Thunderdrome threatens legal action against this m-bike
We’ve just received this threat of legal action via email for our post on the Thunderdrome event.
The gist of the email:
While you may have your own motives for trying to interfere with this event, or cause its participants to seek refunds or avoid the event, we take this matter very seriously. First, your article publishes that the organizers have made false statements to the participants and the public. No false statements were made. Also, your post states that the event “serves beer.” Your statement is factually false. No beer will be “served” at this event. You state that the organizers do not have liability insurance for their event. This is also false.
Your public statements were made to intentionally portray the event organizers as acting irresponsibly, fraudulently and illegally. Those statements impugn the integrity of their business reputations. In my opinion, your statements are slanderous per se and could subject you to legal liability. Our belief is that your posting was intentionally made to attempt to cause participants, registered and still considering arriving at the event on event day, to avoid this event and look with impunity upon future events to be held by these organizers.
What is truly unfortunate here is that you have attempted to interfere with, and have denigrated, an event that was organized, planned and paid for by people who acted solely to hold an event to benefit Detroit and provide some fun to its participants.
This message is a formal demand to immediately remove your defamatory posting and publish an equivalent retraction. If you choose not to do so, legal action may be taken against you.
Govern yourself accordingly.
What’s interesting about this email is they claim we’re “trying to interfere” with the event when in fact we helped. As we mentioned, we provided them with the Recreation Department contact and some tips on where to look for insurance. We passed along information from the Wolverine Cycling Club about their structural concerns regarding the track.
We have the emails from both the organizers and recreation department. We reported the facts.
Apparently now we need to seek legal counsel ourselves.
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Tags: Thunderdrome
October 15th, 2010 at 3:28 pm
Ms. Harrell, your claim that Mr. Scott said that the event “serves beer” is false. His reference to serving beer was in reference to the liability associated with “motorized competitive racing”, not the event specifically. You also claimed that Mr. Scott stated that “the organizers do not have liability insurance for their event”. Again, a false statement by yourself and a clear distortion of what Mr. Scott said. His comments were about meeting the city’s insurance policy requirements, not about whether the insurance held by the organizers (do they have any?) constituted “liability insurance”. The organizers may have liability insurance but the city’s staff person indicated that it didn’t meet the city’s requirements. It’s quite ironic that you attack Mr. Scott for his “false, defamatory statements” when you yourself have made several false statements and done so in a way to impugn Mr. Scott’s reputation and integrity. It’s shameful and if there’s justice in this world, it will be that your false statements are exposed for public contempt.
October 17th, 2010 at 10:49 pm
Thunderdrome Was awesome!
October 20th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
I think it is a damn shame that the Thunderdome organizers are aiming at shooting the messenger instead of addressing organizational and planning shortcomings with their activity. This blog has done a great service to people in the Detroit area who use bicycles for both recreation and transportation. M-Bike has put out stories that the mainstream media won’t. It has tilted with the giant of CAR CULTURE in a highway blighted society.
Velo racing is a wonderful sport, but it is a rather small sub-culture of the entire bicycle riding population. If this blog takes a big financial loss from a courtroom action of some race promoter concerned with essentially his ego, we all LOSE. I find this situation appalling that just when we have major issues with battles to fund non-vehicular transportation and recreational trails, a major voice for ALL riders could be stiffled in the courtroom just when we need this informational resource the most.
By all means, if the organizers of Thunderdome feel what was reported here was in error they should contest it- but by taking the litigation route they they are nothing but selfish jerks who cant take constructive criticism.
October 22nd, 2010 at 3:24 pm
The event was awesome. I hope everybody can get past this and make it next year.