knew about this on the Journal of Nuclear Physics today, and Rossi responded, “yes, I saw it, it has been reproduced from other publications”. Alain asked if AR was involved in this deal, and he responded, “no, it is an action IH made in his Territory, for which has been licensed from Leonardo Corporation”

Notice that Rossi assumed it was about LENR and the E-Cat.

ele claims that “This figure [$250 million] was cited many times here and no one from IH have never negated it.” Of course, he has just responded to Dewey Weaver, the only person blogging on these issues known to be from Industrial Heat — as a contractor for them and investor, apparently from the beginning, who would know about such transactions as an insider — who had just denied it. If ele is not lying, ele is not seeing what is immediately in front of him.

Trolls, when they make mistakes, almost never go back to correct them….

Frank Acland went on:

It’s still a bit vague as to what exactly is being financed, but Industrial Heat does have an E-Cat license for China. Perhaps they are going to be manufacturing E-Cats in China in this Science and Innovation Park that has been established, or since IH is supporting other LENR groups, funds could be used for supporting non-E-Cat LENR technologies.

Still, it this number of accurate, it shows a significant commitment from the Chinese to support the development of LENR.

Like much speculation on E-Cat World, there is practically no basis for this. Someone might, I suppose, have asked Hydrofusion where they got that information. Did they? AlainCo asked Rossi, not Hydrofusion, but Rossi only had second-hand information.

There is no evidence I’ve seen anywhere that IH received substantial funding from China. The agreement signed, from the Chinese sources, was for technology cooperation in establishing a research center in China, there is no clue of any major investment in (or involvement by) Industrial Heat.

The Darden visit to China was in September, 2013. IH had just received the 1 MW Plant. It is highly unlikely they would have been heavily promoting anything at that point.

So that is not a “Rossi Says”.
Here :
https://translate.google.com/t…spx%3Fid%3D845&edit-text=
is the photo of Darden in China…..

Darden visited China, proving … proving what?

That there are “documents of the trial” is “ele Says,” which certainly sounds like Rossi Says. Now, Rossi has seen IH discovery, that we, as the public, have not seen. To reveal this, though, ele would have to out himself. More likely, Rossi, like others, picks up rumors and repeats them as fact, particularly when they serve his purposes. The general purpose here would be to provide “evidence” that the IH people (a whole series of them) are liars, since they claim they could not confirm the technology, but they “sold” it to so many investors for so much money.

Of course, in September, 2013, IH had not had time to confirm the technology, other than by relying on the Validation Test and Penon’s analysis. Rossi Says is commonly clueless about time, when things happened.

Eric didn’t buy it.

Well, let’s look at the (surely misleading) numbers you quote. Nominally from Woodford we have 50 million, and nominally from the Chinese we have 121 million. That’s 50 million + 121 million = 171 million dollars. You’re short by 79 million to get to your 250 million that you’ve mentioned on several occasions.

Normal people will concede points to trolls. Eric, here, is not accepting the $121 million figure, but is only pointing out that the original claim of $250 million is off by a third, even if that figure is accepted.

Now let us recall the article that clarified that only 20 or so million from Woodford had been disbursed to IH.

I noticed the problem here and so did ele, of course. “The article” is vague, and what is reported is possible an interpretation, by someone unspecified. What I know of is the IHHI financial information. It does not specify what is “disbursed to IH.”

Go to Companies House.

07 Nov 2016

Total exemption full accounts made up to 31 December 2015

View PDF

I can read and interpret this such that, as of the end of December, 2015, the first year of IHHI operation (the Woodford investment was in May, 2015), IHHI had spent roughly $17 million in the year, and had current (short-term) liabilities of about $3 million. They had cash beyond those short-term liabilities of almost $14 million, but they had “investments” valued at almost $28 million. Without knowing what those investments are, saying that only $20 million was disbursed could be very misleading. That might, for example, include the value of IPH, i.e., mostly of the Rossi license. The total investment in IH was about $20 million, raised from the original group of investors, apparently. (That was the stock issue authorized when they raised the $11.5 million in 2013). So, with the Woodford $50 million, of a total of $70 million raised, it appears that it has been spent on Rossi and other operations, so far, leaving roughly $14 million. We could probably come up with what they have spent on Rossi, I think that’s a court document. Millions of dollars went to Ampenergo, all part of the cost of the original Agreement.

And let us recall that the Chinese number was probably a commitment and does not appear to have been intended to be directed to IH.

Speculation but reasonable. The stories cited as sources in the old discussions of the China connection do not show any investment in IH, at all. This was, first of all, Cherokee participation, not IH. (Confusing Cherokee with IH is a Planet Rossi trope, it’s very common, and there are news stories that also confuse the two.) Then this was all about a technology park in China paralleling Research Triangle Park in North Carolina. Not about LENR. That was Planet Rossi speculation, making the kinds of assumptions often made in that community.

There is no source for the $121 million, which is an awfully specific number to stand as a vague rumor.

We are now far shorter [short of] the 250 million. Please stop repeating that IH raised 250 million as though it were a fact unless you can substantiate it. Or, if you do repeat it as though it were a fact, your post will probably go into the bargain bin.

Clearance Items. Far superior to arbitrary (or judgmental) deletion.

ele came back again.

Eric Walker wrote:

That’s 50 million + 121 million = 171 million dollars.

This is not just few money. I remember also other figures in the docs and I will search the exact document….. but ok lets take 171 for now

In other words, “I was wrong but I win anyway, because $171 million is a lot of money! Therefore Darden is a lying crook! That I lied is not important. So what if I lie? I’m just a troll, you don’t know who I am, and I can disappear anytime I like, like randombit0.

Eric Walker wrote:

Now let us recall the article that clarified that only 20 or so million from Woodford had been disbursed to IH.

Please cite the aricle yourself. You have not.

Above I cite a source. I think, though, that Eric had something else in mind, that IH spent about $20 million on the Rossi affair. That wasn’t from Woodford, though some of the last expenses may have been supported with Woodford money, through IHHI, which is sole owner of IH.

Eric Walker wrote:

And let us recall that the Chinese number was probably a commitment and does not appear to have been intended to be directed to IH.

Are you sure ? The only internet articles I found with this figures are related to Darden visit. Remember that IH holds the rights for China.

This was all Planet Rossi, making assumptions, i.e., Darden = Industrial Heat = Cherokee. The articles actually talk only about Cherokee and Raleigh and Research Triangle Park there. No mention of Industrial Heat. Somewhere, though, there is an indication that Darden may have mentioned LENR. The timing of the Darden visit to China is an issue here. It was September, 2013, when IH had only the month before received the Plant, certainly did not have time to test it.

Yes. IH holds the E-cat rights for China, which shows what? They were nowhere near starting up manufacture. You can’t make millions if you can’t make one. Cherokee doesn’t hold the rights, never invested in Industrial Heat. Rossi was never clear about who and what he was dealing with.

Eric Walker wrote:

Or, if you do repeat it as though it were a fact, your post will probably go into the bargain bin.

As you see I’m not repeating.

I feel, but of course I can be wrong, that there is a double standard here. People from IH can openly offend and insult other while I’m just trying to reconstruct how much money IH has rosen.

Raised. Liar.

He is trying to prove something, not to learn or “reconstruct.” There are, so far, no sources for either the $200 million or $121 million figure, other than a report from Hydrofusion that seems to have inspired a flock of reports. That report is itself vague and implies previous discussion, talking about “rumor” The story has “the equivalent of $121 million,” implying that this was not a US dollar investment, and many have opined that if China were to invest, it would not be in a U.S. company like Industrial Heat or IHHI (which denominates investments in USD).

We know how much money IH has raised: $11.5 million in 2013 with a stock offering, with that issue allowing up to $20 million, and since they needed more money, I assume they did raise it, probably up to the limit. Then Woodford invested $50 million in IHHI, and there may have been some smaller investments, I don’t recall the numbers. So we are looking at total investment, not counting promised future investments, of roughly $70 million. There is no sign of anything else. It certainly isn’t in IH Holdings International, Ltd.

No, ele was claiming that Dewey Weaver, who would actually know, was lying, by claiming that this $250 million figure was well-known and then, nutty as it was, pointing as proof to a way-crazy web site, donbot.com, without bothering to look for actual sources.

And then there was this unfortunate post:

Rends wrote:

The main question remains, had IH the full sum of money in order to meet the obligations of the license agreement at any time available?. The answer is no!

Speculation as to how they could have raised money is superfluous, because they have signed a contract with the knowledge that they can possibly not raise the sum and so they could not be interested seeing Rossi successfully running a long term test – because they did not have that $89 million at no time!

Rends, quite simply, has not been following the documents (and has shown that he doesn’t understand what he does read). Woodford gave $50 million to IHHI to support LENR research, and committed another $150 million. If it were needed, they had found the money. No, they never had it sitting in the bank, but companies almost never do. Money sitting in a bank is wasted. They didn’t have the $10 million for the IP payment either, until a few days before. But they knew how they could get it.

I signed a contract to buy a house, to pay the better part of a half million dollars for it. I didn’t have the money — but I secured the agreement with $1000. This is totally routine! For a house, I could obtain a mortgage, and did. It is paying large sums for nothing, or something of highly speculative value, that’s difficult, but Darden has high experience at risky investments. The companies he has started through Cherokee, investing about $25 million of Cherokee funds, have often raised hundreds of millions of dollars, it appears, with investments and loans and grants.

See the Ampenergo memo for information about the Woodford commitment, but there are other documents in the record. The idea that IH didn’t have the money, and therefore defrauded Rossi when they signed the Agreement, is a standard Planet Rossi trope. Rossi himself apparently believes it. His attorneys tried hard to claim that.

I transcribed the entire memo.

this is from the first page of it, dated October 3, 2014:

Woodford > first deal / public deal
$25-50 M (up to $200 M) (or more if they need to buy out Rossi)
Dutch entity > will become parent
Dutch entity > currently a subsidiary of IH. IH’s IP has been transferred to Dutch entity

So an initial Woodford investment was planned by October 2014. The plan then was to make IPH (“Dutch entity”) the parent. Instead, Woodford wanted IHHI to be formed in the U.K. (see page 7 of the memo).

The Ampenergo memo is devastating to many Planet Rossi tropes. Cassarino was (and, I’m told, remains) a friend of Rossi, from way back. Ampenergo had invested in Rossi. Ampenergo is also an investor in IHHI; owned equity in IH; this in lieu of some of what IH owed Ampenergo for their release of the License to them.

Any questions?

Mysteries abound when eyes don’t see

When we fail to observe the world carefully, and without strong prior belief, many mysteries appear, and often questions that support prior belief, i.e., argument from mystery, argument from lack of imagination, or, often, very restricted imagination.

When we have knowledge, these questions often vanish because possible answers become obvious, and where these possible answers have high organizational function, we may choose to accept them, at least until we have even more knowledge (i.e., evidence combined with a broad sense of possibilities).

On LENR Forum, SSC wrote (links added)

THHuxleynew wrote:

SSC seems just to be incapable of imagining uncertainty – and then fits his rationalisation around his lack of imagination. In this case that IH could be confused by Rossi’s setups, and the other independent tests, working when their own – done with much weaker technical resources, we know, Dameron, did not. So I have some sympathy with SSC – lack of imagination is no crime.

Error in general is not a crime, except when it is…. The problem is an imagination that follows established tracks, and particularly, here a track laid down by Rossi, as a major theory behind his lawsuit, but that ignores obvious other possibilities, including some well-established by evidence, rather than the kind of imputation that SSC uses here (which Annesser and Chaiken also use, it’s quite visible in the Murray deposition.)

Dear TTH, it may be that I am lacking in imagination, but in any case I would not speak of “uncertainty” talking about IH…. Please read PLAINTIFFS’ REPLY IN SUPPORT OF THEIR MOTION FOR PARTIAL SUMMARY JUDGMENT (doc 254), where you can find these words:

“Notably, Defendants could not point to a single document in which they notified Plaintiffs of their alleged inability to replicate the technology, whether as a result of their incompetence, faulty equipment, inferior materials, or outright lies. See SOF ¶¶ 31, 33. “

This is citing Rossi’s pleading and the Rossi declaration as evidence, and the claim is presented in a narrowed way that might easily be overlooked. There are two general kinds of evidence in the case: documentary evidence and testimony under oath. Documentary evidence will be subject to interpretation, the claim is often that it “speaks for itself,” but here Rossi is referring to what the documents do not say. Maybe. We’d have to look at all of them to verify this. Meanwhile, the public record contains evidence that IH showed Rossi — in person, not by an email and formally — that their tests were not confirming his claims, and that Rossi was irate.

SSC is writing from what he believes, which is ultimately based on Rossi Says, and what he quotes here shows it. That is not admissible evidence. The question asked assumes a context that was missing, open communication. It ignores timing. It ignores what is completely plain on review of the record: IH strategy for communication with Rossi, it was designed and controlled to “not piss him off.” This is so obvious that Annesser uses it to ask Murray why the visit to the plant by Murray was proposed for July 2015, if it was expected that it would upset Rossi.

It obviously did upset Rossi, so much so that he violated the Term Sheet to deny the visit (by generically denying the right to visit of anyone not already agreed, until the “tests under way were complete,” I think is how he put it, as if Rossi had that right. It was the IH Plant and they had a clear right to visit it at any time.

Rossi counsel is attempting to have it both ways: IH should have told Rossi, in writing, and that they did not has some implied meaning, and then that IH was provocative by scheduling the Murray visit. (As if “provocative” has some legal significance here. Annesser and Chaiken seem to be, to some extent, grandstanding for Planet Rossi.)

(IH had no legal obligation until and unless Rossi himself put in writing that the Doral test was the GPT, and that idea is also missing from the documentary record, as to the contractually required prior consent in writing, and probably did not happen until later in 2015. In fairly short order, IH formally challenged the GPT interpretation, but we can see evidence that IH still hoped to negotiate something with Rossi, some test or way of moving forward that could satisfy the parties.)

There are e-mails and documents where you can read that IH has initially obtained good results from its E-Cat tests.

There are documents that can be read that way. However, I strongly suggest reading the Murray deposition, the whole thing (423 pages!). IH largely abandoned its efforts with Rossi by the middle of 2015, focusing on other technologies. It appears that they allowed the Doral test as a last-ditch opportunity for Rossi to perform in some way. There are many other comments in depositions on this. SSC, like Rossi, focuses on a possible fact: no written notice, but ignores all the rest. That Rossi Partial Motion for Summary Judgment failed. Does SSC know why? He is here citing argument that was not accepted by the court, the only part of this that is admissible testimony is Rossi Says, in the form of the Affidavit cited.

After Rossi had sued them, they began to say that they had never seen excess heat. But this complaint never came officially to Rossi. If at one point they really realized they were not able to replicate the reactor, why did not they even send an email to Rossi to tell him about it?

Nor did the Rossi intention to consider Doral the GPT ever come “officially” to IH. Until that intention was registered in writing, it did not create an enforceable obligation. If IH had decided to push and shove, they would have needed to formally notify Rossi of their inability to make devices that worked reliably, when thoroughly tested. (This is not the same as “never seeing excess heat,” unless we are careful about what “seeing” is. Operating reactors do not in themselves display “excess heat.” It must be inferred from measurements, and what is truly bizarre in the history of Rossi Results is that on occasion the results were directly contrary to plain and simple sensory evidence. Instead, error-prone measurements were used and attempts to confirm them (i.e., with control experiments and independent measures) were resisted strongly.

I decided to look at the material quoted by SSC in detail. I had started to look at the Rossi Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, but had originally abandoned it because the exhibit numbering was highly confusing (which was also noted by Industrial Heat in their Opposition.)

So I did a study, published at RvD: Rossi Partial Motion for Summary Judgement – Replication

It takes about a day to do one of these.

This is what I’ve seen about Planet Rossi. It does not appear that those who comment like SSC have read much of the case. The question of why IH would not inform Rossi in writing of their failure to replicate has a very obvious answer, and it’s answered in the documents (because Annesser asks it in depositions!).

Reading the case takes a lot of time. There are many hundreds of often-confusing documents. But if one wants to have an informed opinion, there is no substitute for becoming informed. What I see on Planet Rossi is the repetition of certain simple memes, often repeated.

I also see this from Rossi himself, which should not be surprising.

If anyone wants to move from imagination and fantasy to reality, and on the questions and claims made by SSC, I’d suggest reading, in particular, this, and this. Or read the whole section on replication in the Rossi Partial Motion for Summary Judgement: those links refer to paragraphs in it, as quoted on the Study page. Read the evidences, don’t just read Rossi’s claims based on them — or my comments or IH objections. Read sworn testimony and attested documents, actual evidence that can be introduced at trial.

And notice how, sometimes, pleadings distort the evidence, in ways that are easy to see. Sometimes they actually lie, it’s that blatant. However, it is not unlawful to lie in a pleading, pleadings are not sworn testimony. It’s a crime to lie in a deposition or in the attestations that are sometimes provided. Notice that the witness in a deposition is sworn. The lawyers aren’t.

If life is a vote, I’ll say that the Eyes Have It.

Update

SSC wrote some more:

Darden has raised funds from investors, so it’s fair to suppose he has spoken well of the E-Cat with them. You may also not give too much credit to document 254, but it is a text presented to the judge and can hardly contain easily disprovable things. In that document you can read this:

“There is no written evidence that, prior to Defendants’ receipt of $50 million in investment funds, Defendants ever told Plaintiffs that they believed Plaintiffs had violated the License Agreement or that the 350-day test taking place in Florida was not the GPT. See SOF ¶ 60”

This lack of understanding of legal process is common on Planet Rossi. (It’s common in general, but here it is used as part of a syllogism, one that can easily be shown as a fallacy by simple counterexample). If SSC reads what is linked from above, he will fund abundant claims made in DE 254 that are not supported by the evidence cited or that are even contradictory to the evidence.

One way to explain DE 254 is that this was Rossi’s last chance to lie in his Motion for Partial Summary Judgment, it would not be contradicted by IH. So he repeated stuff from before, ignoring contrary evidence and response. Just saying it over again. If his goal was to fire up his base, it worked. I don’t think SSC is Rossi, the English is too good. Though it could be an English-speaking puppet.

What is not true: the claim that the Defendants received $50 million. They did not. The $50 million was received by an independent U.K corporation that is not a defendant in Rossi v. Darden, but the distinction — which is legally quite clear — is suppressed in Rossi claims because he is playing on emotions. Here there is an attempt to connect the $50 million with the GPT issue, as if it is somehow relevant. Unfair!!!

What is not true: that IH never told this about the GPT to Rossi. They obviously did, from evidence presented. However, the question is not whether, but when. It was certainly before the end of the test, but IH would not say that to Rossi, for all the obvious reasons, until and unless Rossi claimed the reverse. We don’t know when Rossi first claimed that Doral was the GPT, but there is no evidence of it being mentioned when the move was planned to Florida, and no mention, as far as I’ve seen, until IH and Rossi started communicating through lawyers, and that was clearly before the end of the “test,” easily by about the beginning of December, 2015.

Why would anyone tell him it was not the GPT if he didn’t claim it, and if the context was that Rossi knew the Second Amendment had failed, and the time had expired? IH knew that Rossi knew — because Cassarino forwarded the Rossi mail about it to IH.

What it would have taken to start up a new GPT would have been a written agreement. IH was willing to sign one, the original Second Amendment. That Amendment failed because it required Ampenergo sign-off and Ampenergo refused. But IH could certainly have signed a new Agreement, and would have had no trouble with Ampenergo if AEG rights were respected. So why didn’t Rossi propose that, instead of proposing this cockamamie faux customer? I find the answer to that question distressingly clear. Rossi is crazy, and demands control, doesn’t deal straightforwardly in cooperative enterprises; instead he lies and manipulates. It is crazy rather than merely controlling and selfish, because he is headed for a serious fall, and my guess is that he also dominates his attorneys. They sound like him, except for better English.

As to violations of the License Agreement, and setting aside the various minor alleged violations, SSC would probably be referring to the claim that Rossi may not have disclosed all the necessary IP for replication. We have testimony that IH people complained to Rossi, concerned that they could not replicate. They certainly would not have sued him for failure to disclose unless they first formally claimed the failure, perhaps demanding specific performance. They were not ready to do that, so they didn’t.

Failure to disclose is simply one of the IH stated possibilities: failure to disclose necessaries, or false claims of performance. Annesser is insistent that there are other “logical possibilities.” Maybe the Russians put Darden in a trance so that he couldn’t function to make the fuel properly. After all, if they could steal the fuel from a sealed reactor, why not stealing his mind? Logically possible, hypothetically. Really, we couldn’t make this up.

Read those pleadings and, if you care about Rossi, or about simple honesty and straightforward argument, weep.

Back to the investment, the original IH investment was in 2013 and probably the $20 million issue was completed in fairly short order. The large investment in IHHI came in May, 2015, and was not invested in Rossi technology, i.e., it was not spent, apparently, on attempting to develop E-Cats, more than a little. What of it has been spent already was allocated to diversifying, exploring other LENR possibilities. So what does this have to do with “praising the E-Cat”?

The Woodford rep statement about the Rossi technology as being “core,” besides being often misquoted (including in pleadings and even in a joint stipulation as agreed), is probably, then, a misinterpretation, with the meaning being imputed to make it into something it wasn’t, which has been very common in this case.

Four bit fever

There has been some discussion on LENR Forum of data resolution in the Fabiani spreadsheet. From Jed Rothwell:

LENR Calender wrote:

2) If you look at the T_out data from this file

http://coldfusioncommunity.net…01/0194.16_Exhibit_16.pdf

It appears that it wasn’t to the nearest 0.1 deg C. Here we are working with a discrete set of possible temperature values: 103.9, 104.5, 105.1.

P. 7 shows 4 digit precision.

LENR Calender wrote:

So more accurate would be to say the temperature data was reported to the nearest 0.5 or 0.6 deg C.

I have never heard of an electronic thermometer that registers to the nearest 0.5 deg C. It is always some decimal value: 1, 0.1, 0.01 . . . This one clearly registers to 4 digits, although I doubt the last 3 are significant.

It is clear that this was not an “electronic thermometer,” but a temperature sensor that generates a signal, often it is a voltage, that varies with temperature. As an example, the TI LM34 sensor generates 10 mV per degree F. This voltage may be sensed and recorded by computer using an ADC, which will have a certain resolution. We are possibly seeing the resolution of the ADC. The voltage reading will be quantized by the ADC.

Looking at the data on page 7, we can see that the only Tout values are 105.0728, 104.5046, and 103.9364. The first jump is 0.5682. The next jump is 0.5682, the same. This is 1.02276 F; the resolution is close to 1 degree F.

I’m suspecting an 8 bit ADC, with full scale being 256 F. Whatever, the resolution sucks. Maybe someone can find the magic approach that explains the exact decimals. (The device provides a voltage which is digitized with the increment being one bit. The temperature is then calculated using an offset and a ratio. This creates the 4-place decimals.)

The Tin temperatures also show quantization. The increment is the same, 0.5682 C., so the values are 63.4544, 64.0226, 64.5908, 65.1590, 65.7272, 66.2954, 66.8636, 67.4318, 68.0000, 68.5682, 69.1364.

That exact value of 68 C pokes me in the eye…. coincidence, perhaps.

There is no sign of calculation roundoff error there; these numbers are likely multiples of 0.5682 C exactly, plus some offset. The recorded data may have been volts, recorded to a certain precision, and then for the spreadsheet this was multiplied by a constant, so the quantized voltage then shows up as quantized temperature. This was not recorded with high precision.

The pressure is also apparently quantized. Now, this is wild: the pressure is close to 1 bar. Absolute pressure, not gauge. The only values shown are 0.9810 and 1.0028, and the value oscillates between them. So the increment is 0.0218 bar. What gauge was this? Penon had said he was going to use PX3098-100A5V, an Omega gauge. This is a 6.9 bar full-scale absolute pressure gauge. The specified accuracy is +/- 0.25% FS, so it would be +/- about 0.02 bar. Then we have possible digitization error, so total error could be 0.04 bar.

The digitization error was unnecessary, at this level. Besides the fact that the pressure gauge selected was too insensitive if pressure was going to be close to 1 bar, the quantization indicates that low-resolution ADC was used. Who chose the ADC hardware? Fabiani?

Update

I took the first page of Fabiani data, loaded it into a spreadsheet (I used the OCR’d version of the file from thenewfire), sorted it by pressure, and then averaged the temperatures. The results:

0.9810 bar, 19 values, average temperature is 104.5345° C.
1.0028 bar, 28 values, average temperature is 104.5452° C.

A difference of 0.02 bar would ordinarily represent a difference of about 0.54° C for saturated steam.

It appears that the outlet temperature and pressure are uncorrelated.

As has been pointed out by others, it is very difficult to maintain constant pressure and temperature with superheated (dry) steam, as was claimed by Rossi. Saturated steam will maintain a fixed temperature at a particular pressure, but that temperature for 1 bar is 99.63° C.

The temperature does vary, as described above, there are three values for temperature: 105.0728, 104.5046, and 103.9364.

Wong assumptions, cabbage conclusions.

First, some basic thermodynamics. Just because I can.

At this point I see confusion as to the motions in limine. “Granted in part and denied in part,” what parts? Color my mind boggled. That her reasoning wasn’t given, that’s not surprising, Altonaga can do that. But that an order is entered, that can’t be understood, that is unspecific, is unexpected.

In any case, I decided to pay more attention to the Wong opinions. This is a study of his Expert Disclosure. It’s cabbage, appalling. Continue reading “Wong assumptions, cabbage conclusions.”

They don’t get it or don’t care?

05/22/2017 0309.0_Rossi_Motion for Additional Discovery re Murray and requesting new Rossi expert

Rereading the relevant Order, it seems that Rossi and counsel don’t get it. Continue reading “They don’t get it or don’t care?”

Misc and Flabber gas – May 2017

I’ve been watching Judge Judy videos and then I see much, every day, that is, as it were, screaming for comment, examples of how people behave on Planet Stupid. It’s amazing to watch Judge Judy in action — and the other “court shows,” they are pretty much the same. The plaintiff or defendant are stupid, sometimes both of them. “Stupid” means that they don’t see, or refuse to see, what is in front of them, but only stand for what they ‘believe,” usually a variety of “I’m right” and/or “they are wrong.” On Hot Bench, they face a panel of judges, all experienced lawyers at a minimum, with real courtroom experience. From behavior and comments after the show, the parties have learned nothing. And that is often what the Judge is telling them. (“Shut up and put on your listening ears,” Judge Judy says to a plaintiff who is interrupting, insistently, obviously obsessed, obviously not listening.)

Once in a while a losing party will say that they learned something. It’s relatively rare! That happens even if the legal and social issues are open and shut. “I’m right” is the foundational belief for many people, for sure! It’s axiomatic Truth.

Some people would rather die than be wrong. Or even merely to listen to the opinions of others about it, without interrupting. Basic skills.

Index to sections of this post
JONP old crap and where it leads
Long and useless on LENR Forum
Clueless rolls on floor laughing
But What If? RossiSays…
Surprise! Pot Calls Kettle Black!
And now for something completely different

Continue reading “Misc and Flabber gas – May 2017”

Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining

Please. Don’t.

That’s the title of the book by Judge Judy that apparently led to her extremely popular TV “arbitration” show, presented as if it were a small-claims court. As an actual judge, Judy Sheindlin was known as outspoken, but on the TV series, she takes this to extremes. She’s smart, and she’s quick, fully “self-expressed.”

A comment by Sam, here, pointed to Youtube of her work, which I watched.

I think we might get somewhere if they let this
Judge handle Rossi VS Darden.

I dive into the world of Judge Judy, new to me. Continue reading “Don’t pee on my leg and tell me it’s raining”

She’s underpaid or understaffed

The judge. Faced with three motions to dismiss, and not having the time to review all the claimed “undisputed facts,” she punted.

It took me months of study on this case to come to the point where I might be able to see through the fog. I never finished the study pages, though I may still work on them for historical value, but at this point it is moot. An appeal of a dismissed MSJ is not likely, and that it might even be possible is controversial.

The judge wrote,

The parties’ voluminous, competing briefing and submissions plainly show the record is brimming over with disputed issues of material fact. Indeed, the Court is hard-pressed to locate any material facts on which the parties agree. Disputed factual issues are for the jury to determine.

In reviewing the MSJs, Oppositions, and Replies, what I found, way too commonly, was fact, clear from the record, that was nevertheless “disputed,” ending up as a matter to be adjudicated, when the asserted fact in the Motion was not at all in dispute, but rather possible implications.

Continue reading “She’s underpaid or understaffed”

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