---------- Forwarded message ----------
From:
Vincent Garofalo <vincentgarofalo@rocketmail.com>
Date: Mon, Sep 29, 2008 at 7:25 PM
Subject: Re: Barret Brown
To:
mirnahariz@gmail.com
Dear Ms. Hariz --
I have received your letter dated September 17th, 2008 in regards to a claim by your client, Barret Brown.
As you can imagine, your payment demand is quite unexpected. Let me review the facts of the matter to help frame this discussion:
- You make repeated claims that I (I would assume you mean "personally") owe your client the amounts you claim.
I am not sure on what basis you make this claim.
EVOTE.COM was a website that was operated and owned by a company called Ideacast. Both the website, and the company, went out of business sometime in 2005, after the 2004 elections. To be honest, I am not sure the exact date that the website ceased operation, but it was several years ago. It's not conceivable that anyone is using, or even is in possession of, the content that your client claims to have written (and which I would assume he in fact did write... I have no information to doubt this).
You obviously have a claim with
EVOTE.COM, or perhaps Ideacast. Not with me. While one of my companies was an investor in Ideacast, and hence,
EVOTE.COM, your client certainly did no work for me on a personal basis. To my knowledge, I've never met, spoken, or had contact with him in the past.
I'm sure you understand this, but I can sympathize with your inability to collect the funds your client is owed by an entity that no longer exists. In point of fact, on a different basis, I also have claims potentially payable by Ideacast, but that's immaterial -- no one is going to be paying them, either.
- I am not sure if you are aware of the manner in which your client delivered your letter to me. I suggest you discuss this with him, and the ramifications of his actions.
Given these facts, however, I am willing to discuss a couple of potential approaches to settling this whole issue.
This is what I would need to see:
a) It's unreasonable to think that I should personally reimburse your client for work he did for a company that I didn't even fully own. Quite frankly, there's no basis in law or fact for me to pay your client anything.
However, I am also cognizant of the cost of defending your claim -- ultimately I believe that your claim would be denied in a court proceeding but, as you are aware, any such proceeding would not be inexpensive.
Any settlement amount would need to be concomitant with such expense, otherwise there is no financial incentive to reach a monetary settlement.
b) Your client would need to be willing to offer written assurances that any and all claims he has would be liquidated by any settlement, that such settlement would be complete and final. I would provide a draft of such a letter for his signature.
If these terms are acceptable to your client, then I think there is some basis to proceed to settling this matter.
Please contact me at your earliest convenience.
Sincerely Yours,
Vincent Garofalo
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