Mohave County miner., 1909-08-28
More Tom Reed Litigation.

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 tervenor and crosscomplaint. The
 complaint, which is very lengthy, goes
 right to the meat of the transactions
 by which the Tom Reed acquired the property heretofore held by the Blue
 Ridge company. It. tells the manner in which the stockholders of the Blue Ridge were divested of their holdings and the taking over of the property by the Tom Reed company. The charges of wrongdoing against certain stock holders and directors of the Blue Ridge and Tom Reed companies are piled high and are of a serious nature.
 To begin with, Col Hanson tells of his effort to sell the remaining stock of the Blue Ridge company to pay off the indebtedness of the concern; that he found the company in such bad state that he could not honestly ask his friends to invest and that then the directors, especially Mushrush, Davis
 and Simpson proposed the pooling of debts and selling the property out through the agency of the Los Ange- les Trust company. This was done and the Tom Reed company formed. The conspirators and their immediate associates distributed to themselves 600, ,OO0 shares of the one million share capitalization of the company and placed 100000 shares of the treasury stock in the treasury for sale. Hanson sold this stock or large part of it, and it is the people to whom this stock was sold that he asks the court to pro- tect should the Blue Ridge company maintain it's action for the recovery of the property. In the cross complaint ] Hanson alleges that Mushrush, Davis and Simpson, although calling on the stockholders of the Blue Ridge con- pany to pay two cents share on their holdings of stock for the purpose of paying off the indebtedness of the company did not contribute one cent themselves, but that many of the stockholders did so to the amount of 6,000$; that had these directors paid the assessment on their holdings all in- debtedness would have been liquidated and the company placed on footing where all the shares of stock remain ing in the treasury could be sold.
 The entire complaint is one of the severest arraignments of the duplicity and dishonest dealing of board of directors ever filed in a court in this county, and if the allegations are maintained many actions will undoubt- edly grow out of it. Col. Hanson is seeking the protection of the court for the people who innocently purchased the stock of the Tom Reed company through his solicitation and who knew nothing of the complicated affairs of the company. The complaint also al- leges that without the investment of a dollar of their own money Mushrush,
 Davis. Simpson, James Rice and Frank Rust took over approximately one- third of the capitalization of the origi- nal Blue Ridge company, and then
 Mushrush, Davis and Simpson assumed absolute control of the Tom Re d con- pany, Davis taking the lion share of the issue of 600,00O shares Ql8,000). | Another count of the complaint sets up extravaganza and incompetency in the present handling of the property
 by which it is throwing away 5O0OS monthly; and that Charles Grimes, who is nominally the president of the con-
 pany, is practically divested of power by the controlling element, Mushrush,
 Davis and Simpson. In the complaint Simpson, as the secretary and attorney | of the company, comes in for a most unmerciful scoring.
 This action will be tried next month,
 so it is understood, but may come up at the regular term of the court in October. The outcome will be watched with great interest by the people of this county. The Tom Reed is one of the big mines of the Gold Road section and has been operated by the Tom Reed company the past two years or more. Col. Hanson was president and manager of the company until the an- nual meeting last May, when he was dropped from the directorate and new board put in. Charles Grimes was elected president and managing 1irootor of tho cOrpOratiOp hv tho pau