Another PA-Related Lawsuit

victoriastrauss

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Alice and Willem Meiners filed suit against Sinthyia Darkness, Thomas Meyers, and Philip Dolan in Maryland District Court on July 20, 2011, for libel.

I looked the complaint up on PACER. It alleges "a conspiracy" between Dolan, Darkness, and Meyers, because they allegedly:
periodically posted defamatory attacks about PA on Ms. Darkness’ website at http://sinthyiadarkness.blogspot.com in an ongoing series called the “PublishAmerica Investigative Report”. In some of these posts, they made disparaging statements about Willem Meiners, his wife, Alice Meiners, and “HELP”. Mr. Dolan aided, abetted and encouraged these defamatory statements as part of the conspiracy.
Specifically mentioned are Darkness's blog post questioning the funding of Meiners's HELP foundation, her post alleging questionable helicopter piloting by Alice Meiners, her post questioning the tax deductability of donations to HELP, her post alleging (among other things) tax cheating by PA, and her post alleging "possible tax fraud" by Meiners.

All these posts appear to be by Darkness alone, by the way. The lawsuit seems to be including Dolan and Meyers solely because they contributed to other articles on her website. From what I can tell from a quick survey, Meyers contributed to her series of general articles about PA, and she, Meyers, and Dolan co-authored a series of articles about the Bellamora skin care company.

The complaint was filed by Victor Cretella. The plaintiffs are demanding $2 million in compensatory and punitive damages, and a jury trial.

- Victoria
 

Mann Crux

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Jesus Christ, these guys are still around? That's one for the books. I would have thought they'd be dead in the water by now.
 

Chris P

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Interesting. Between the IRS and this lawsuit, things might get a mite complicated for PA. Thanks for posting this!
 

thothguard51

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Will the defendent get to force PA to open their books?

It would be interesting to see if they really went to Scottland and talked to Sean Connery about their authors...
 

DreamWeaver

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Lots of people have suspected tax cheating by PA. If PA has to bring their books out into the open for this, it should prove very interesting.
 

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Little1

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Seems PA is getting it self in hotter water every day :D
 

Chris P

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Thanks for posting that, Marie. I am not a lawyer, but it seems pretty clear that the plaintiffs don't object to (most of) the facts presented but to them being presented with leading questions or statements ("Please keep in mind that. . . ."). Taken separately, the facts and the questions/statements are valid, but presented together do seem quite leading without directly accusing anyone. This will be an education for me to see what the law thinks of this.
 

Marie Pacha

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I didn't like the site the pdf file was linked to either, but I wanted everyone to see the suit in its entirety.

I want to add one thing: Of the individuals mentioned in the suit, I know Phil Dolan to be an honorable man.
 

Chris P

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I had never heard of America House Publishing Company before this. Was this an early incarnation of PA? I googled for it, and the only thing that comes up under "America House LLC" is a siding contractor in Connecticut. "America House Publishing Company" comes up with nothing, nor does any permutation of it, except one hit search leads to PA. Is it still in business as the document claims on page 13? The history nerd in me wants to know!
 
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victoriastrauss

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I had never heard of America House Publishing Company before this. Was this an early incarnation of PA?

Yes. Actually, at the time (1999-2000), it was written AmErica House, possibly as a reference to Erica House, the vanity publisher Meiners established a number of years earlier.

- Victoria
 

Chris P

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Thanks for the info! I love knowing all this stuff.
 

tlblack

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My PA book has the AmErica House logo and not the PA one. The contract was with PublishAmerica, and I'm not certain when they started using the PA logo on the backs of their books. Mine was in print by May 2002 so it would have been after then.
 

Terie

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Okay, I don't have the brain power to plow through that thing, but, er, shouldn't PA's lawyer know that people aren't citizens of states?
 

Chris P

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Perhaps I'm too much a child of the modern age, but it's strange to me that a business that "has not ceased doing business" (AmErica House) is nowhere to be found on the internet. In what way does it do business? How does Meiners claim this? Is it assumed to be in operation unless declared dead by a dis-incorporation proceedings with the state?

Sorry, I'm not trying to derail this thread. Honest! *angel icon*
 

Marie Pacha

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Much of the information regarding any company, tax liens, and a company's standing is public record, if one knows where to look.

Regarding America House:

Principal Office (Current):208 CRESTVIEW COURTFREDERICK, MD 21702Resident Agent (Current):VICTOR CRETELLA230 E. PATRICK ST.FREDERICK, MD 21701Status:MERGEDGood Standing:NoBusiness Code:Ordinary Business - StockDate of Formation or Registration:12/28/2009 State of Formation:MDStock/Nonstock:StockClose/Not Close:

[FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman][FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman]"Not in Good Standing" [FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman][FONT=Times New Roman,Times New Roman]means the entity has not filed the current year’s Annual Report/Personal Property Return or it owes a late filing penalty." [/FONT][/FONT]
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