Salvodiving v Halcyon

caveseeker7

Here you go, Mike:
http://www.halcyon.net/news/halcyon-...resolution.pdf

__________________
Cheers
Stefan



"It is still a good day if you are on the green side of the grass!

Su amigo Roberto!"

Sponsor Lou in Race For Life!

Drmike

I own an engineering company with staff doing jobs similar to Barrys.

If one of them stole 100Ks worth of gear/manpower I would be mad and I would want them punished - but personally I would not want them to spend a year in prison and subsequently whilst they are down I wouldnt persue further action against them for libel.

But thats just me. If they offered to repay the money plus some fine I would be content with that. To me any more than that is more like seaking revenge rather than justice.

But thats me. I actually dont know what to think about this afair. I just think its very sad that it got this far.

__________________
Get a girlfriend you sad twat - a Rebreather is an unfaithful mistress - dont blind yourself to her faults just because she goes down on you

Genesis

I've both run a company and been someone else's "key employee" in the past.

I also have had promises made to me in the context of being that "key man" that were maliciously not kept. I was young, stupid, didn't get it in writing and got screwed. I timed my departure to be of the most damage possible, but didn't take anything with me on the way out - they didn't have anything I'd have wanted anyway. To say I was angry would be the understatement of the year - but for my contribution the company I was working for at the time would have folded. I literally rescued a project that would have sunk them and filled the lungs with water.....

That event, which occurred relatively early in my employment life, was one of the driving forces behind my desire to be self-employed. I was able to turn that screwing into a motivational force to succeed, and while there were many ventures both for myself and others after that one, I never forgot the lessons I learned from it.....

I don't know what to think about this, to be honest, but here's my nickel analysis of the two press releases.....

To buy Barry's story you have to believe that he was offered 1% of gross sales plus a salary for his talents and equipment in a key role. You have to believe that an equipment manufacturer who needed something and has a friend with talent and tooling would negotiate such a deal, that such a transaction would be seen as reasonable by both sides, and that both would do it on a handshake. You also have to believe that Barry was then paid only the salary, and told to pound sand on the gross revenue split - repeatedly. After some amount of insult in this fashion he took the law into his own hands, set up his own company, and took some measure of recompense - but not the total he claimed he was owed in back compensation - in the form of lifting the raw material from Halcyon. Barry states that while he understands taking the material was legally wrong, this is why he did it and felt justified at the time in doing what he did. You must also probably believe that Barry believed (at the time he took the stuff) that when (not if) the theft was discovered he would be able to successfully "offset" it against what he was owed in some fashion and as such would avoid significant penalty by the law for this act - or, alternatively, that Barry would be willing to steal five average automobiles from a random new car lot. (I find the second entirely implausible myself!)

To buy Jerrod's story you have to believe that Barry was Halcyon's "Most Senior Manager", was paid a "healthy salary" (in relationship to his value to the company), and for reasons unexplained decided to intentionally damage Halcyon's vendor relationships, set up his own company and then steal $100k+ worth of raw materials and "trick" employees into doing work for his firm (while presumably on Halcyon's clock). You must believe that Barry thought that $100k worth of raw materials taken from a small company either could not be traced to him, or that it would not be discovered missing at all. You have to believe that someone of Barry's intelligence (which you must evaluate by what you know of either him or his products, as that's all you've got to go on) would believe he could "get away" with stealing the material (in whatever form "get away with" actually means to him.) Finally you have to believe that its unreasonable (or even unethical or worse) to file paperwork to set up your own company before formally resigning from your position.

I think this pretty much outlines the two positions that have been taken in the respective documents, without embellishing anything.

Now, something which may help you evaluate these two positions in your own mind.....

......There is a thing in the US called "The Statute of Frauds" (go look it up.) The short (non-lawyer) version of this is that any contract intended to be performed over a period of more than one year must be in writing to be enforceable. As such, a 1% "handshake agreement" - if such a deal was made - spanning several years cannot be enforced. This would mean that if such an agreement was made, even if it can be proven that it was made, Barry would likely have been told by a lawyer (if he went to see one in contemplation of suing to enforce that deal) that he had no prayer in hell of managing to win. (BTW, this is my "Businessman's understanding" of the SOF - I ain't a lawyer!)

There are likely only two people who know what really happened, and the explanations put forward are, of course, polar opposites.

However, this is what both parties have put on the table for us to judge by, as customers. Reality is that we are unable to evaluate this objectively as we do not have the facts - but as customers and individuals we are entitled to draw conclusions for ourselves - and act on those conclusions - from the material presented to us.

As with most polar opposite presentations, the truth could be anywhere along a line between those two presented positions....

__________________
"A venturesome minority will always be eager to get off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American."
http://www.denninger.net
http://www.diversunion.org/liability.htm - Fix the Diving Cert racket

caveseeker7

In my opinion, if that little mail delivery at DEMA a few years back is any indication that Halcyon/Brownie/JJ/Carmichael/whatever conglomerate doesn't like any competition whatsoever. So I'm not suprised when they go after people when they're down. And the way they iced AG means that lot doesn't treat their own particulary well, either.

Barry did wrong, knows it and is paying a price for it.
I really hope he, his family and his employees will get through it well.

__________________
Cheers
Stefan



"It is still a good day if you are on the green side of the grass!

Su amigo Roberto!"

Sponsor Lou in Race For Life!

Nick uk.

My sentiments exactly.

__________________
If it aint broke....don't fix it,
and if it is.............well......get another one!


divechief2000@hotmail.com

AD_ward9

Whilst based in Scotland, I deal a lot with US companies. I have gentleman's agreements with companies in the US that have run for years. A US lawyer advised me that if I reminded the other side of our agreement once a year, then it was renewed. Whether it is or not is immaterial: gentlemen keep their agreements. Never had a problem with those companies, nor they with me. They are not good business practice, but are common.

The dispute Halcyon claim they have with Barry Miller is not as unusual as it may seem. I have seen it in a few companies, and experienced it myself.

Four years ago, I had a group of employees run their own business as contractors for Siemens, while working as full time staff for me. They stole some stuff and also did me about $500k of damage in lost time. Quite funny really: our IT saw unusual traffic, so I went with the only one we could identify to his PC and called up Recent Documents, and when this confirmed things, I suspended him until we could organise a disciplinary meeting, took out his disk drive for safekeeping, and escorted him off the premises.

The day before the disciplinary hearing, I put the disk back in his machine and while I had a directory open, files were vanishing before my eyes! The others in his consortium were deleting files as soon as they saw his machine on line! This allowed me to find all the others: I immediately suspended the lot.

At the disciplinary meeting, each admitted it - given the evidence on the disks they had not a leg to stand on. They agreed to return stuff they stole. I fired them and told Siemens that if I got any more of this, I would do a civil claim for the profits from the product line they developed with my staff as in law I owned the design rights. Someone acting for Siemens had deliberately recruited my staff in this way.

These circumstances have none of the mitigating factors of Barry Miller's case.

Siemens still keep trying to poach my staff, even now, but our current team are really good and honest people so no problem. Due to the theft aspect, if I had contacted the police, the families of those that did this would have had a hard 5 years, and instead of those guys running their own business now, employing 15, they would be trying to piece together their lives. They know it, and recently two of them did me a nice favour.

Now it is reported Halcyon are starting a libel action against Barry. How on earth can Barry defend himself from where he is? The best signal for justice, would be for Barry to raise a counterlibel action and win, but justice and courts, from what I have seen, have no relationship with each other. Dishonesty and courts seem to have a close bond: those that use courts are, in my experience, the dishonest people you do not want to have any dealings with.

Pity we have this behaviour in what is really a tiny industry, where most companies struggle just to make a steady living and very few get rich. Most work for the passion of diving. Until we have more with bigger minds then it will stay a network of cottage industry.

Parallels with the misuse of the law by Scientologists and Halcyon have got even closer. Always said DIR was a religion. Expect to get lots of Red Blobs for my posts on this thread, as you cannot reason with some.

I won't comment any more on this. Just is a very sad reflection on the way elements in the industry are going.

Alex

JonnyB

Thanks for the info Alex, you wont be getting a red blob from me for this. Have a gren though.

/Jonny

__________________
A quote from Crazyduck - In remembering our own Rob Davies.
"Outbound flight 777 heavy you are cleared for flight
Due west into that warm red Texas sunset
You have angels on your wings and divers memories on your six."

Rest In Peace

http://www.divetekcyprus.com
http://www.diveccr.com

rogeringebo

out of five possible

Rodge

onetime

One other thing you have to buy is that Barry would be stupid enough to leave the Halcyon shipping tags on all or some of the pilfered supplies. That seems to be a bit out of the realm of possibility in my mind. Anyone who is knowingly doing wrong with a touch of intelligence would remove anything linking the stolen goods to the rightful owner.

It seems to me that Barry had a fairly successful light business before Halcyon involvement and Jarrod expects people to believe that he would just up and work for Halcyon for just a salary. Most entrepeneurial people don't give up their freedom and provide the equipment to bolster a company's product line just for a paycheck.

Of course, if we look at the whole picture it would seem that Halcyon does quite a business of keeping lawyers employed. Between the Sartek suit against Halcyon/Brownies and the Halcyon/Brownies suit against various manufacturers (rumored to be oxycheq and others) for their counterweight systems.

SDOC0049.pdf

and now, presumably, libel against Barry and whoever else posted on behalf of Salvo it would seem they're spending an awful lot of time taking from others while fighting against those they claim are taking from them.

If Halcyon was such an above board company then I doubt Sartek would have won their patent infringement suit for the lights.

Based on Halcyon's history, I'll lean towards believing Barry's side of the story.

Genesis

The Sartek thing is an entirely different kettle of fish - I probably would have gone to the wall on that one myself, arguing both prior art and lack of patentable subject matter in the first instance.

Might have lost too - patent litigation is ugly stuff and doesn't exactly work the way you think it should. Just look at RIM .v. NTP for a prime example of how you can be "dead right" when it comes to patents.....

Much, of course, would depend on exactly what sort of licensing arrangement Sartek was offering. If the answer was "none!" (as is their right) or at some exhorbitant fee, well then its war or shut down - that would make the decision easy.

__________________
"A venturesome minority will always be eager to get off on their own, and no obstacles should be placed in their path; let them take risks for Godsake, let them get lost, sunburnt, stranded, drowned, eaten by bears, buried alive under avalanches - that is the right and privilege of any free American."
http://www.denninger.net
http://www.diversunion.org/liability.htm - Fix the Diving Cert racket