Guest View: Court Hearing Was Disaster for Glazer; Huge Victory for Clyne

Erasend is one of our esteemed commenters who regularly delivers solid prose and good arguments – sometimes contentious and sometimes probing new territory – and not afraid to disagree with anyone or everyone – including your publisher. Erasend made a comment shortly after the last hearing – before Judge Eric Komitee – in the civil case of Sarah Edmondson, et al, against Keith Raniere et al – the case I shall often refer to as the NXIVM case or better yet – the Bronfman NXIVM case.

It goes without saying – or at least it should – that the opinions of Erasend are entirely his own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Frank Report.  The photo below is not an actual photograph of  Erasend but rather what I imagine him to look like since he is after all anonymous not only to our readers but to myself as well.

By Erasend

This is in response to Judge: No Naming Anonymous Plaintiffs, No Gag Order, No Sanctions, No Control of Third Parties; Glazer Must Reveal Plaintiffs Names to Defendants

So yeah, pretty typical paper pushing meeting. Requiring everyone to show up instead of teleconference was a complete waste of time, money, and resources.

Judges really need to get over their traditional approach to court.

My opinion has nothing to do with the who is involved (like for some), I just find that requiring people to fly in, dress up, stand before a judge so he can feel the thrill of power is just stupid and counterproductive.

All that should only be necessary when there is a lot of moving parts involved like during the actual trial. But these paper pushing meetings are really just between the lawyers, the judge, and maybe a few questions to plaintiffs and defendants. Type of stuff that teleconferencing is perfect for.

The dressing down that everyone was hoping for didn’t happen because Michele Hatchette isn’t a defendant and the judge has no control over her, which he surprisingly admitted on the record.

She is just a busybody inserting her ego into a situation that currently has nothing to do with her. As I said before, “fuck Hatchette.”

Anyone that gives her vicious ass oxygen are subverting the judicial process and the privacy of others for no meaningful reason beyond ego.

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To me, this last court meeting was a disaster for Neil Glazer and huge victory for Nicki Clyne and company. The Bronfman’s came out even – but now have a clear path to potential victory.

Glazer’s position was been significantly weakened and likely will increase pressure to settle. This can be reversed depending on how the judge decides on bifurcation and dismissal (judges tend to not want to dismiss cases).

I had already thought the decision to bifurcate had been sorted. Dumb assumption on my part because still early in the case.

I would be shocked if the judge doesn’t do it, as keeping the DOS claims and the NXIVM consumer fraud claims  together will most definitely create many avenues of appeal.

Judge Komitee is right, “every defendant seems to be accused of everything” which is a problem considering the charges.

Bifurcation would effectively end the lawsuit as I see it. It doesn’t appear the Bronfmans had anything to do with the creation of DOS. I would say everything Glazer is planning hinges on DOS. The DOS activities with the blackmail, branding and sex is how he gets the jury to hate the defendants. Hating the defendants is how you get mega bucks.

Without the Bronfman’s as part of that, he can still pursue it, but it would be a waste of his time and money as all that remains are defendants with shallow pockets that would never be able to pay whatever amount the jury decided on. Yeah some will say Clyne has money, but she definitely doesn’t have millions.

Bifurcation likely will mean the DOS stuff will not be usable in the cases about forced labor and fraud. Those will be difficult for Glazer to win on their own merits. The “profit” part of it doesn’t even exist for the Bronfmans, They didn’t make money off of NXIVM. It was a money drain by everything I have read. As keep saying, many of the plaintiffs are a huge weakness for this case since many participated in the very activities they are suing for.

The Bronfman lawyers will have a lovely stream of plaintiffs who will have to admit they volunteered to work, that they volunteered to take the classes, that they volunteered to keep taking classes and so on. A steady drumbeat of up to 69 people doing variations of “yes I did do that but…” on top of any others they decide to throw on the pile will be hard for a jury to ignore.

I suspect Glazer is crunching the numbers on what a max settlement might be. It is significantly lower than it was befoeyesterday. His chances of case revival will be preventing the bifurcation or failing that keeping the Bronfman’s as defendants on the DOS aspect of the suit.

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