March 14, 2012

The Ellisons

The case

Here is how I read it. The Ellisons owned a public charter like Direct Air.   Like Direct Air they were suppose to put monies from tickets sold into an escrow account. When business tightened up they played games with the escrow account and they eventually went out of business.   Make a long story short when they counted the money to give people their monies back for pre-sold tickets, there was not enough money there so they tried to hold the Ellisons personally liable ("piercing the corporate veil").

Looks like a lower court agreed that the Ellisons were liable personally, but the appeals court saw it otherwise.     At least that is how I read it??   My point being is that, if there are not (or should I say when) enough monies in the escrow account, even if you could go after the owners of Direct Air personally they are hidding their monies right now anyhow..

You will, however, be able to make a claim against their bonding company but bond is only $200,000??!!!      This is a joke of an amount??!!!

For the record,

  • no way in hell will all the monies from ticket sales be in the escrow account
  • 200,000 bond will pay out a tenth of the people who are owed monies
  • voucher and membership owners will not get a penny back since that went into the general funds of Direct Air, who will be filing bankruptcy over the next month
  • Direct Air will never fly another flight 

    9 comments:

    Janis said...

    So what are your thoughts on this..
    I read online somewhere that Direct Air is under new ownership...does this give hope to people like me that have $1014.00 in these family ties vouchers? The vouchers don't expire until Oct 2012, they are resuming flights May 15. I was told when i called that they are still active vouchers...

    tim macdonald said...

    I heard on the news Tim Murray sent a letter to the Massport executives to ask them to double their efforts to recruit a new airline for ORH. Maybe we can contact Tim and explain to him the idea of a community airline ticket bank?

    Steve Foley said...

    Bill, you misread the case. The court found the Ellisons were personally liable for the debt.

    The part you quoted was from the dissent.

    Bill Randell said...

    thanks steve

    Bill Randell said...

    steve I just reread it. I am pretty sure the appeals court did not hold them personally liable?

    Steve Foley said...

    The holding of the case is this:

    In sum, we affirm the bankruptcy court's ruling that, under 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(4), the Ellisons' indebtedness to ARC based on their personal guarantees to ARC of Sovereign Travel's indebtedness is a nondischargeable debt.   And on the issue of damages, we vacate the award and remand for further factfinding.

    Unemployeed thanks to direct air said...

    The whole staff was fired today from the direct air west Virginia call center as a former employee may i say all ur statements of family tie members and way 2 go members will not get their monies

    Anonymous said...

    there will be no refunds for vouchers, and no refunds will probably get processed. the staff that was working on the requests was fired today

    Another unemployed member of direct air said...

    I was also an agent in the west virgina office and was fired today i was informed by the supervisor that ticket holders of any kind are pretty much out their money due to no funds available the amount of money owed to several different companies a substantial amount we were informed that the DOT was trying to help direct air investors in the right direction which gave us hope of employment but today 30 + employees were fired around 10,000$ was refunded yesterday and thats it i would like to apologize for working for crooks please know none of the agents were aware of the wrongful doings and we all have felt horrible for the outcome