Part III: How I earned $6 million and never collected, so far… In my first trial against the company Affinity and its founder Jeff Norris in the summer of 1998, the jury found for me. I did have a contract for 1% of Affinity. But the jury mysteriously determined the value of my 1% to be only $48,000 against Affinity and $20,000 against Norris, the man who joined with me under contract but who failed to deliver. In a short period after the initial public offering in the spring of 1996, time enough for this outside consultant to sell his shares, 1% of Affinity’s market capitalization value of almost $600,000,000 was a little less than $6,000,000. Trying to get out from under what he promised, Norris asked me to join him for lunch in late September 1994, which was when he said I did nothing and I would get nothing. I said OK fine, I still had my 1%, and I was going to keep my 1%. The message I was hearing over club sandwiches was that the venture capitalist I brought into Affinity, Carolina First Bank CEO Mack Whittle, was probably about to come through, and everybody in Affinity wanted the ownerships pared down to continuing players and prospective investors. Norris offered no money, no current valuation of my 1%. He was just saying I was not an owner of 1% of Affinity. I said I was. My 1% ownership was recognized by too many witnesses and recorded in too many documents for Norris to say otherwise. The first trial’s jury took that occasion in late September 1994 to determine the value of my 1% of the company. The jury awarded me $48,000 against Affinity because Affinity’s expert witness in the courtroom said once Whittle’s money came in, the value of Affinity was $4,800,000, and 1% of that was worth $48,000. When my lawyer heard the jury award of $48,000 against Affinity, he stood to remind the court that we had also sued Norris individually. The jury left for a few minutes and returned to tell us they found for Ligon $20,000 against Norris. In the summer of 1994, an investor had bought 1.25% of Affinity for $25,000, meaning 1% could be valued at $20,000 at that time. The jury had it all wrong, and Judge Casey Manning said so. Presiding Judge Manning a year later called for a new trial: “The jury failed to follow the Court’s instructions to award the value of the Plaintiff’s stock at the time it was agreed to be delivered, at the time of public offering. Rather the jury valued the stock at the time of the Defendant’s anticipatory repudiation of their agreement with the Plaintiff in September of 1994. The jury’s award was in error as the Defendant’s anticipatory repudiation did not constitute a breach of contract for the purposes of measuring the Plaintiff’s damages. The jury’s decision to measure damages at that time or at any other time other than the time of public offering which was when the stock was promised to be conveyed was, therefore, not only legally incorrect but was also unsupported by any evidence in the case." Sounds clear here and it sounded clear enough then when Judge Manning explained it to the jury at the close of my trial. How in the world could the jury be so wrong, especially after such straightforward instructions from the trial judge? How could the jury suffer such gross misunderstanding of a 1% ownership in a company for the duration from early organizational phases to its initial public offering, the time the real value of shares could be determined by market value? Someone got to the jury. Columbia residential contractor John Wadford was on the jury, and his good friend was my girl friend, architect Tricia Kuna; but I didn’t know any of this. I called Kuna the day we were selecting our jury because I was afraid either she or I or maybe even both of us house designers knew Wadford. But somehow I had never met the guy or even heard of him, and my lawyer wanted him on our jury – something about the sanctity of contracts. So I called Kuna at her office in the state’s Department of Public Safety, and not being able to reach her, I left at least two messages fully explaining the nature of the calls. She returned my call that night around 9:00 to say, “I’ve never heard of him. Does Warner know him?” Warner was Dr. Montgomery, the publisher of the Columbia Star newspaper, where maybe Wadford had advertised, I guess Kuna was trying to say. I called Montgomery at home immediately after saying good night to Kuna. And Montgomery remembers the call. No, he said, he had never heard of John Wadford or his construction company. So we went ahead with Wadford on the jury, having no earthly idea that Kuna had been with the Affinity team for a year before the trial and that she was going to exercise errant influence on her good friend, juror Wadford, who disregarded Judge Casey Manning’s instructions on weighing only the evidence presented in the courtroom and on valuing my 1% ownership of Affinity at the time of the initial public offering. To disregard both sets of instructions, such clear and explicit instructions from the presiding judge, suggests incredible influence from outside the courtroom. About a month after the trial, Kuna asked me if I had any objection to her working with Wadford on some moonlight design projects he was offering her. After all, he had a solid reputation as a residential contractor. I said go right ahead. I obviously didn’t care much for the jury’s conclusions, but Wadford did show up every day for a week to serve on jury duty. All things considered, his citizenship credentials held up pretty well. Kuna never complained about Wadford or their work together, which for her is a form of indirect praise. Hearing enough praise, I called Wadford to meet with me and my house-addition client to see about being our contractor on what I estimated to be a $500,000 job in Peak, just east of I-26 about 20 miles north of Columbia. The construction documents were all done, and I highly recommended the client, affluent folks who didn’t worry too much about costs, just as long as they were getting what they were paying for. They were wild about Wadford, even though I brought them two other blue-chip contractors to interview for the job. A third besides Wadford, readily as well-qualified, we had to release because he was too good of an old friend of mine, a Boy Scout buddy and a fellow icehouse worker and a better tennis player. So the job was his if he wanted it, and in a few days Wadford said no thanks – too big for his financial standing and too far away from town. I didn’t understand. Job too big? What? I began to think a little more about Wadford. Within two months I proposed to Wadford a manageable $150,000 job behind Home Depot just off Two Notch Road. Another great client, this one looking to expand his house to accommodate his father’s call for both adjacency and privacy. Again, this one was just about hammer ready. And this one was nearby. And Wadford turned it down. Someone else other than Wadford was looking at what jobs to take, I had to guess. Wadford was declining perfectly good jobs so as I recalled in Part II, I asked Wadford how long he had known Kuna, who said when I called her during jury selection, “I’ve never heart of him.” Wadford said they had been working together for about a year before the Affinity trial. That was around the middle of May 2000. As soon as I realized Wadford and Kuna had been together for a year before the trial, I called Kuna at night at her home to tell her my suspicions, about her working with Wadford for a year before the trial, about her working with Norris somehow, probably on his Lake Murray property, and about tampering with the jury. All this was left as a message. According to the security officer’s recorded account, about two weeks later, early June 2000 at 3:00 a.m., a black highly polished small Mercedes pulled in front of Senate Plaza, where I was asleep on the 17th floor and my mother was in bed on the 6th floor. The driver, suited and fitted just so, even to the point of his expensive gold rim glasses and jewelry, got out and entered through the first two glass doors, the second two being locked at night. He picked up the pay telephone receiver between the two sets of doors, inserted coins, dialed a number and said loud enough for the security officer’s benefit, “Hey, Temp. Hey, buddy. I’m here. I’m downstairs. What do I have to do to come up? Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yeah, I’m coming up.” The driver knocked on the locked glass doors, and Joe Moorehead, America’s greatest night security guard, let the man in. Moorehead had never seen him before, and later I gathered this was a complete stranger who knew a good bit about me. He said, “Temple says come on up.” Moorehead said, “He’ll have to come down to get you. I can’t let you wander in the halls unescorted this time of night. Let me call him.” “But I just did,” Gold Rims protested. “Tell you what. I left my car running. If you need to move the car out of the way, go ahead, move the car. I trust you. Now, can you trust me? I’ll be right back.”
Posted on: Thu, 29 Aug 2013 22:49:58 +0000
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