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The FTC’s claims against the individual defendants in the Success by Health case have been pushed to the forefront by the resolution of several motions.
On February 17th, we had a hearing, after which we received some important decisions. The motions before the court are complicated, with increasingly intertwined issues. As evidenced by the court’s orders, the motions were linked. However, the Court upholds its previous finding that the receiver has a right to select the legal counsel for the corporate defendants.
A receivership is required to perform this essential task. The FTC’s proposed course of action, on the other hand, would bring about its own set of issues. When a court grants summary judgment against a corporate defendant, the FTC asks that it be allowed to proceed to trial without representation on the issue of monetary damages, despite the fact that the receiver did not file an opposition.
This is because of the belief, which was shared by the court, that only individual defendants were being targeted by the FTC’s summary judgment motion. In the end, the court’s decisions were a Catch 22 situation. Having Noland select a lawyer for the corporate defendants is unnecessary at this time. Due to the fact that the FTC is still unsure if it will be able to collect damages from the individual defendants of Success by Health (Noland and the gang), Defendants claim that the FTC will be unable to obtain any monetary remedies against them because the FTC has not disclosed a methodology for calculating damages apart from the methodology that was deemed invalid in the summary judgment order on monetary remedies.
The court acknowledges that this argument has some merit, but refrains from making any conclusions. According to the FTC, they will be awarded summary judgment liability against the corporate defendants because if they cannot claim monetary damages, they agreed that they will not “exceed damages that may be sought from the individual defendants.”
It’s important to note that if the FTC cannot sue individual defendants, then they cannot sue corporations. This means that monetary damages cannot be sought against corporations. Thus, the FTC’s liability and the individual defendants’ claims for representation had both been rejected. The FTC’s claims against the corporate defendants were also stayed by the court.
As long as the FTC and the individual defendants can resolve their differences, the court has essentially pushed both issues into the future. On February 17th, Noland requested that the asset freeze be lifted so that the studio could be released. The corporate defendants, as far as I can tell, included Success by Media as one of their constituents.
The court rejected the request, stating that it would not “freeze the assets.” There are some issues of confidentiality with discovery that will need to be addressed in the future.
We don’t yet have a trial date for Success by Health.
