Wortley v. Chrispus Venture Capital, LLC

Summary of 11th Circuit Opinion

Petitioning Creditor-Appellee Chrispus Venture Capital, and Richard Tarrant, James Juranitch and Chad Pugatch (the “Opposing Parties”). As found by the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit; No. 13-11666 D.C. Docket Nos. 0:12-cv-61483-KMW; 10-28935-BKC-RBR.

  1. Conspiracy – Opposing Parties “developed a plan to wrest Wortley’s interest in Global from him by having Chrispus file an involuntary bankruptcy…”
  2. Filing a Bad Faith Bankruptcy – The June 17-19 emails between the Opposing Parties “clearly show that Tarrant, Juranitch and Chrispus acted in bad faith in filing the involuntary bankruptcy petition.”
  3. Withholding Evidence – Opposing Parties, specifically Chad Pugatch “actively obstructed Wortley’s efforts to obtain evidence”. Further, the Opposing Parties “had the evidence that Wortley needed to sustain his claims, blocked his access to it and deliberately prevented him from finding it”.
  4. Perjury – “Tarrant and Juranitch both gave sworn testimony denying their plan to file an involuntary petition” …. And that these denials “appear to be blatantly false”.
  5. Suborning Perjury – “Pugatch also represented Tarrant at the deposition, where Tarrant falsely testified” and “Having participated in the June 17-19 email discussions about the involuntary bankruptcy petition, Pugatch knew that testimony was false, yet he did nothing to correct it”. (Page 12 of the Opinion)
  6. Obstruction of Justice – “Notably, the emails were not produced by Pugatch –who had received and known of them” and “All the more troubling is that Pugatch, a sworn officer of the court, actively obstructed Wortley’s efforts to obtain evidence”…
  7. Fraud upon the Court – “He (Pugatch) and his associate falsely responded to Wortley’s November 2010 discovery request by saying that all non-privileged documents …had been produced”.

The Court of Appeals remanded the case back to the Bankruptcy Court, instructing it “to insure that Chrispus, Juranitch, Tarrant and Pugatch do not profit from their misconduct and abuse of the bankruptcy process”.