Bobby N. Harmon, CPCU, ARM
August 13, 2004
VIA facsimile only @ (808) 529-7177
Mr. Steven Guttman, Esq.
Kessner Duca Umebayashi Bain & Matsunaga
220 South King Street, 19th Floor
Honolulu, HI 96813
RE: Notice of Claim - Steven Guttman, Esq., Kessner Duca Umebayashi Bain & Matsunaga
Ref. Mary Lou Woo, Trustee v. Bobby N. Harmon
Dear Mr. Guttman:
This responds, in part, to your letter dated August 10, 2004, addressed to James B. Farris, Senior Case Manager, American Arbitration Association, in which you write:
“As I am uncertain as to the decision making process at AAA regarding the forwarding of correspondence to the Arbitrator, I am sending this letter to specifically request that Mr. Harmon’s letters of August 10 and 11, 2004, be forwarded to the Arbitrator. The reason for the request is that the Arbitrator needs to be aware of Mr. Harmon’s tortured reasoning in his attempt to try to justify the avoidance of the clear language of the [REDACTED] and the Arbitrator’s Interim Orders.
“The Arbitrator gave herself a deadline of August 23, 2004, to issue her final ruling. At the time we submitted the proposed Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law, we had no way of knowing the convolutions Mr. Harmon would process in his mind to rationalize his behavior. Because there remains the opportunity for the Arbitrator to fully address the irrational logic of Mr. Harmon, we think it is important that she be advised of the August 10 and 11, 2004 letters.
“To use Mr. Harmon’s language, his August 10 and 11 letters are ‘truly unbelievable’. He has clearly shown that he has no intention of acting in accordance with the Interim Orders. Therefore, we have to assume that we will need to enforce the final ruling of the Arbitrator through the federal courts in Hawaii and Kentucky. The Arbitrator’s knowledge of the August 10 and 11 letters should assist in the ultimate goal of having Mr. Harmon behave in accordance with the law.”...
Mr. Guttman, this is another perfect example of your ongoing attempts to confuse the issues, evade answering the direct questions, and extort monetary rewards for yourself through threats of further legal actions and financial sanctions.
First, I believe that I made it clear in my letter of August 10, 2004, that there are two separate matters involved here. As I stated, “Mr. Guttman, since both you and I agree that my claim allegations against you and others involved in the settlement negotiations have no bearing on the merits of this arbitration, the Arbitrator, or the [REDACTED], I do not understand why you continue to insist upon trying to combine what are clearly two separate matters. Even the Arbitrator, Judith Neustader, repeatedly stated during our conferences and hearings that my claims of fraud and other wrongful acts were NOT at issue in this arbitration.” Given the clarity of this statement, I do not see where my August 10th letter has any bearing on the final ruling of the Arbitrator. – including enforcement through the federal courts in Hawaii and Kentucky.
Second, you have completely evaded responding to any of the factual arguments in my August 10th letter, such as the following:
“In answer to your allegation that I am attempting to re-ignite my campaign against the Trustee and The Kamehameha Schools, its Trustees, counsel, employees, and other affiliates in direct violation of the Interim Orders, I must soundly disagree with your allegations. My “Claim Notices” to various entities are just that: WRITTEN NOTICES OF CLAIMS. It is improper and misleading for you to label these Claims Notices as part of my “letter-writing campaign” that was at issue in the arbitration, and then request that the Arbitrator impose financial sanctions against me for ‘blatant violation of the Interim Orders of June 16 and June 28, 2004'.
“I would also point out that, to my knowledge, you are NOT AUTHORIZED to act as an attorney on behalf of KAMEHAMEHA SCHOOLS; TORKILDSON KATZ; MARR HIPP JONES & PEPPER or any other entity against whom I am making these claims - including TRUSTEE MARY LOU WOO. I do plan to object to the Court, at the time of your Final Accounting, if the Trustee requests any payments be made to you in connection with ANY of these claims against her, your firm, or any other entity involved in these claims matters. These fees and costs must rightly be borne by the INSURANCE COMPANIES for Ms. Woo and other entities, or by her and you personally – not by the Bankruptcy Estate. To do otherwise, clearly would be a breach of Trustee Woo’s fiduciary duties.”
Since my letter of August 10th was addressed to you, and had no bearing on the arbitration issues, I believe that you should have responded directly to me first – BEFORE asking the Arbitrator to decide to take legal actions based solely upon your psychological analysis of the “convolutions” in my mind or my “irrational logic”.
You are similarly evasive in answering the arguments in my letter of August 11, 2004 addressed to the American Arbitration Association. Your only response to ANY of my arguments in that letter was to say that it was the “tortured reasoning” of a “convoluted” mind to “rationalize” my behavior. Also, you do not respond to my reasonable offer to identify and REDACT any portions of the website www.the-catbird-seat.net that you might consider to be in violation of the Interim Orders. I believe that if you were truly interested in trying to resolves these issues, you should have provided your counter-arguments to these important legal issues BEFORE asking the Arbitrator for her decisions.
Third, your letters of August 9th and 10th, contain threats of legal sanctions unless I cease pursuing my claims against your law firm, Trustee Woo, and others whom you do not even represent in the arbitration matter. I consider these threats as further acts of intimidation, extortion and racketeering that I alleged in my letter to you dated August 10, 2004.
Judging from your letter to the AAA, it appears that Trustee Mary Lou Woo does not wish to attempt to negotiate an out-of-court settlement of these claims in order to avoid further litigation. However, I continue to believe that the fairest, fastest, least disruptive, and most economical way of settling these multiple-party claims, is to have all parties – or their insurance companies – simply sit down and try to negotiate a mutually-agreeable, global settlement of all claims and counter-claims. If we can reach such a global agreement, then there will be no more claims, no more letters, and no more legal costs and delays – and Trustee Mary Lou Woo finally can close out the estate. If we unable to reach a mutual agreement, for any reason, then we are certainly no more at a stalemate than we are at this time.
If this suggestion of out-of-court negotiation is definitely not acceptable to Trustee Woo, then I will have no choice but to continue to press my separate claims against you and your firm, Trustee Woo, and all the other parties I have named. For ease of reference, I have now consolidated most of these claims at the following Web address:
www.the-catbird-seat.net/Claims-By-Harmon.htm
I sincerely hope that we can move forward quickly on this matter, so that we can all get on with our lives. I will delay any action regarding directly pursuing these claims with other parties for five days – unless I am forced to proceed earlier due to any decisions that might be rendered by Arbitrator Judith Neustadter Fuqua.
Please contact me directly with your comments or questions regarding these matters.
Very truly yours,
Bobby N. Harmon
cc: Mary Lou Woo, c/o Steven Guttman (via fax @ 808-529-7177)
James B. Farris, Senior Case Manager, American Arbitration Association
(via fax @ 559-490-1919)
Robert Kihune, Douglas Ing, Constance Lau, Diane Plotts, Nainoa Thompson, Trustees of Kamehameha Schools (via fax @ 808-523-6313)
Dee Jay Mailer, CEO, Kamehameha Schools (via fax @ 808-523-6313)
P&C Insurance Co., Inc. (via fax @ 808-523-6313)
Susan Tius, Esq., c/o Rush Moore Craven Sutton Morry & Beh
(via fax @ 808-521-0597)
Matt A. Tsukazaki, Esq., Torkildson, Katz, Fonseca, Moore & Hetherington
(via fax @ 808-523-6001)
Henry H. Peters, Richard S. H. Wong, Lokelani Lindsey, Gerard Jervis and Oswald Stender, and Kenneth Hipp, Esq., c/o Marr Hipp Jones & Pepper
(via fax @ 808-536-6700)
Jeffrey H.K. Sia, Esq., Ayabe Chong Nishimoto Sia & Nakamura
(via fax @ 808-526-3491)
Robert S. Tameler, ALPS, Claims Administrator for Bradley Tamm and Greg Dunn
(via fax @ 406-728-7416)
Lori Chung, Aon Insurance Managers (via fax @ 808-540-4301)
Casimer Fidele, Tradewind Insurance Company (via fax @ 808-521-7489)
Hugh Jones, Deputy Attorney General (via fax @ 808-586-1477)
J.P. Schmidt, Hawaii Insurance Commissioner (via fax @ 808-586-2806)
Janet Hughes, Internal Revenue Service (via fax @ 303-844-3596)
Billy Beaver, Pension & Welfare Benefit Admin. (via fax @ 626-229-1098)
Ralph F. Boyd, Jr., U.S. Dept. of Justice (via fax @ 202-514-1116)
PricewaterhouseCoopers, c/o Warren Price III, Esq. (via fax @ 808-533-0549)
Marsh & McLennan, Honolulu Office (via fax @ 808-585-3510)
Terry Mullen, CEO/Pres., John Mullen & Co. (via fax @ 808-531-0053)
Lyn Flanigan Anzai, Hawaii State Bar Association (via e-mail: lanzai@hsba.org)
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