TNJ......... Sabotage

Part One

You would think being gone a week to a horse show, even if it was as show manager, would be a break from the lawsuit. That's not, however, what happened here. I had taken my paperwork, just in case I thought of something or had a boring break to deal with but I never really expected issues to arise at the horse show that had anything to do with the lawsuit.

The C-Fair Charity Horse Show is put on by the Morgan Horse Club of Washington but it is not exclusively a morgan show. There are four breeds of horses (morgans, saddlebreds, hackney horses and freisians) represented at this horse show and there are classes open to any horse regardless of breed available as well.

Very good friends of mine breed hackney horses as well as Arabians and half-Arabians. Of course, their half-Arabians are hackney crosses and eligible to show in hackney horse classes at this horse show. In fact, hackney horses have very few classes available to them anywhere in the country so my friends are a regular part of this horse show. I was really looking forward to seeing them.

Their horses usually come in before the show but my friends do not come until their horses are ready to show, sometimes the day of a class, if it is later in the day, otherwise the evening before. The one friend is a doctor, a radiological oncologist and partner in a large practice so he can't afford the luxury of just hanging out at the horse show. Too many people rely on him and he takes that obligation quite seriously.

I took Legs to this horse show so I could ride him early in the morning before the horse show got winding up for the day. When I did the stabling I put my horse next to these people because I knew I could count on their trainer to keep an eye on him. I also knew I would be more likely to get to see my friends if my horse was in the same location.

The day their horses moved in I checked with their trainer to see when my friends would arrive. Because the lawsuit had taken up so much of my life I had not seen them at all this entire show season. I was looking forward to the opportunity to visit even if it was worked around my duties as show manager and their showing.

On the day my friends were supposed to be come in I checked at their stalls a couple of times on my way through working my show manager's stuff. I found out they were on their way and had an approximate time of arrival to look forward to.

It just so happened I was on my way out through the barn heading to check out the baled shaving situation in the bunker behind as my Dr friend was walking up to his stalls. My face lit right up when I saw him and I called out a greeting to him.

He walked directly towards me and while he'd said "hello" I could tell by the look on his face he was not happy. I thought it was something to do with the horse show. There had been a mixup on their stalls but I'd thought it had been fixed. It never occurred to me this could be anything but horse show related.

As he got right in from of me, I realized he was very angry and it was at me. I listened closely as he asked me if I remembered when I had asked him for a job reference. When I told him I did, he said he had never intended for that reference to be any part of a lawsuit. Then he followed that by saying, "Not that I wouldn't have done so, had I been asked."

My jaw hit the ground. Shaking my head, I said, "I don't know what you're talking about. Where did you get this?"

He proceeded by saying something like "You are suing YW and BG." To which I nodded, "Yes." And he followed with "You put me on your list of character witnesses." To which I replied "Absolutely NOT! I would never do that without talking to you."

"I didn't think so, " my friend replied, "but"

I admit I cut him off to ask, "Who told you that?"

I should have known I would hear the answer I got.

He responded, "BG"

To which I questioned, "When did this happen?"

Nodding his head he answered, "At the Region 5 Championships."

The light bulb went off in my head. BG had tried to sabotage my ability to use this man as a character witness. To be honest, the thought had never crossed my mind this friend would be a good witness for me. I'd only been thinking in terms of who knew the actual details of the case. Now as I realized that BG had tried to be sure my doctor friend would be angry at me, I began to wonder who else BG had tried to turn against me.

I looked at my doctor friend still shaking my head. I called him by name and said "That's just NOT the way I do things. You've known me long enough to know that. I am a straight shooter and I do not play games. I would never take advantage of our friendship like that. "

"Well, I didn't think so." was again my friend's response as his anger towards me began to soften.

I looked him squarely in the eye saying, "And __ , we haven't even gotten to that part of the process yet." and saw the question on his face as he began to process my words.

I assured my friend, "I haven't turned in any kind of list with witnesses or names. Heck, we haven't even started on discovery yet. Sure I'm going to court next week to request some things from them but I have not submitted anything like that to them. He's playing games, guessing at who might be on such a list and wanting to make sure you're mad at me so you don't help me if I need you. "

Being a doctor, my friend knows all too well what discovery is. I saw the look of his face as the realization of my words sunk in. He knew immediately when he heard the word, I was telling him the truth. Discovery would be the first place that such information would be given. The rest of his anger drained from his face.

I explained to him I was acting as my own attorney and that I had not even compiled a list of people as witnesses yet, let alone submitted anything like that to the court. They really didn't know anything about what my case against them was at this point because I had not shared particulars in any of my original filings.

My friend is no dummy to be manipulated by BG. As I explained to him how I had traded Storm for BG to start young horses for me, I could see him putting the pieces together in his head. I admitted how I'd foolishly given them the signed papers so WF could show in the amateur class and how they'd kept them thinking they could keep the horse without doing the work. Then I told him about the accounting sheet and all it's lies.

Nothing I said seemed to surprise my friend. It was obvious to me that he had gotten a better read on BG than I originally had. When I said BG must have done this specifically to turn him against me, my friend nodded his belief that was indeed the case. He clearly saw that now and I don't think he was happy to know he'd been played by BG.

We didn't get to talk about that instead I had to get back to my show manager duties. At least by the time we finished our conversation, my friend and I were on the same page again. I knew if I needed him to help show the court BG's true colors I could call him and see what we could work out.

For the first time, I began thinking in terms of character witnesses. Something I really hadn't thought about before. And I began thinking about what else WF and BG could be up to trying to sabotage my case. I'd known all along about their lying and I figured they were not above asking others to life for them but I sure hadn't thought about what they might be doing to drive my friends away. I couldn't even imagine how I would get to the bottom of this can of worms.

Thank God, my friend is the kind of person to confront people about things that bother him instead of just turning away from me and never telling me why as other friends have done over the course of this thing. Without him caring enough about our relationship to talk to me, I never would have known what BG had done.

BG did know it but his attempt to turn my doctor friend against me had just blown up in his face. Instead of guaranteeing the man didn't testify, BG had now given me one more thing to prove BG's lack of integrity and I figured my doctor friend would be willing to see the court knew that in the form of a sworn statement if I needed it.

I must admit when this happened I found myself wondering and doing a lot of head shaking. How low can this guy go?

To be continued...............

A Legal Response from Opposing Counsel.......

This picture is Scandalous Chance with his mother KG Phadra Rose. Chance was the third colt born that year and he unlike any foal I had to that point. I didn't know if he would every grow into that marking......but he did. There was something particularly special about his eyes. I'm not normally a person who thinks of horses in terms of sexy.....but those eyes of his, definitely sexy.

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