HomeMy WebLinkAbout01-26-06 (2)
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2
. 1 INDEX
2 SPEAKERS PAGE(S)
3 First Question:
4 The Auditor 9
5 Brady Green, Esquire 9
6 Ralph Jacobs, Esquire 10
7 Mr. Robert Mumma, II 11
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Second Question:
9
The Auditor 12
10
Mr. Robert Mumma, II 12
11
Ralph Jacobs, Esquire 13
12
Brady Green, Esquire 13
13
. 14 Third Question:
15 The Auditor 14
16 Brady Green, Esquire 14
17 Ralph Jacobs, Esquire 15
18 Mr. Robert Mumma, II 16
19
Fourth Question:
20
The Auditor 18
21
Mr. Robert Mumma, II 18
22
Brady Green, Esquire 22
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24
25
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DEBORAH ZEPP, COURT REPORTER
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. 1 SPEAKERS PAGE(S)
2 Fifth Question:
3 The Auditor 24
4 Ralph Jacobs, Esquire 24
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Sixth Question:
6
The Auditor 25
7
Mr. Robert Mumma, II 25
8
Brady Green, Esquire 26
9
10 Comments:
11 The Auditor 26, 31
12 Mr. Robert Mumma 26, 31
13 Ralph Jacobs, Esquire 28, 32
. 14 Brady Green, Esquire 28 32
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THE AUDITOR: The first thing on the agenda is to
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take roll. I will indicate that I do have a court reporter
3 here that is taking this down so it's important that only one
4 person talk at a time.
5
So I'm here of course. And we'll start from
6 Brady's office. Brady, indicate that you're here and who's
7 here, also, on your speaker phone.
8
MR. GREEN: Yes. I am Brady Green from Morgan
9 Lewis. And Michael Riffitts is also here in my office with
10 me.
11
THE AUDITOR: And just for Mr. Mumma's sake, maybe
12 you want to spell the last name of Michael.
13
MR. GREEN: That is R-i-f-f-i-t-t-s.
14
THE AUDITOR: Thank you.
15
Go ahead, Mr. Jacobs.
MR. JACOBS: Yes. It's Ralph Jacobs.
I'm here on
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17 my own.
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THE AUDITOR: All right. And, Ivo?
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20 And with me is our associate Hilary Dean.
MR. OTTO: It's Ivo Otto. That's I-v-o, O-t-t-o.
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THE AUDITOR: All right. And you're on a speaker?
MR. OTTO: Pardon me?
THE AUDITOR: And you're on speaker phone?
MR. OTTO: Correct.
THE AUDITOR: And, Mr. Mumma, you're there by
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yourself or with somebody?
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MR. MUMMA: No, I'm here by myself on a cell phone.
3
THE AUDITOR: On a cell phone. Okay. That's fine.
4 Can everybody hear all right?
5
MR. GREEN: Yes.
6
MR. OTTO: Yes.
7
MR. MUMMA: Yes.
8
THE AUDITOR: All right. Now, what I'll do, Mr.
9 Mumma, do you per chance have a tablet and a pen?
10
MR. MUMMA : What?
THE AUDITOR: Do you have something to write with?
MR. MUMMA : I can get something, just a second.
THE AUDITOR: Yeah.
MR. MUMMA : Where's that pen? Okay. Go ahead.
THE AUDITOR: What I want to do is walk down
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16 through the agenda and you can write it down because I want to
17 follow this agenda pretty closely so we just don't have a
18 free-willing event here. And after I walk down through the
19 agenda, we'll go down through the agenda.
20 The next thing on the agenda is I will put on the
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21 record the purpose of this conference call. After that, the
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participants of the -- to the call will speak to the following
questions and they will speak to it in the following
order -- these are the same questions that were in my letter
of November 25th that was sent to each of you -- the first
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question is, To what extent have the materials that were made
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available for inspection and copying this past summer remained
3 available for inspection and copying?
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MR. MUMMA: Taylor, maybe this will save you some
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time.
I have a list of the questions.
6
THE AUDITOR: That's fine. All right. Then just
7 do this: these questions are the same questions and they're in
8 the same order but I will tell you the order ln which I want
9 to hear people speak to these questions.
10 On that first question, I'm going to want to first
11 hear from the Estate and Trusts. Then I'm going to want to
12 hear from Attorney Jacobs, and then I want to hear from Mr.
13 Mumma.
14
The second question about the extent to which
15 inspection did occur before the Order of October lath, I will
16 first want to hear from Mr. Mumma, then from Attorney Jacobs,
18 Trusts.
17 and then from the representative of the Estates and the
19 The third question, How much additional material
20 has been made available for inspection and copying since
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21 October lOth? I'm first going to want to hear from the Estate
and Trusts, second from Attorney Jacobs, third from Mr. Mumma.
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The next question, How much time has Mr. Mumma
and/or his designees spent inspecting materials offered for
inspection stated for the period before October lOth and the
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period after October lath? I'm going to want to first hear
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from Mr. Mumma and then hear from the representative of the
3 Estate and the Trusts who I understand will be Brady Green.
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Next is, How much time has been spent by
5 representatives for Barbara Mann Mumma inspecting materials
6 both for the period before October lOth and the period after
7 October lath? I will hear from Attorney Jacobs and then
8 Attorney Green on behalf of the Estate and the Trusts.
9 The last question is, Why shouldn't Mr. Mumma be
10 expected to retain the services of an attorney or other
11 representative or agent to participate and expedite the
12 process of inspection and copying of the information offered
13 in discovery? I will first hear from Mr. Mumma and then hear
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from the representative of the Estate and the Trusts.
15
I will then hear other comments that you want to
16 make, first hearing from Mr. Mumma, then hearing from Attorney
17 Jacobs, then hearing from the representative for the Estate
19 opportunity to comment to the other's comments after which we
18 and the Trusts. And then I will give each of you one
20 will adjourn.
21 So that will be the agenda for this phone
22 conference. I regard this to be in the nature of a prehearing
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23 conference, not a hearing.
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Nobody is going to be put under oath.
This is as
attorneys meeting with a party to talk about the status of
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discovery and where we stand on the discovery.
2
We do, though, have a reporter here. Her name is
3 Deb ZePPi and she's taking down what people say and that's why
4 it's important that only one person talk at a time.
5 Now, the purpose for this conference call is a
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Motion for Reconsideration filed by Robert M. Mumma, II.
It
7 was docketed on October 24th, 2005, and seeks reconsideration
8 of the schedule, that is, the timing of discovery that was
9 ordered by Judge Oler on October 10th, 2005.
10 In response to this Motion, Judge Oler issued a
11 Rule to Show Cause why relief should not be granted and made
12 that returnable in ten days.
13 An Answer was filed and docketed on November 7th on
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behalf of the Estate and the Trusts.
I don't believe there
15 was anything filed on behalf of the other objector.
16
Am I correct about that, Mr. Jacobs?
17
MR. JACOBS: That's correct, I did not file an
18 Answer.
20 Answer from the Estate and Trusts, referred this matter to me
THE AUDITOR: Judge Oler then, upon receiving the
21 for a Recommended Order back to the judge.
22 It is true that after he did that, he, I believe,
23 inadvertently signed an Order denying the Motion for
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24 Reconsideration. But when it was realized that he had already
deferred the matter to me, he entered another Order rescinding
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his Denial; and I believe he's looking for Recommendation from
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me. So we are here today to receive information that pertains
3 to the Motion for Reconsideration.
4
That brings me to the very first question. Which
5 is, To what extent have the materials that were made available
6 for inspection and copying last -- this past summer, that lS
7 the summer of 2005, to what extent have they remained
8 available for inspection and copying?
9 And, Mr. Green, if you would speak to that.
10
MR. GREEN: Okay. Just briefly -- and first of
11
all, I also am on a speaker phone.
If anyone has trouble
12 hearing me, please just let me know and I will pick up.
13 Per a letter of July 28th of 2005, we advised Mr.
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Mumma and Mr. Jacobs and the Auditor that the
that records
15 would be available.
16 There was one open item that we were still looking
17
at which was some of the Morgan Lewis files but
and not
18 every box was available on September 28th. But by the time
19 that Mr. Jacobs first came here on August 12th there were a
20 total of 93 boxes available. The vast majority of those boxes
22 boxes of documents have remained available in our office for
21 had been available as of September 28th. And all of those
23 inspection and review continuously since that time.
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MR. MUMMA: Well, can I
THE AUDITOR: No. You'll have a -- you'll be the
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third to speak on this point, Mr. Mumma; but you'll have a
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chance to speak.
3
Anything else, Mr. Green, in your response?
4
MR. GREEN: With respect to documents made
5 available last summer, that would be the totality of the
6 information.
7
THE AUDITOR: Attorney Jacobs, do you have response
8 to this?
9
MR. JACOBS:
I received a letter from Mr. Green
10 advising that documents were available, and I made
11 arrangements to take a look at them.
12 My recollection is I spent at least one day at the
13 offices of Morgan Lewis in August. The August 12th date I
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think is correct. And there were 90-some odd boxes that I
15 began to review.
16 I designated certain documents for copying; and in
17 due course, copies were provided to me. And then I made
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arrangements later on in October to spend some time and to
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have another representative of my client spend some time
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looking at the documents.
I think on October 17th and 18th, we spent time at
Morgan Lewis's office again reviewing the -- this -- I believe
the same 93 or 96 boxes of documents and again designating
pertinent of those for copying which were provided to us in
due course.
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THE AUDITOR: Okay. Now, Mr. Mumma, you may
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respond to this.
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MR. MUMMA:
I just want to confirm werre answering
4 No. I, right?
5
THE AUDITOR: That is correct.
6
MR. MUMMA: Okay. To the extent that I am aware,
7 there's 93 boxes; but one of the boxes, No. 93 I believe, was
8 my personal files that they put on display. And I've objected
9 to that and my understanding is that Mr. Green has sequestered
10 that box and it is not available.
11
Now, if that's not the case, I need to know that
12 right away.
13
THE AUDITOR:
1'11 come back to Mr. Green on that
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point.
Speak anything further you want to to this question or
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15 this inquiry.
17 that from 93, there are 92 presently available boxes, one of
MR. MUMMA: Well, like I said, my understanding is
18 which was sequestered at my instructions to Mr. Green. And
19 they were files that I gave to Morgan Lewis and Bockius when
20 they represented me. And I consider them my personal files
21 and I consider it unethical for him to distribute those to any
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22 other people. He doesn't have any permission to do it.
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THE AUDITOR: All right. So that I think I'm clear
to what I'm hearing, aside from the one box that Mr. Mumma's
now referring to, the other 90-some boxes that were made
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available this past summer have continued to be available
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until this time.
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Is that correct, Mr. Green?
4
MR. GREEN: With the exception of the one box, that
5 is correct. The -- the one box has been withdrawn from the
6 production except as to review by Mr. Mumma who has requested
7 access to that box when he has returned.
8
THE AUDITOR: All right.
9
MR. GREEN: So in other words, there's 92 available
10 for everybody else and there's 93 for Mr. Mumma. And I did
11 misspeak on that. Consistent with a letter that I sent to Mr.
12 Mumma and Mr. Jacobs with a copy to the Auditor, that box was
13 withdrawn.
14
THE AUDITOR: Okay. I'm going to go to the second
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inquiry
and I'm going to ask you to speak to this first,
16 Mr. Mumma -- To what extent did inspection and copying of
17 these materials Occur before the Discovery Order of October
18 10th, 2005?
MR. MUMMA: On October 5th, we were there from
20 11:00 a.m. till 4:10; October 6th, 10:00 a.m. to 4:20; October
21 7th, 11:15 to 4:00; October 10th, from 10:00 to 4:00. That's
22 both my -- on three of those occasions it was both myself and
23 Daryl Hewitt. And on one occasion, October the 7th, it was
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24 strictly Mr. Hewitt. That's 22 hours on four days between the
two of us.
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THE AUDITOR: All right. Mr. Jacobs?
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MR. JACOBS: I don't have quite as precise an
3 accounting of hours; but I can tell you that in August I spent
4 a good part of the day and in October, I believe the 17th and
5 18th, I spent a good part of a day and another representative
6 of my client spent I believe two days.
7
THE AUDITOR: All right. Mr. Green, do you want to
8 speak to this from what knowledge you have as to others
9 inspecting and copying from the materials?
10
MR. GREEN: I believe that the dates that Mr. Mumma
11 recited as to his presence and/or that of Mr. Hewitt are
12 consistent with our records. Again, this is on or before
13 October 10th.
14
With respect to Mr. Jacobs, I believe that Mr.
15 Jacobs was here on August the 12th and I believe that he is
16 correct, that he was here on the 17th of October -- well,
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17 that's post October 10th so I'll stop with that.
19
THE AUDITOR: All right.
20 of four days by Mr. Mumma and one day by Mr. Jacobs prior to
MR. GREEN: There were four days by Mr. -- portions
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21 October the 10th.
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23 you say Mr. Mumma or his representative?
THE AUDITOR: Yeah. And when you say Mr. Mumma,
25
MR. GREEN: Correct, the gentleman we understand to
be his representative.
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THE AUDITOR: Right. Okay. Now, third question,
2
How much additional material has been made available for
3 inspection and copying since October 10th?
4 And, Mr. Green, I want you to speak to that first.
5
MR. GREEN: With respect to files of our clients
6 and files of Morgan Lewis and Bockius, the only change in
7 availability has been the one box that we discussed which has
8 been withdrawn from the production as to Mr. Jacobs or anyone
9 else other than Mr. Mumma. No additional boxes have been
10 added.
11 By a letter dated October 27th enclosing an index,
12 I advised Mr. Jacobs and Mr. Mumma -- and with a copy to the
13 Auditor -- that an additional number of documents were
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available for inspection at the offices of Hadley & Company
15 which is a long-time accounting firm for the Mumma Family and
16
its businesses in Buffalo, New York.
I don't have a precise
17 count but there is an index attached and my understanding is
18 that it is something along the order of 15 boxes.
19
THE AUDITOR: So the -- what was made available for
20 discovery was enlarged after October 10th by that one box or
21 that box actually may be being pulled back and these materials
22 that were at Hadley & Company?
23
MR. GREEN: That is correct.
24
THE AUDITOR: All right. Now, Attorney Jacobs, I
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want you to speak to whether that sounds right to you or
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whether you have a different experience with that.
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MR. JACOBS: That sounds correct. And I would just
3 note that I had hoped to be able to review the Hadley
4 documents; but because of my schedule, I haven't been able to
5 do that yet. And hopefully I'll be able to arrange some
6 mutually convenient time to do that shortly.
7 I do believe technically the Order set a December
8 12th deadline for review of documents, but I'm hoping that I
9 can be able to review those after December 12th.
10
THE AUDITOR: Let me just ask, Mr. Green, when you
11 say boxes, are these banker boxes? Is that the size of the
12 boxes?
13
MR. GREEN: You know, I hear the term banker box
14
and I'm never quite sure that I'm using that same terminology.
15
THE AUDITOR: It's not precise enough, I agree.
16
MR. GREEN: No, well, I mean, 'cause different
17 people mean different things.
18
THE AUDITOR: Right.
19
MR. GREEN: The 93 boxes in our office are what I
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would consider a standard for these days document box.
It's
22
21 probably a foot by 14 inches.
23
THE AUDITOR: Okay.
MR. GREEN: You know, in other words, it fits
24 letter-sized paper one way and legal-sized paper the other way
25 and nine -- so it's 93 sort of standard sized boxes. They're
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not the oversized old metal framed boxes that are more like
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two and a half to three feet long.
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THE AUDITOR: Gotcha. All right. Now, Mr. Mumma,
4 do you want to speak to this? As to whether the report that
5 Mr. Green gave is consistent with your experience.
6
MR. MUMMA: Well, I would -- would make two
7 comments. One, when they say boxes, there are indeed -- that
8
meant boxes. Do not anticipate that they are all full.
Some
9 of those boxes might have three file folders that don't
10 aggregate to an inch thick in them.
11
THE AUDITOR: Okay.
12
MR. MUMMA: Other boxes -- okay? -- with copying
13 materials so they're very very dense __
14
THE COURT REPORTER:
I'm sorry, he is fading in and
15 out.
16
MR. MUMMA:
-- other ones are filled with --
17
THE AUDITOR: Just a second, Mr. Mumma.
I'm
18 not -- if you just start that last thought, we were
19 getting -- you're coming in and out a little bit on our
speaker.
I want to make sure we get everything that you say.
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21 Start where you were talking about not all boxes are full.
MR. MUMMA: Not all boxes are full and there's
certainly no sequence of how things were put into boxes.
So
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there's -- they're co-mingled.
And I would call to your attention that, for
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instance, the Hadley boxes contained information for D.E.
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Distribution Corporation, the GAT Corporation, Mumma Realty
3 Associates 1 which is purported to be a tenancy in common,
4 Mumma Realty Associates 2 which is purported to be a tenancy
5 in common; and then there is a set of boxes apparently for the
6 Estate of Robert M. Mumma.
7 So the majority of the Hadley stuff is not Estate
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documents.
It belongs to other entities. And this is where I
9 think people need to be very careful.
10 I am not sure what authority the Auditor has
11 over -- over information that belongs to entities that are not
12 the Estate. And we've had that problem ongoing with pennsy
13 Supply documents, Pennsylvania Supply Company, Kim Company.
14
There's -- all together, Taylor, there's probably
15 30 to 35 different entities that are involved here that we are
16 individual -- in our individual capacities either as tenants
17 in common, partners, or shareholders of.
18
And to me, they are not -- couldn't be regarded as
19 Estate documents --
20
THE AUDITOR: Robert?
21
MR. MUMMA: but rather as corporate documents,
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22 partnership documents, or tenancy in common documents.
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24 in that I understand what you're saying but it's not
THE AUDITOR: Robert, I'm going to stop you there
responsive to the question that we're speaking to.
I will
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take it into account as one of the comments you want to make
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when we get to the end of the agenda. But I want to
3
MR. MUMMA: But then I would say this to the Hadley
4 documents, we want to go and investigate those. As I said, in
5 our analysis of what he sent us, there are huge gaps in time.
6 They're not continuous. They're not from the beginning
7 of -- of the entities to the end of the entities.
8
THE AUDITOR: Again, Robert, you're not -- Mr.
9 Mumma, you're not speaking __
10
MR. MUMMA: Would you let me finish, please? We
11 would like to -- right now we are probably considering just
12 copying everything that's there. But I want to say that this
13 stuff appears to be incomplete and we don't want to make a
14
trip to Buffalo and then have to make a second trip to get the
16
15 complete set of documents.
THE AUDITOR: All right.
I want to now go to the
17 next question. And, Mr. Mumma, you'll speak to this first.
18 How much time has Mr. Mumma or your designee or designees
19 spent inspecting the materials offered for inspection and
20 copying? And I mean after October the 10th. You've already
21 given me the time that you spent up until October 10th so now
23
22 I'm interested in the time since October the 10th.
MR. MUMMA :
I don't have the dates here, but I went
24 by myself one day. Daryl and I went down several times.
25 Daryl went down twice. And Daryl and us went down once with
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Vinnie Carissimi. And we had either -- it looks like we had
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seven days that either I or Daryl were there plus partial a
3 day that Vinnie was there.
4 And I have plans, when my schedule permits, to go
5
down there again.
Part of the problem is to get to do four
6 hours or five hours of review -- which is about all you can
7 practically do when you're going through page by page and
8 reading every page and still be alert enough to see what it is
9 or to figure out what it is you're looking at -- it also takes
10 us four hours' driving time to get down and back. So it is a
11 full day just to do a five hour inspection.
12
MR. AUDITOR: Now, help me understand. You think
13 you've been down on seven occasions, either you or somebody on
14
your behalf?
15
MR. MUMMA: Daryl put this together. He says after
16 October lath, there's basically seven days that either I or
17 Daryl were there plus a partial day where Vinnie and Daryl and
18 I were there.
THE AUDITOR: And on each occasion, it was
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20 somewhere about four or five hours inspecting the materials?
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MR. MUMMA: Yes.
THE AUDITOR: And can you -_
MR. MUMMA: Or more.
THE AUDITOR: Can you give me an estimate as to
how -- what percentage of those materials you now have gotten
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through?
2
MR. MUMMA:
I did -- on the last occasion I was
3 there, I went through three boxes, one of which was full, one
4
which was about half full, and one was
it had several
5 folders inside of it to give you an idea but it wasn't
6 jam-packed with materials.
7 It took me four hours to go through those three
8
boxes.
There's a lot of stuff that's duplicative but there's
9 a lot of stuff that is incomplete and you have to look at each
10 page, look at each page number. You have to read each
11 document because they refer to other documents.
12 For instance, there's one that says it's the first
13 memorandum of a set of two memorandums but you get only the
14
first one. And you go through the whole box, and the second
15
one is not there.
So it's time consuming.
16
THE AUDITOR: Well, in the summertime before
17 October the 10th, I think you indicated you were there for 22
18 hours.
20
19 Does that sound like what you said?
22
21 kept track of everything.
MR. MUMMA: Yes. That's what Daryl has down. He
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23 roughly seven occasions, say, four hours an occasion?
THE AUDITOR: All right. And since October 10th,
25
MR. MUMMA: That's
that's what he has here, yes.
THE AUDITOR: So that would be around 50 hours
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total. Are you through half of the materials?
2
MR. MUMMA: No.
3
THE AUDITOR: What fraction would you say you have
4 gone through?
5
MR. MUMMA: Well, what we did, Taylor, was Daryl
6 went through everything, all the boxes, and tried to make a
7 list, a general list, of what was in each box. And then he
8 circled certain things that he thought might be of interest.
9 And we've been going back to review those boxes.
10 That's how we came across my personal files co-mingled with
11 these because he picked that up and it came out on this
12 listing of his and we contacted them about it.
13 But I would say of the 93 boxes, the thorough
14
review is going to entail probably 40 of the boxes have
15 information that -- well, I shouldn't say that. Because
16 they're all mixed up, we'll have to go through all 93 boxes
17 page by page to see what's in them. And of that, we've
18 probably done -- other than this general review, we've
20
19 probably done thoroughly about eight boxes.
THE AUDITOR: Are you able to estimate for me how
21 many hours it took for Daryl to go through all those boxes and
23
22 make the lists that you've described?
MR. MUMMA: Three days, maybe more. No, I would
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24 say that's what we did before the 10th. I would say most of
his time before the 10th was doing that.
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THE AUDITOR: All right.
2
MR. MUMMA: In other words, he would go -- he
3 started going through the boxes in a general fashion. And I
4 started reviewing some of the stuff that he would hand to me
5 to look at closer, you know, deeper, a more in-depth review;
6 and it took us every -- all that time before the lOth for him
7 to get through the general investigation.
8
THE AUDITOR: All right. Have you been through any
9 of the materials in Buffalo?
10
MR. MUMMA: No. It's going to take a trip to go up
11 there and we sort of figured it might be better to just copy
12 the material. The problem -- the problem that we have is
13 there are occasions where we come across stuff that's whited
14
out and been altered. And you can't tell that from a copying
15 machine. So you have to do -- I mean, to do it correctly, you
16 have to go through each document page by page.
17
THE AUDITOR: Right. You've answered my question
18 about I think the time spent and how long it takes and what
19 all you've gotten accomplished. Thank you.
Mr. Green, do you want to speak to this?
22 We show that Mr. Hewitt was here on November the 8th from
MR. GREEN: I can report on what our numbers show.
24
23 10:20 until 2:35. I show that Mr. Mumma and a gentleman
25
called Mr. Carissimi were here also on that day arriving at
12:50 and each of them left at 3:10.
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I must tell you honestly, I don't know who Mr.
2
Carissimi is or in what capacity he was here but we did not
3 object to his presence.
4 Finally, Mr. Mumma was here on November 16th from
5 11:00 in the morning until 4:15 in the afternoon. Mr. Jacobs
6 came on October 17th with Mr. -- with a Mr. Savage.
7
THE AUDITOR: Hold off on Mr. Jacobs 'cause that's
8 the next question.
9
MR. GREEN: All right. Yes, that's all that we
10 have in terms of checking our records for when Mr. Mumma was
11 here.
12
THE AUDITOR: All right. The second date you
13 mentioned after the 8th, what was the next date?
14
MR. GREEN: November the 16th.
15
THE AUDITOR: And what was the next day after that?
16
MR. GREEN: That was it.
17
THE AUDITOR: Now, you mentioned a date when Mr.
18 Hewitt was there.
21
20 Hewitt was here from 10:20 to 2:35.
MR. GREEN: Oh. No. Okay. On November 8th, Mr.
22
THE AUDITOR: Right.
24
23 gentleman Mr. Carissimi were here from 12:50 until 3:10.
MR. GREEN: On that same date, Mr. Mumma and this
25
THE AUDITOR: Okay.
MR. GREEN: And Mr. Mumma was here on the 16th.
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THE AUDITOR: All right. Thank you. We'll go to
2
the next question. And this, Mr. Jacobs, you speak to this
3 first. How much time has been spent by representatives of
4 Barbara Mann Mumma inspecting the materials offered for
5 inspection and copying?
6 You've already given us some response to this
7 before before October 10th and in fact your response did
8
mention a couple days after October 10th.
If you would speak
9 to all the time after October 10th.
10
MR. JACOBS: Yes. My recollection -- and I haven't
11 been able to go back to notes to see if I have anything more
12 precise than this. But my recollection is that I spent the
13 better part of a day on October 17th and another
14
representative of my client spent October 17 and October 18
15 reviewing the 93 boxes at Morgan Lewis and designating some of
16 them for copying.
17 At this point we don't have any intention of
18 spending additional time with the 93 boxes at Morgan Lewis.
20
19 As I mentioned earlier, I still would like to arrange to see
the Hadley documents up in Buffalo.
I probably ought to say without going into any
detail on the substance of our review, that obviously in the
kind of time involved, while we did what review we thought
appropriate, we certainly did not look at every single page
and every single box for what that's worth.
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THE AUDITOR: Okay. All right. Next
2
question -- this is for you, Mr. Mumma, and maybe -- and to a
3 certain extent you've done this from what you indicate; but,
4 Why shouldn't Mr. Mumma be expected to retain the services of
5 an attorney or other representative or agent to participate
6 and expedite the process of inspection and copying of the
7 information offered in discovery?
8
Mr. Mumma, if you would speak to that.
9
MR. MUMMA: Well, I think -- I think the answer to
10 that is very simple, very basic, in that only I can review
11 those documents and know whether there's something that's
12 important in them.
13 Mr. Hewitt can make a general review and classify
.
14
what the documents are which is what he's done. Mr.
15
Carissimi, who's advising me, can look at the documents and
16 see from his perspective what's important.
17 But the nuances that are contained in those
18
documents
'cause they're not familiar with the 50-some
19 year, almost 60-year history that I have with all this. And
20 when they're reviewing memorandums of Karl Felmeden and they
21 see Charles Delone's name in them, I know that's something
22
important. They wouldn't have a clue what that means.
So
23 it's important for me to read every document unfortunately.
24
THE AUDITOR: All right. Mr. Green, do you want to
25
speak to this?
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MR. GREEN: You know, I Suppose I would say it's
2
very difficult for -- for me or anyone on behalf of the Estate
3 or the Trusts to speak to whether Mr. Mumma should be required
4 to proceed in a certain fashion.
5 I certainly do not think that it's unreasonable to
6 expect that he will employ and deploy sufficient resources to
7 move through these materials more expeditiously than has been
8 done to date, in particular since the materials are an attempt
9 to respond to discovery that he's requested.
10
THE AUDITOR: Very good. Now, the next part of the
11 agenda is you can just make comments about -- again, it should
12 go to this Motion for Reconsideration of this discovery
13
schedule.
We're not here to talk about all discovery issues,
.
14
the substance of what's being made available in discovery,
15 that's not what we're talking about today but it has to do
16 with the timing of when the inspection of these documents
17 should be expected to be complete.
18 And if you have any other comments on that point, I
19 would hear them first from Mr. Mumma.
20
MR. MUMMA: Well, I would just say again that these
21 documents are co-mingled. A lot of these documents that are
22 included in these boxes are not solely Estate documents. They
23 belong to corporations. They belong to tenancies in common.
24
They belong to partnerships.
25
And as a shareholder partner and tenant in those, I
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don't think that there should be any restrictions put on my
2
ability to inspect those.
It does take a reading line by line
3 of what's in there.
4
There's -- for instance, in some of these Felmeden
5 memorandums, there's one entire memorandum missing. There are
6 pages missing out of other ones. And if you don't take the
7 time to go through it, you miss this stuff.
8
And it's important stuff. Because everyone of
9 those memorandums has certain citations about things that
10 they're going to do, who owns certain things, and where they
11 came from, what their intentions are about things.
12
And this stuff is all co-mingled.
It's -- it's not
13 as if -- I mean, it was represented in the beginning that this
14
was all stuff that had been given to us before and that that's
15 what they were going to produce again.
16 I can assure you they have produced additional
17 documents inside these boxes and no -- there's put in
18 there -- it appears to be that they're put in there randomly
20
19 so that if we don't go through the whole thing they'll -- it
will be
this new material gets overlooked because it was
21 represented it was old material and so it just takes time.
23
22 And it would be lot a easier if it was in
Harrisburg.
I could go in there, I could, you know, do that
24
25
in the evening or in the afternoon as well as in the daytime.
But unfortunately, they accumulated 20 years' worth of
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materials and took 20 years to close this.
2
And I think if I just get a twelfth of that time it
3
would be 20 months.
I'm not asking for that much time. But I
4 shouldn't be precluded from taking -- I don't know why there
5 should be any restriction on the amount -- on the amount of
6 time that these are available for us to review or to copy.
7
THE AUDITOR: All right. Mr. Jacobs, do you want
8 to speak -- any comments you want to make about this?
9
MR. JACOBS:
I have nothing to add to what I've
10 said previously. Thank you.
11
THE AUDITOR: All right. Mr. Green?
12
MR. GREEN: A couple of observations.
I guess most
13 striking to me 1S I'm really taken aback at the notion that
14
one of the -- one of the complaints now is that there's too
15 much material, that we've produced things that weren't
16 produced before.
17 We are responding to a Discovery Request which
18 requests that we produce -- and I don't want to get the quote
19 wrong; but it's something like every single piece of paper
20 relating to the Estate or the Trusts or any business or entity
22
21 in which the Estate or the Trusts has ever owned an interest.
24
23 parameters to which we object. But we have produced an awful
We've objected to that. We have staked out certain
25
lot of material subject to our objections in an attempt to
finally get through this process.
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And what's now -- what we're now hearing is that
2
we've overproduced. There's documents in there that don't
3 belong to the Estate. The memos from Mr. Felmeden that Mr.
4 Mumma is speaking to, Mr. Felmeden predeceased Mr. Mumma, Sr.,
5
by about
by only a few months. So those memos date to 1986
6 or earlier.
7
It is -- it is again kind of remarkable that this
8 is what is holding up the process of wrapping up the Estate.
9 We don't wish to foreclose Mr. Mumma from reviewing documents.
10 We have not objected to any request that he has made since
11 July the 28th to come and review materials.
12 We have made an awful lot of material available to
13 him; and, you know, to be candid, it doesn't seem as though
.
14
there's been a very energetic effort to get through the
15 material, especially in light of the vehemence with which it's
16 been demanded.
17 With respect to Harrisburg, our office in
18 Harrisburg has been largely closed down. There has never been
19 an attorney in Harrisburg who has ever played any meaningful
20 role in this representation.
21 And the idea that we would sort of just throw these
22 documents which -- about which you hear, there are going to be
23 authenticity and other objections and issues. We've heard
24
about alterations and white-outs.
25
The idea that we would simply lodge these documents
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in Harrisburg to be reviewed at odd hours and so forth is just
2
not something that we view as being practical for any number
3 of reasons.
4 We are happy to make these documents available for
5 as many days as Mr. Mumma needs them; but in our view, the
6 process must end at some point. All of this is supposed to be
7 moving towards objections to accounts. And I don't see and I
8 don't think it's easy to discern in any event that we're
9 moving in that direction.
10 What's really happening is that -- that -- exactly
11 what we feared, is that this is just becoming some open-ended,
12 never-ending process whereby Mr. Mumma comes in and reviews
13 materials that relate to various claims and allegations,
.
14
various pieces of litigation and various grievances and
15 arguments that have been held and continue to be held in
16 various forms over the years.
17 And I don't think that's what this process is
18
supposed to be about.
I think this is supposed to be
19 discovery leading towards a finalization of the Estate
20 closure. And we would like to move the process forward.
21 I think the amount of time that's been requested is
22 just unreasonable given that these documents already have been
23 available for five months or nearly five months.
24 I'm not saying it needs to end today; but to have
25 this drag on for another three, four, five, six months just
.
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seems unreasonable to me. Mr. Mumma has asked for the
2
material.
It's been made available and it ought to be
3 reviewed promptly.
4
THE AUDITOR: Now, according to the agenda, Mr.
5 Mumma, I'll give you a chance to make another comment if you
6 want to respond to what Mr. Green has just said and he's going
7 to have the chance to respond to you. Mr. Jacobs will have a
8 chance as well and then we'll be done.
9
MR. MUMMA: Well, I just say again, if they would
10 have kept the stuff separated and said, Here's the stuff we
11 produced before and here's the new stuff, he would probably be
12 right, we could start looking at the new stuff.
13
But they didn't do that. They mixed the stuff up
14
in the boxes. So I gotta go through the boxes and figure out
15
what's what.
I mean, that's one of the things that's going to
16 take -- make this thing so long.
18
17 And a lot of these original documents
were
were -- I mean, we were only given copies of them so
19 this is the first time we're seeing the original ones.
21
20 And I have a serious problem -- I want to say this
22
23
24
25
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again
with them putting documents that are not solely
Estate documents in these boxes so that somebody can say,
Okay, that's the last time you get to see these, when they are
clearly records of either tenancy in common, partnership, or a
business entity, that we have individual rights to look at
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this stuff.
2
THE AUDITOR: Mr. Jacobs?
3
MR. JACOBS:
I have nothing to add to what I said
4 previously.
5
THE AUDITOR: Mr. Green, do you have anything else
6 you want to say?
7
MR. GREEN: Yes, I do, very briefly. First of all,
8 the material that was previously produced is in 15 discreet
9 boxes. Virtually all of it bears Baits numbers evidencing the
10 prior production.
11 There has been no sprinkling of previously produced
12
materials with these other materials.
It's certainly possible
13 that there are duplicates of documents, but those materials
14
which were previously produced are in their previously
produced form which as I said is almost entirely in a Bates
numbered fashion.
Secondly, Mr. Mumma's statement about corporate
records and individual rights and so forth only underscores
the concern that we've had all along which is that what Mr.
Mumma is attempting to do in this proceeding and under the
guides of the audit and the review of the objection and
account process is to indulge other rights and other
individual interests that he believes that he has.
And I think that mixing the two together -- this
has always been our suspicion and our concern about his
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requests for documents relating to entities that the Estate
2
owned or may have owned an interest in, what we're doing now
3 is we're mixing the two together.
4 And we know that litigation in this family has been
5 going on for nearly 20 years. And if we are going to continue
6 to blur the discovery process in this proceeding with this
7 sort of open-ended pursuit of other grievances and litigation,
8 the discovery -- or the audit process will never end.
9 The only other thing -- that's all I have on the
10
agenda items.
I was going to request -- and I certainly won't
11 push this if you're not inclined to hear it; but I was
12 inclined to raise the disclaimer issue only because it has
13 appeared in some of your correspondence and appears to be kind
.
14
of hanging out there.
15
THE AUDITOR: Yeah.
I don't want to discuss that
16 at this time.
17
MR. GREEN: Okay.
18
MR. MUMMA: But I would like to go on the record
19 again that I consider it highly unethical for Mr. Green to
20 even mention
21
THE AUDITOR: Well, it's an issue in this case, Mr.
22 Mumma, and at some point we will be addressing it.
23
MR. MUMMA:
I just wanted it on the record.
24
THE AUDITOR: All right. Thank you, gentlemen. We
25 will adjourn at this time. Now, let me just note, the Order
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of October lOth is still in place.
2
It does direct the inspection and copying of these
3 materials by December 12th. There may be relief -- some
4 relief granted to Mr. Mumma. That remains to be seen.
5 I urge all of you to keep those materials available
6 past December 12th so that we don't lose time if relief is
7 granted by some hiatus when they were -- they were not
8 available or Mr. Mumma did not know they were available.
9 Is that agreeable, Mr. Green?
10
MR. GREEN: Yes.
I mean, given the circumstances,
11 we have no intention of disbanding so to speak the 93 boxes
12 either by sending -- scattering them to various locations or
13 certainly discarding any of them.
.
14
THE AUDITOR: And, Mr. Mumma, do you understand
15 what I'm saying? The current Order says that you're to have
16 this done by the 12th of this month which is just a couple
17 days away; but since there may be another Order coming down, I
18 urge you if you don't get it done by December 12th don't stop
19 your efforts. Continue your efforts through December until
20 you see if an Order comes down -- until an Order comes down
21 dealing with your Motion.
22
MR. MUMMA: Well, what Mr. Carissimi suggested is
23 that we ask -- and he was going to do this I thought. He's
24 getting prices to copy all of the documents. And if that's
25 what's necessary, we'll do that. But the problem is even if
.
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we copy everyone of them, well, all we're going to have is
2
copies.
3
THE AUDITOR: Well, whatever tactic you use,
4 whatever strategy you use __
5
MR. MUMMA: I'll just say it.
It's just to protect
6 us because I think since Judge Oler has already said what he
7 wants the outcome to be, I should just tell everybody we'll
8 copy everything. But we also want to be able to see the
9 originals of them because I think the judge made it pretty
10 clear what he expects to have.
11
THE AUDITOR: All right. Gentlemen, thank you very
12
much.
I've got the information I think I need to make an
13 interim report and a recommended order to the judge.
14
I wish you all to have a happy holiday and keep up
16
15 the efforts through the month of December.
MR. GREEN: Thank you.
THE AUDITOR: We're done.
(The proceedings adjourned at 2:48 p.m.)
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I hereby certify that the proceedings and
2
evidence are contained fully and accurately in the notes taken
3 by me on the within proceedings and that this copy is a
4 correct transcript of the same.
5
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)v/! )()J) .)
"-Deborah Zepp )
Court ReportevLNotary Public
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