Wednesday, September 10, 2008

HOLD THE FRONT PAGE: Very Important new SPCK/SSG Development

Big developments in the SSG case today. Mark Brewer is now the subject of court proceedings for fraud, trying to evade his legal responsibilities, and bringing disrepute to the US court system

http://spckssg.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/motion-for-sanctions/ has the full text of the legal proceedings against Brewer and SSG

http://spckssg.wordpress.com/2008/09/10/the-significance-of-the-motion-for-sanctions-against-mark-brewer/ has Matt Wardmans excellent summary and commentary on this.

Incredible stuff. I'm in and out of meetings, otherwise I'd post more.

The legal motion concludes (emphasis mine):
14. At best, as this Court has already found, Mr. Brewer’s conduct was in bad faith. The Trustee submits as set forth herein that such bad faith also amounts to a fraud on the Court. At worst, his conduct violates § 157 of Title 18 and possibly other statutes. As an attorney and a law firm, Mr. Brewer and Brewer & Pritchard owe a duty of candor and honesty to this Court and to the bankruptcy process. The acts that are the subject of this motion violate that duty. In addition, the filing of this case in the United States where almost every creditor is located in the United Kingdom brings disrepute to the Bankruptcy Courts of the United States as they are being used as a haven for a party attempting to escape justice where it was formed and where it did business. Mr. Brewer seeks to use the designation of St. Stephen as a charity to somehow suggest that his conduct does not bear scrutiny. In fact, just the opposite should be true, any attempt by an alleged charity to escape or defer its obligations should be subject to the utmost in candor and disclosure so that no question of impropriety exists. Here, just the opposite is demonstrated by Mr. Brewer’s conduct, and he and his firm must bear responsibility for these actions and make amends to this Court, the Trustee and most significantly the bankruptcy process so that creditors, especially those in a situation like this who are looking at the system from outside U.S. borders, can see that parties who would attempt to subvert the law to escape their responsibilities will be punished.

15. Accordingly, the Trustee requests that the Court grant the Trustee’s motion, enter sanctions consistent with the foregoing and grant such other relief as is just.


Some of the sanctions include compensation (5 figure sums), and compulsory retraining in legal ethics. The piece de resistance is the inclusion of a post from Dave Walkers blog as part of the evidence in the case.

4 comments:

  1. Thanks for posting this. Will put the link on my blog.

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  2. I don't follow the bit about the cartoon blog - which reads like 'some bloke down the pub says that...'. Why didn't they investigate the Companies House register for themselves?

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  3. The cartoon blog has been one of the main sources of news on SPCK, the Society of St. Stephen the Great, and related issues, for a couple of years - Dave Walker is now a semi-journalist working for the Church Times as he authors the Church Times blog. So it's a legitimate source of news and information.

    I also wonder whether it's deliberately been referenced because, in what is possibly another attempt to suppress evidence that might have counted in court, Mark Brewer threatened legal proceedings against Dave Walker if he didn't remove his SPCK posts from the cartoon blog with immediate effect. So they could have referenced Companies House, but the blog reference itself brings in the blog censorship issue. Given that the Cease and Desist threat came just a few weeks before the bankruptcy case, it's highly likely that Brewer was trying to keep important facts out of the public domain whilst they filed for bankruptcy.

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  4. Not really David - I respect Dave W and the CB, but anyone can write any old rubbish on a blog. Maybe it is not possible to access the Companies House website abroad (I don't think so, but then I've never tried).

    It'd be amusing if the Trustee is making a point about the Brewer's attempts as silencing legitimate comment, but I somehow doubt it.

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