Denver, Colo., Aug 26, 2019 / 05:25 pm (CNA).- Jury selection began Monday in a lawsuit that accuses the Knights of Columbus of violating a verbal contract with a vendor who claims that the Catholic fraternal organization inflate its membership numbers, and has destroyed his business.
The lawsuit claims that the Knights of Columbus gave a software company, UKnight Interactive, a $100 million verbal contract to make it a designated web services vendor to KofC local and regional organizations.
UKnight alleges that its services would have provided local councils with a “complex interactive system” of linked websites designed to attract and engage members, increase fundraising, and increase sales of Knights of Columbus insurance policies.
However, the company alleges that in 2016, the Knights of Columbus “fraudulently” denied the verbal contract, and later used the company’s proprietary design elements to seek contracts with other technology companies.
UKnight claims that Knights of Columbus executives “acted…maliciously” with the “specific intent” of destroying the company.
In a 2018 court filing, the Knights of Columbus disputed that account.
“The true nature of this action is that Plaintiff is a disappointed prospective vendor that offered the Order inferior and outdated website services that the Order refused to endorse. UKnight is now trying to accomplish through this lawsuit what it could not get through product development and sales negotiations,” the Knights argued.
The Knights argued that Labriola has “raised preposterous legal claims in an attempt to force the other side to pay money that is neither owed nor deserved. One of these claims is that the Order supposedly gave UKnight an oral contract in which it would, on a single day, endorse UKnight’s services and thereby confer on UKnight a $100 million value.”
UKnight filed its lawsuit in January 2017. The suit was dismissed in July of that year, and UKnight refiled the lawsuit in January 2018.
The plaintiff, List Interactive, also known as UKnight Interactive, claims that “broken promises” by the Knights of Columbus have destroyed its business. That business is owned by Colorado resident Leonard Labriola.
The Knights of Columbus say the lawsuit is over a simple business dispute that has been exagerrated for publicity.
In a February 2017 motion requesting that the suit be dismissed, the Knights argued that a “garden variety business dispute” had been “repackaged…to extort a settlement through damaging publicity having nothing to do with the Plaintiffs’ core allegations.”
UKnight and Labriola had “festooned their complaint with baseless, scandalous allegations that are designed only to inflame and attract publicity,” the Knights said.
The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court, seeks $100 million in damages, and a court order invalidating the Knight’s tax-exempt status.
Among the suit’s claims is the allegation that the Knights of Columbus deceptively inflates its membership numbers in order to increase its life insurance ratings.
While Judge Brooke Jackson allowed UKnight to review membership data last year, the Knights have rejected claims that they inflate their numbers.
“The Knights of Columbus has a long-standing, thoughtful, and well-conceived membership retention process in place that reflects sound practices and the values of the Order,” a spokesperson told Buzzfeed last week.
“One of those values is to ensure that members of the Knights provide mutual aid and assistance to fellow members of our organization.”
Labriola could not be reached for comment. But the plaintiff is no stranger to litigation.
In 1993, Eller Industries, a company owned by Labriola, attempted to revitalize the bankrupt Indian Motorcycle brand by purchasing the defunct company’s trademarks. Labriola signed a contract to purchase the trademarks in 1997, but a court battle began in 1998, after the brand’s legal custodian said that Eller had failed to obtain financing or meet the terms of its contract.
Eller’s contract with Indian Motorcycles was terminated by a federal judge on Dec. 7, 1998.
Labriola subsequently sued the brand’s custodian for $2.7 million, and in the midst of the lawsuit requested that two judges recuse themselves, accusing them of “corruption, duplicity, ineptitude, hubris, and abject indifference.”
In the same motion, Labriola accused Indian Motorcycle’s legal custodian of “brazen temerity” and “outright lies and distortions.”
Before founding UKnight, Labriola founded at least three additional companies.
In 2002, he founded the Backyard Drills Foundation, which produced DVDs teaching sports skills. According to a 2007 article in BizWest, the DVD sets were marketed through revenue-sharing fundraising arrangements with youth football leagues. Backyard Drills was dissolved in 2007.
Two months after dissolving Backyard Drills, Labriola founded Quvico, a clean energy enterprise, which was dissolved less than a year after it was founded.
In September of 2007, Labriola founded Dinner Party Dot Com, LLC. The company was cited by the Secretary of State for failing to file required annual reports, and was dissolved in November of 2016.
According to the Colorado Secretary of State, UKnight Interactive was registered in 2011 as a trade name of LiST Interactive, a company founded by Labriola on the same day. In 2012 and 2015, LiST Interactive was cited by the Secretary of State for failing to file required periodic reports.
The UKnight lawuit has made several allegations dismissed by the court.
Among the dismissed claim’s is UKnight’s charge that the IRS fraudulently maintains the tax-exempt status of the Knights of Columbus, allowing the organization to commit acts of racketeering forbidden by federal law.
Also dismissed is UKnight’s initial accusation that the Knights engaged in “racketeering,” in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known as RICO.
Jackson dismissed the suit’s first filing on July 28, 2017. His order determined that the plaintiffs’ RICO allegations were unfounded, and noted that the suit seemed actually to misunderstand racketeering laws.
“If plaintiffs’ description of how jurisdiction under RICO works were correct it would mean that Congress could effectively override the Constitution,” Jackson wrote.
Jackson also criticized UKnight and Labriola for the lawsuit’s “excessively aggressive phrasing and histrionics.”
Sources have told CNA that UKnight’s lawsuit is partially funded through LexShares, an online platform that connects plaintiffs with investors, who buy a stake in any settlement or judgment rendered in the suit.
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We read: “At the event, Wester called Pope Francis’ statement that nuclear weapons are immoral ‘groundbreaking’ and asked the faithful to ‘to speak the truth’ on the matter.”
“Immoral?” Not to question the precarious military state of the world today, and the incomprehensible magnitude of any nuclear war, is it still possible to responsibly pause at the slogan of Pope Francis? In the circumstances of the 1960s and the then nuclear arms race, the SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL took a position regarding the possession of nuclear weapons—and approved the schema by a vote of 2111 to 251.
During DEBATE, it was noted by Archbishop Nannan that the impression given in schema to the average reader was that “the possession of nuclear arms is condemned as immoral.” But in further explanation, “the rebuttal of Bishop Schroffer and Archbishop Garrone claimed that ‘nowhere in Articles 80 and 81 is the possession of nuclear arms condemned as immoral.’ The words of the text were selected with a purpose, they said, and must be accurately understood. Nor was it denied that freedom could be temporarily preserved through the possession and accumulation of nuclear weapons. It was only denied that the arms race was ‘a safe way to preserve lasting peace.’ Nor was it stated that nuclear arms were a ’cause of war’.[….] “This letter and reports to the general assembly] now stated that Article 81 did not intend ‘to condemn nuclear weapons indiscriminately,’ and that the text in no way intended to impose ‘an obligation of unilateral destruction of atomic weapons'” (Fr. Ralph Wiltgen, SVD, “The Rhine Flows into the Tiber,” 1967, p. 281).
TODAY is not the 1965 of the Cold War nuclear arms race—which now is replaced by a proliferation of nuclear powers.* And, no one today is counseling unilateral disarmament. Still, beyond the great value of the prayer vigil, it might be more credible to not invoke—as “groundbreaking”—a preemptive one-liner.
(* United States, Russia, China, France, United Kingdom, India, Israel, Pakistan, North Korea; formerly Ukraine and not yet Iran).
Wester is just another woke Catholic bishop. Just a little information, Wester. Abortion has killed thousands of times more human persons than nuclear bombs have. Yet, how much effort do you expend changing minds and hearts against the holocaust that is going on under your nose? More moral posturing by our feckless bishops.
That’s right: Only one person will ever go to Hell, and that’s whoever personally kills the most people, right? Judas Iscariot will back you up on that one!
Or, if you prefer, it is often necessary to kill thousands of innocents to honor the memory of your deceased ruler or to insure military victory. Once you accept that principle, it’s just a matter of practicality to do this with technology, rather than cutting out their still-beating hearts and tossing the lifeless bodies down the steps of a pyramid. But the important thing remains: the worship of Huitzilopochtli.
“To start with, some impulse, perhaps a sort of desperate impulse, drove men to the darker powers when dealing with practical problems. There was a sort of secret and perverse feeling that the darker powers would really do things; that they had no nonsense about them…. But with the idea of employing the demons who get things done, a new idea appears more worthy of the demons. It may indeed be truly described as the idea of being worthy of the demons; of making oneself fit for their fastidious and exacting society. Superstition of the lighter sort toys with the idea that some trifle, some small gesture such as throwing the salt, may touch the hidden spring that works the mysterious machinery of the world. And there is after all something in the idea of such an Open Sesame. But with the appeal to lower spirits comes the horrible notion that the gesture must not only be very small but very low; that it must be a monkey trick of an utterly ugly and unworthy sort. Sooner or later a man deliberately sets himself to do the most disgusting thing he can think of. It is felt that the extreme of evil will extort a sort of attention or answer from the evil powers under the surface of the world.”
Of course, Chesterton was too woke to join in the worship of Huitzilopochtli. He even wrote, “In any case it is clear enough that the painted and gilded civilisation of tropical America systematically indulged in human sacrifice. It is by no means clear, so far as I know, that the Eskimos ever indulged in human sacrifice. They were not civilised enough. They were too closely imprisoned by the white winter and the endless dark. Chill penury repressed their noble rage and froze the genial current of the soul. It was in brighter days and broader daylight that the noble rage is found unmistakably raging. It was in richer and more instructed lands that the genial current flowed on the altars, to be drunk by great gods wearing goggling and grinning masks and called on in terror or torment by long cacophonous names that sound like laughter in hell.” Worship of Huitzilopochtli requires a more pragmatic man, nicht?
As usual, your ramblings suggest you’re tormented. Peace be with you.