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John T. Reed to attend hearing in Whitney case in Fort Myers FL 5/13/05 10 AM

Russ Whitney has been suing John T. Reed for almost three years. During that time, Reed has not had to visit Florida. However, Whitney filed an emergency motion for a preliminary injunction. The judge ordered that an evidentiary hearing be held. Since an evidentiary hearing requires testimony, Reed has to go there in-person.
The hearing will be in Magistrate Judge Frazier’s court in the U.S. District Court, 2110 First Street, Fort Myers, FL 33901. Reed assumes this hearing is open to the public. Anyone who wants to attend and who will be inconvenienced by it not being open to the public should call the court in advance to ask whether it is public.
Previously, Reed attended two hearings by telephone.
In addition to the evidentiary hearing with regard to the motion for a preliminary injunction, the court will also hold a hearing regarding all pending motions. The court originally started to schedule the hearing for 2PM on 5/12/05. When he heard that it would cover all pending motions, Reed joked to the court clerk that such a hearing would take a week. There are many pending motions. After consulting with the magistrate judge, she changed it to 5/13/05 at 10 AM instead. Reed presumes that it is expected to last most of the day.
Could be turning point
This hearing could be a turning point in the case. The last time Reed attended a hearing (by telephone) in the Fort Myers federal court in front of this magistrate judge, Whitney’s attorney called Reed minutes after the hearing and said they were withdrawing the case.
Although the ostensible purpose of the hearing is the emergency motion for a preliminary injunction, that motion seems to be ridiculous on its face. It says Reed should not be able to use Whitney’s name to criticize Whitney because by doing so Reed is using Whitney’s trademark to illegally steal customers from Whitney.
There have been a number of court decisions that said you can’t use trademark litigation to prevent someone from criticizing you by name. One was an unsuccessful suit by Bally Total Fitness against a Web site called Ballysucks.com. You can read the decision quotes in Reed’s opposition to the preliminary injunction. Reed has never operated a russwhitneysucks.com Web site or wanted to. Of course, he could not even if he did want to. Russ Whitney himself has long owned the domain name russwhitneysucks.com.
Protective order may be more important
Reed thinks the court’s decision on Whitney’s motion for a protective order may be of more immediate importance. Reed has asked Whitney to answer 25 interrogatories under oath. Many are hard hitting. Whitney does not want to answer them and he has asked the court to protect him from answering them. The same is true of Reed’s document requests.
Whitney has been spouting a bunch of crap throughout this case, but he has almost never said anything under oath. On the rare occasions when he did, in a couple of affidavits, he chose his words very carefully. For example, his lawyers repeatedly say unequivocally that he was 17 when he committed robbery. (They used to tell Reed, “Russ has never been convicted of a crime.” They changed that tune when Reed published Whitney’s prison record.) Reed thinks he was 18. In an affidavit, Whitney said he was “approximately” 17. Guess what one of the interrogatories Whitney is refusing to answer asks? What was the date of the robbery?
Answering REED’s questions under oath
In interrogatories and depositions, Reed gets to word the questions and Whitney has to answer Reed’s questions under oath. He can’t change the wording and answer a different question. And Reed has no intention of letting Whitney get away with the negative pregnants he is so fond of. An example of a negative pregnant is you ask a guy, “Did you kill Jones?” and he answers, “I did not shoot Jones.” The correct response for the questioner is to say something along the lines of, “I did not ask if you shot him, you weasel. I asked if you killed him. Answer MY question!”
Not ‘convicted’
In response to Reed’s article about Whitney’s hit and run, Whitney likes to say, “I was not convicted of a hit and run.” Reed never said he was. Doesn’t matter. He hit the pedestrian with his truck and left the scene without telling anyone. The pedestrian was left lying unconscious, bleeding, brain damaged and otherwise severely physically injured in a ditch in freezing weather. Whitney even came back to the scene an hour or so later and talked to a cop who was there for another accident, but he still didn’t mention his accident. And the pedestrian was still lying in the ditch. Another pedestrian found him the next morning after sun rise.
Whitney’s denial of the hit and run in the Fun Rentals letter
In a fight with some of his partners in his Fun Rentals business, Whitney was apparently accused of the hit and run. Here is what Whitney said to one of his partners in a letter about the accusation. Note the negative pregnant.
“You wrote and told shareholders that I ran someone over while drunken driving. This is also a complete lie with not even a shred of truth. You are out of control and a low life liar.”
The negative pregnant is the word “drunken.” Whitney was sober when he hit the pedestrian. Reed does not know the exact wording of the accusation to which Whitney is responding, so he does not know if Whitney added the word “drunken” when it was not there to begin with. But which is worse, a drunken hit and run or a sober one? Seems to Reed that a drunken hit and run is essentially a predictable continuation of the improper decision to drink and drive. A sober hit and run is a whole other matter involving much worse behavior in spite of a clear head.
And how about that line, “This is also a complete lie with not even a shred of truth?” Not even a shred of truth, Russ?! It is 100% true except for the word “drunken.” And that word may not even have been in the original accusation if Reed’s experience is any indication. Whitney likes to add words like “conviction” to denials when there was no accusation of conviction to begin with.
So forcing Whitney to answer Reed’s questions—under oath, not Whitney’s cleverly altered affidavit statements, should be an extremely interesting exercise, if Whitney does not withdraw the case to avoid answering the questions.
Here are the pending motions:
• Whitney’s emergency preliminary injunction motion (Whitney’s preliminary injunction would prohibit Reed from criticizing Whitney by name because his name is a trademark—Can Tom Delay claim that, too?)
• Reed’s summary judgment motion (A summary judgment would say that Whitney loses his federal case against Reed)
• Whitney’s motion to dismiss Reed’s counterclaims and Reed’s opposition to it
• Whitney’s motion to compel Reed to answer interrogatories and produce documents (Reed answered some of Whitney’s interrogatories and objected to others. Reed also sent Whitney more than 800 documents)
• Reed’s motion for a protective order from Whitney’s scheduling of depositions and mediation in conflict with the schedule proposed by Reed (Whitney keeps trying to schedule Reed’s deposition first. Reed thinks Whitney in going to drop the suit as he did with Matt Gagnon just before he gives a deposition to Reed so Reed wants Whitney’s depo first to eliminate the whole mess sooner. Reed asked the court to skip the mediation as a waste of time or at least schedule it for when Reed is in Florida to take Whitney’s deposition. Reed also wants the court to order Whitney to attend the mediation and to give the deposition on behalf of Whitney Information Network, Inc.)
• Whitney’s motion for a protective order from Reed’s interrogatories and document requests (Whitney has refused to answer even a single interrogatory from Reed or to send even a single document to Reed.)
• Reed’s motion to get more time for his C.P.A. expert to file his expert report (The normal deadline was 4/1/05. Reed’s C.P.A. expert was busy doing tax returns then.)
John T. Reed
Copyright 2005 by John T. Reed
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John T. Reed, a.k.a. John Reed, Jack Reed, 342 Bryan Drive, Alamo, CA 94507, Voice: 925-820-7262, Fax: 925-820-1259, Email: johnreed@johntreed.com

CONSUMER WARNING NOTICE: I recently saw Russ Whitney on a late night TV infomercial and then attended one of his "free" seminars. Unfortunately I believed all of their LIES and FRAUDULENT CLAIMS and I paid thousands of dollars to go to his "training camps". Needless to say I was clearly ripped off, cheated and lied to by Russ Whitney and his employees (band of thieves). My mistake was not searching the Internet to find out more about Russ Whitney and his company's HORRIBLE reputation for fraud, deception and illegal activities. Had I searched online I would have found out about THOUSANDS of customers being cheated, HUNDREDS of investigations by the Attorney General into the fraud of Russ Whitney and his company's, and that Russ Whitney himself is a CONVICTED VIOLENT FELON and spent years in PRISON. I saved the cached pages from the major search engines of the John Reed lawsuit with Russell Whitney and the TRUTH and FACTS that Reed discovered during his investigation of Whitney. I am posting this information on real estate discussion boards so other people do NOT get cheated and ripped off like I did.