Paul Hansmeier: Who Me? I Did Nothing… Everything You're Accusing Prenda Of Was Done By Someone Else

Say That Again

from the leave-me-out-of-this dept

Paul Hansmeier has now filed his response in the big Prenda showdown case, and the short version might simply be described as “You’ve got nothing on me, judge!” Basically, he explains that each of the things the judge has complained about has nothing to do with himself, and more or less throws Brett Gibbs under the bus, saying that Gibbs was the attorney on the case, and thus anything that went wrong was Gibbs’ deal.

Respondent Hansmeier was not a party to proceedings outside of the April 2, 2013 proceeding, where no evidence was presented. There is simply no tie between Hansmeier and the issues raised within the court’s order to show case. And the court should limit the inferences that it draws about Hansmeier’s culpability for the actions of a third-party attorney, like Gibbs, who was neither employed nor supervised by Hansmeier in connection with this matter

He further tries to get out of the whole Alan Cooper issue by again noting that he, Paul Hansmeier, had nothing to do with Alan Cooper or in getting Alan Cooper to sign on as a representative of the various shell companies. This is a little bit of throwing Steele under the bus, though not as far as he throws Gibbs. Also, he tiptoes around the question of whether or not the Alan Cooper who showed up in court is “Alan Cooper” who was a corporate representative of the shells. Such tapdancing is unlikely to go over well with an angry judge who already thinks you’re bullshitting him.

Basically, Hansmeier tries to present himself as just some random guy whom the court dragged into this case based on nothing. Given how much evidence has been presented suggesting that Hansmeier was deeply involved in these cases, including statements from Gibbs about how he was something of a puppet for Steele and Hansmeier, this isn’t likely to go over well. Because Hansmeier insists that he had nothing to do with Gibbs, it might be helpful to go back to Gibbs’ testimony from March 11th.

Q And who did you understand were the decision makers of Steele Hansmeier?

A John Steele and Paul Hansmeier.

Q When you were an of counsel to Steele Hansmeier, who supervised you?

A John Steele and Paul Hansmeier.

Q Did you have periodic meetings while at Steele Hansmeier to discuss cases?

A Yes, we did.

Q And were those weekly meetings?

A Yes. Sometimes they would be sending the schedule, but, yes, mostly weekly meetings.

Q Who participated in those meetings?

A John and Paul would call me, and they would hold a weekly meeting.

[….]

Q And were you supervised at Prenda Law?

A Yes, I was.

Q Who were you supervised by?

A Paul Hansmeier and John Steele.

Q Were you supervised by Paul Duffy?

A No.

Q And when you say supervised, could you just describe what you mean by that? How did they supervise you?

A Sure. You know, they essentially were the ones that would initiate cases. By that, I mean, they would tell me they wanted to file certain cases in California, for instance, and they would instruct me to go ahead and file those. And they would give me the authority to do so. I would be told what cases we are looking at and how many cases we are talking about, and then I would file the cases. And they would give me general guidelines on what to do and sometimes the cases would be settled by John as was pointed out earlier, and sometimes they gave me certain parameters which I could settle the case myself.

Q Did you ever talk to anybody that you understood to be the client, AF Holdings?

A No. The communications were solely through Paul Hansmeier and John Steele.

Q Did you ever talk to anybody who said they were affiliated with Ingenuity 13?

A Well, I mean, aside from Mark Lutz who is the CEO of Ingenuity 13, but aside from that, no. All my communications were straight through Paul Hansmeier and John Steele.

[….]

And whose decision was it to dismiss those cases?

A Ultimately, it was John Steele and Paul Hansmeier’s decisions. We had talked about it. As counsel of record here, I just kind of broke down like a cost benefit analysis of those cases. And they said, basically, go ahead and dismiss them because — they said go ahead and dismiss them.

Q When the cases were filed, did you have a discussion with anybody about whether notice of interested parties should be filed?

A I did. Yeah.

Q And who did you have discussions with?

A Mostly Paul Hansmeier. Yes. Mostly Paul Hansmeier but sometimes John Steele, I guess. I don’t know. It was a while ago I guess.

Given that, Hansmeier’s filing here is less than believable. Either way, it looks clear that Hansmeier is trying to dump all the responsibility on others, mainly Gibbs, when Gibbs has already said that Hansmeier basically was his puppet master. At some point, you’d have to expect that Gibbs is going to realize he gains nothing by protecting Hansmeier and Steele any more.

Filed Under: alan cooper, brett gibbs, john steele, paul hansmeier
Companies: ingenuity 13, prenda, prenda law