Movin’ Out
A BITTER FIGHT over control of A Moving Experience, a marketer of new-mover lists, is being played out in a Las Vegas court. Whoever wins, it’s clear the three-way partnership that ran the company is on the rocks.
The first volley was fired last March. Half-owner David Bancroft Avrick sued his two partners in the Las Vegas-based firm, Susan Keenan and Leo Yochim, claiming they wrongly fired him and denied him his share of the company’s dividends.
Avrick asked the court to appoint a receiver, charging that “the business of the corporation is suffering” because the managers were divided.
Keenan and Yochim countersued in April, charging that Avrick took names from the firm’s database to sell in competition with A Moving Experience.
That’s where the matter stands as the litigants undergo discovery and await a trial data in the District Court for Clark County, NV. But papers filed with the court provide insight into the dissolution of a list partnership.
The company was founded by the three veteran direct marketers in 1989. The partners agreed to share net income according to their respective stock ownership: Keenan 25%, Yochim 25%, and Avrick 50%.
A Moving Experience’s main product is a list of new movers that features enhancements from Experian and Performance Data. Data cards posted online last March by Listworks, which manages the files, indicate that there are 2.7 million new movers and 9.3 million last-three-month movers named.
Since 1990, all three partners have received dividend checks “virtually every month,” according to Avrick. But the relationship apparently started deteriorating last year.
In September 2000, Keenan and Yochim charge, Avrick held a special shareholder’s meeting in Las Vegas — without the other partners — in which he recommended the dissolution of A Moving Experience. Keenan and Yochim argue that he lacked the authority to make such a move.
A month or so later, the two contend, Avrick took 24 million names and mailing addresses and used them to compile historical data for Avrick Direct, a separate firm he founded in 1997. He then sold these lists in direct competition with A Moving Experience, acting, they claim, with “oppression, fraud and malice.”
The countersuit filed by Keenan and Yochim name Avrick Direct as a defendant.
For his part, Avrick charged that Keenan and Yochim fired him last March after a “clandestine” board meeting at Yochim’s home. In addition, they informed him through a lawyer that there would be no more dividend checks because he was “indebted to the corporation,” he said.
But Keenan and Yochim asserted in court papers that Avrick is not entitled to dividends because of “his wrongful actions.”
Avrick also accused his partners of telling people he had been removed and suggesting he’d been guilty of unsavory conduct. Among the firms contacted were Experian, Performance Data, Listworks and Adrea Rubin Marketing Inc.
These announcements subjected him to “hatred, contempt and ridicule, which has caused him to suffer great mental and emotional distress and humiliation,” Avrick said.
Keenan and Yochim admit that they notified the companies, but denied the other charges. The court has requested documents from various third parties, including Adrea Rubin Marketing.
Yochim founded Printronic, a computer service bureau, in 1965. Keenan worked with Yochim at Printronic for 32 years.
Avrick stated in papers that lists are his “livelihood,” and that various list companies he has been associated with in the last 30 years have done over $1 billion in business. He also noted that he “remarkets dozens of mailing list properties” owned by Experian and Performance Data.
A founding partner in Uni-Mail List Corp., Avrick pleaded guilty in 1995 to federal mail fraud charges related to the marketing of a male potency cure.
