Lawsuit of the Day: Death Threat as a Corporate Strategy?
With the Dow Jones hitting new lows and many a company struggling to keep stock prices up, corporate types are challenged to get their businesses back in good shape.
Some do this by firing replacing those at the top. Some do it by streamlining (e.g. layoffs) and cutting back on expenses. Some do it by threatening the lives of executive officers and their families if they don't keep quiet about the company's troubled finances...
Well, at least one Canadian board chairman chose that last questionable tactic. From Courthouse News:
"Beginning in or around June or July 2007, and contrary to the corporation's public reporting, Garda World Security Corporation was apparently experiencing serious financial problems. The operating results with respect to the corporation's cash logistics business were apparently so at variance with its public reporting that defendant Stephan Cretier, the Chairman of the Board of Garda World Security Corporation and its largest individual shareholder, threatened Richard Irvin and other top executives of the company at a meeting in late November 2007, that if any of them leaked the true facts, he would use the corporation's security operatives to investigate the leak and would kill any executive and the family of any executive found responsible for the leak," the complaint states.
"As a result of this death threat, plaintiffs Richard R. Irvin and his wife ... have lived in fear for their safety and the safety of their family, and seek compensatory, emotional distress and punitive damages incurred as a result of this threat."
Unlike the crazy, homeless man in Tampa who will be facing jail time for threatening the President, it sounds like Cretier had seriously thought out his chilling death threat. We're more media than business types at ATL, but we think death threats aren't the best tool to use in negotiations.
According to Cretier's bio, he's a very successful entrepreneur: "Being a true visionary, he takes risks, seizes opportunities within the security field and motivates the people around him to outdo themselves." ...Or he'll have them killed?
Board Chairman Threatened To Kill Execs If They Talked About Finances, VP Says [Courthouse News Service]
(21) Comments
FIRST to say when is this TTT blog going to post something about white guys with asian girls? Those pretty, flat faced Korean babes are a great "alternative" to the boring, bitchy spoiled white girls... and pretty good at head too.
- King of WGWAG
Well, what good are a corporation's security operatives if you can't use them to keep your employees in line. Be reasonable now.
Nothing like a little death threat to compound good old fashioned fraud.
hey king. WGWAG is white girl/asian guy. if you're going to post your lame crap in every thread, at least get it right.
This is a common tactic as shown by the documents I review. What's wrong with it?
yay kash is back.
BOO SEN, BOO
(but i would like to see pics of kash/SEN mud-rasslin', alabumpka style, in a fight for the queen of the blog title)
Ribs. I had ribs for lunch, that's why I'm doing this.
Ribs sound good... St. Louis Style or Dirty South Style?
If I don't bill 200 hours a month the head of my department threatens to have me whacked
We would give death threats to top executives in high school all the time. It was no big deal.
Memphis style - Dry, that is. A la Rendezvous.
Who takes a death threat from a pussy Canadian seriously? C'mon.
Ahhh I like to get my ribs from a shack in someone's backyard. They rock. And I'm being serious, it is a shack, but dammmmmmmmn it is delicious
My law school threatened all of its students with death for revealing that $40k per year might have been a tad over the top.
"death threats aren't the best tool to use in negotiations"
Whoever wrote that never dealt with Luca Brasi, who was a rather effective negotiator.
Luca Brasi got it at the beginning of the movie didn't he? How effective is that?
@5:07 I guess you need to re-watch the movie! He caught it about halfway through the film, but at the beginning Michael recalls an excellent story about Luca's negotiating prowess.
I forget, with a three hour movie, an hour in does seem like the beginning...
"Hey ha' yadoin?, I'm Tony Soprano your new Chief Executive or what not. I'd like to welcome all of yous who came to this shareholda's meetin. First order of business, that rat bastard CCO. Don' chyou worry bout him no mo' I had Paulie take him for a trip to our friends house upstate. Next I'd like to remind all of you punk directors, snitches get stitches. Now thas all I got for you today, theres gabagoo in the back, envelopes go to Freddy the freezer in the back. Salute" [sic]
- Just another day at Garda World Security Corp.
I hate SEN!!!!!! she go to alabama .how stupid!
I should point out that Garda isn't the kind of security firm, at least to my knowledge, that acts as bodyguards for celebrities and world leaders, etc. Garda security works malls and 7-Elevens. Hell, they are the security firm/concierge in my condo building.
I have a hard time believing these people are capable of carrying out any form of assassination or execution.