Opinion ID: 1388652
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Key Personnel

Text: Alan Barazi is Plaintiffs' owner and principal officer. He communicated with Defendants' employees or officers by various methods, including via email, when the parties were negotiating the Agreements. In addition, before this litigation commenced, he taped three conversations between himself and Defendants' officers. His emails and the secretly recorded tapes are at the center of two of five issues that led to dismissal of the case. Chris Walls is a business consultant Plaintiffs characterize as a member of management. Plaintiffs designated Walls as an expert on the topic of the Agreements and site operations. Prior to this litigation, Walls assisted Plaintiffs in negotiating and evaluating the merits of the Agreements, and he subsequently assisted in the management and operation of the stations and in the ongoing analysis of financial performance at the stations. Although Plaintiffs now characterize Walls as an employee and insist he is a non-retained expert, Walls submitted bills to Plaintiffs on an hourly basis for his work on letterhead from his own consulting firm, TQM Consulting. At the start of litigation, Walls's resume listed TQM as his employer, but he changed that designation in the course of litigation and eventually listed Plaintiffs as his employers. Defendants assert Plaintiffs continually shifted their characterization of Walls's status back and forth between that of consultant and/or employee. Defendants assert it was Plaintiffs' goal to protect certain information Plaintiffs had shared with Walls as privileged while at the same time characterizing Walls as an outside consultant so that he could view information Defendants argue was subject to a protective order. Production related to Walls appears to have been the primary issue that frustrated the court and led to dismissal of the case. Four of the five discovery orders involved production related to Walls. Nick Anton is an accountant who served as Plaintiffs' employee at the time Plaintiffs entered into the Agreements. Plaintiffs assert that Anton's employment ceased in late 2004 or early 2005 and that he has served as an outside accounting consultant since that time. Defendants point out, however, that Barazi and Anton signed state liquor-license applications after 2005 and that the state liquor-license applications name Anton as a manager, managing officer, or managing agent. Defendants argue that Plaintiffs and Barazi lied to the court and to Defendants about Anton's status in order to prevent Defendants from gaining access to information held by Anton. Two of the five issues that led to the sanction of dismissal involved Anton. One was related to purported misrepresentations about Anton's status and Plaintiffs' failure to comply with an order to make Anton appear at a court hearing. The other was related to a triple-hearsay report of an alleged attempt to pay Anton to withhold information.