Backfire: Former exec’s suit could blow Enterprise’s files wide open
(Published by the Riverfront Times on March 12, 2003.)
Worm‘s impressed when folks start acting like him, all ruthless and slimy and unwilling to yield to convention. So here’s a tip of this invertebrate’s hat to the folks at Enterprise Rent-A-Car, whose aggressive defense of a lawsuit takes them places where the sun doesn’t shine.
Facing a potentially embarrassing trial in a wrongful-termination lawsuit, Enterprise recently asked a judge to, in effect, slam the courtroom doors shut. Not only does the company want the jury sequestered (that is, holed up for the duration of the trial), it asked a judge to bar the public from attending.
In other words, according to one of Enterprise’s lawyers: “Exclude people who are not necessary to the proceeding.” No inquisitive Enterprise employees, no competitors and absolutely, positively no reporters. Worms, other than ones already representing the parties, definitely aren’t welcome in St. Louis County Circuit Court.
It’s just the kind of ballsy, to-hell-with-everybody-else move that has propelled the privately held St. Louis company to the top of the nation’s car-rental heap. According to court records, the company says that its local status “ensures a high level of publicity will be attached to the case.” To back up the argument, Enterprise cites a story about the case that appeared in this very newspaper [Geri L. Dreiling, “Blood in the Water,” July 17].
In his lawsuit, former Enterprise controller and vice president Thomas P. Dunn alleges that he was fired for raising questions about Enterprise’s business practices, including overbilling customers for repairs, levying deceptive surcharges on customers and registering vehicles in a manner to avoid paying sales tax.
But one of Dunn’s key allegations is that he crossed swords with company founder Jack Taylor and his son, chairman and chief executive officer Andy Taylor, over the question of how vehicles in the Enterprise fleet should be depreciated.
Dunn claims Jack Taylor personally insisted on a lower, more conservative value for the vehicles — a move Dunn and his lawyers argue would have benefited current shareholders, including the Taylors, if the company were to proceed with plans to go public. Plans for an initial public offering were later shelved, and in January 2001 Dunn was fired from his $650,000-a-year job.
The suit portrays Dunn as a whistleblower whose rigid defense of proper accounting practices made him the odd man out at a company where things weren’t always done by the book. Executives for Enterprise, however, have testified that Dunn was a highly compensated top executive whose termination was prompted by complaints about his abusive management style. The company, in its court filings, has vigorously denied Dunn’s claims about improper business practices.
Whatever the outcome, Dunn’s suit has threatened to crack open the tight lid on Enterprise’s operations. Not only have personnel matters been discussed in open court, but Dunn’s lawyers have gone after sensitive records — just the kind of stuff Hertz and Avis would love to get their hands on.
But there’s a much, much bigger issue at stake for Enterprise: The company doesn’t want the income and holdings of its top execs and shareholders made public. “We don’t think it’s fair for the individuals in this community to have that information in the newspapers about how much money they make,” says Michael A. Kahn, Enterprise’s California lawyer.
One of Dunn’s sharks, Lisa Van Amburg, counters that revealing how much the Taylors and other top Enterprisers make and own is critical to understanding how they would have benefited from a public offering. Argues Van Amburg: “If the company is going to parade employees on the stand to criticize our client, I think the jury is entitled to hear what money they are making, what might bias their testimony in favor of the defendant [Enterprise] here.”
Enterprise has legitimate reasons to worry about the trial offering up tantalizing details — even if the local daily declines to report them. At a hearing this past summer, Dunn testified that he’d raised concerns about the company’s corporate aircraft’s being used to fly Jack Taylor to catch his private yacht. Though a Post-Dispatch reporter was present, the paper made no mention of that tasty tidbit.
The Dunn case has been marked by an unusual degree of acrimony among the lawyers. In court, Van Amburg has a knack for dropping references to “cooked books” and the Enron debacle — comments that drive Kahn crazy.
“The strategy is clear,” the latter sputtered at a recent hearing. “Try to make our salaries in the newspapers, call us ‘Enron,’ declare we’re ‘cooking the books’ — not try the case of wrongful termination of a controller of a private company.”
If that tactic sounds like dirty tricks, consider what Dunn’s lawyers claim may have happened to a key witness.
At a recent hearing, Van Amburg said that a local partner at Ernst & Young complained to St. Louis University about Dr. James Jennings, a tenured professor of accounting. Jennings is an expert witness for Dunn; Ernst & Young is the accounting firm that worked on Enterprise’s planned public offering.
The letter, written by Stan Deptula, noted that his firm was upset that Jennings had referred in class to an audit Ernst & Young had conducted at a Chicago bank. Deptula advised that Ernst & Young’s partners were withholding alumni contributions to SLU. But Deptula’s real goal may have been to discourage Jennings’ planned testimony in the Enterprise case, Van Amburg alleged.
“It seems rather suspicious that on the eve of our trial, our expert would be called on the carpet for something like this,” Van Amburg told a judge. Enterprise’s lawyers acknowledged that Ernst & Young had threatened to cut off donations to SLU but insisted that this was unrelated to the Enterprise case. Jennings declined to comment; Deptula did not return a call.
The trial is set to begin Thursday.
Sign of the Times: It’s all in the family at Engineered Support Systems
(Published by the Riverfront Times on Jan. 22, 2003.)
There’s a fleet of modified Humvees, camouflage-green and sporting red crosses, parked behind the Engineered Support Systems Inc. world headquarters, where the old Schnucks used to be. A jarring sight in tiny Cool Valley, to be sure: all those Army vehicles, specially equipped to treat casualties of chemical and biological warfare, just a stone’s throw from Worm‘s favorite hangout, the I Don’t Know Cabaret.
A twenty-year-old holding company whose subsidiaries make military-support equipment, ESSI is a rather nondescript military contractor. Michael Shanahan, company chairman and onetime owner of the hockey Blues, has a higher profile here than his firm.
In other words, ESSI is no Boeing.
But like the Seattle-born monster that ate Mr. Mac’s baby, ESSI’s fortunes climb when war seems imminent. And for the past year, the company’s done quite well — shares have risen by 67 percent (as of last week) while the broader market, measured by the S&P 500, has slipped 22 percent. Earnings are on track to grow 20 percent this year.
“We’ll see an increase in activity from what’s going on with Iraq and perhaps North Korea,” Shanahan recently tipped Bloomberg News. Indeed, the company’s been spewing out press release after press release, announcing expedited government contracts to support the buildup. Thanks, Saddam. Thanks, Kim. Thanks, George W.
Is it news that military contractors do well in times of peril?
Hardly.
But Worm loves family gossip, especially when it reaches the top:
One of ESSI’s star directors is St. Louis investor and financial advisor William H.T. Bush, uncle of the saber-rattlin’ commander in chief. Uncle Bucky, who has also held a $2,500-a-month gig as an ESSI consultant, owned 17,500 shares in the company as of January 17, 2002 — worth more than $650,000 in today’s market.
It’s a relative pittance for the rich and related but also about 17,500 more shares than a certain green-eyed invertebrate has tucked in his portfolio. The elder Bush was tapped as a company director in 2000 — as W campaigned for Poppy‘s old job.
To be fair, the Republican honcho wasn’t, as the company puts it, the only “exceptionally well-qualified individual” tapped for a directorship. In addition to five retired generals, Democratic stalwarts are well represented, and their holdings are substantial — folks such as Tom Guilfoil, the grizzled legal rainmaker, and S. Lee Kling, the banker recently tapped as moneyman for Dick Gephardt‘s quixotic presidential campaign.
Further proof that in the USA, the machinery of war doesn’t know Republican from Democrat.
United we stand.
Greg Freeman, 1956-2002: Worm bids farewell to a friend
(Published by the Riverfront Times on Jan. 8, 2003.)
Worm left St. Louis to seek fame and fortune. His cats didn’t share Worm’s optimism, so Worm left them behind. Rocky moved in with a new owner in North County and was never heard from again. Bullwinkle ended up with Worm’s friends Greg and Elizabeth Freeman. Greg turned Bullwinkle into fodder for his Post-Dispatch column. As a result, Bullwinkle received the fame and glory that long eluded Worm.
Bullwinkle wasn’t the only cat to get star treatment in Freeman’s column, a fact the Riverfront Times poked fun at. Greg smiled at the RFT‘s gibes and would point out that his cat columns generated more reader response than anything the RFT published. Greg was a fan of this newspaper, more specifically of D.J. Wilson‘s former “Short Cuts” column. A few months ago, he called to praise a Wilson column on John Carney and an angry KMOX-AM advertiser. “I died laughing,” he guffawed. “A really funny piece. You know, you’re giving Jerry Berger a run for his money — except your story is accurate.”
Not just the big St. Louis-loving cuddly bear depicted in eulogies, Greg was a fighter. As an undergrad, when he was rejected for a gig as a department-store Santa — he had the physique and the requisite good nature — he wrote a blistering column declaring that Christmas, by God, ought to be colorblind. Fair play was always foremost for Greg, and that didn’t change when, after years of hard work, he became a columnist for his hometown newspaper.
The job came with a heavy burden of expectations. Greg grew up here and knew how deficient the Post was in covering local news. He’d complain to friends when the paper — the newspaper he loved — missed a story or when a tip he passed to colleagues wasn’t pursued. It angered him that so many talented colleagues who’d felt the sting of the newspaper’s good-ol’-white-boy culture went elsewhere to shine.
But Greg didn’t bail, and he didn’t just sit on the sidelines: He spoke out, pressed his editors, never gave up. It wasn’t just talk — through his entire career, even when cancer, kidney failure and muscular dystrophy took their toll, Greg mentored dozens of aspiring young journalists. The Post wasn’t big enough for his interests, so he served the city as the host of popular public-affairs programs.
Greg knew who was naughty and who was nice, but he cared for ’em all the same.
That’s why people who barely knew him feel they’ve lost a friend.
That’s why it’s a good thing Worm has five hearts, because at least one of ’em is broken.
Hey, Who Gave You That? A misdirected press release provides endless amusement to our favorite invertebrate
(Published by the Riverfront Times on Jan. 1, 2003.)
Worm‘s always been a cutting-edge creature, an invertebrate on top of the news. So it made sense that Worm’d jump on the hottest news tip of 2002: Not only is white-bread St. Charles County a happening place, the state’s fastest-growing county “reflects and represents” the true heartland of the nation.
Just “compare the demographics” of St. Charles to the nation’s, advises Partners for Progress of St. Charles County, a biz-promotion group that includes WingHaven’s developer, Pals Financial Group and Baue Funeral Homes.
In a press release designed to get the county favorable mention in news media “year-enders,” the Partners say St. Chuck’s home to everything that’s “in” for 2003.
What’s “in”? Spending more time with family. Planned communities. Suburban corporate campuses. Active, involved citizens. Easy suburban living.
That’s not all. Also making the list of heartland hits for aught-three: smart bombs (made by Boeing, natch) and Republicans.
For every “in” there’s an “out,” and what’s out includes downtown corporate skyscrapers, “fast-talking” CEOs and unplanned urban sprawl. Out, too: dumb bombs and Democrats.
Worm had plenty of time to check out this info as he tried to slither across the Blanchette Memorial Bridge on his way to the Heartland — a traffic-choked world of strip malls, fast-food restaurants, big-box retailers, censorious Bible-thumping county execs and butt-ugly housing developments.
Compare the demographics? OK, how ’bout these numbers? Nearly one in three Americans is nonwhite; 94 percent of the “heartland” is Caucasian. Twelve percent of the nation lives in poverty; 4 percent of the “heartland” is poor.”
But who’s Worm to quibble?
Ron O’Connor, public-relations guru of O’Connor & Partners Inc., says the press release was, in part, intended to be humorous.
The dig at Democrats? A joke, O’Connor says. Republicans won big in November — and St. Charles recently leans Republican. “We’re certainly hope we’re not polarizing,” O’Connor adds.
The release was aimed at about 1,200 media outlets, including business publications. “It was an attempt to focus, with some humor, the national media on how St. Charles County reflects a good strong work ethic, a good place to relocate,” O’Connor says.
The goal’s not to get St. Louis companies to cross the Missouri River — Lord knows they don’t need any encouragement — so the Partners wasn’t peddling its list of “ins” and “outs” locally.
As O’Connor says: “It was inadvertent that it ended up at the Riverfront Times.“
Inadvertent, but excellent.
The Terrorists Are Winning: Truth, justice and the American soap opera are under attack at the West County Y
(Published by the Riverfront Times on Dec. 18, 2002.)
Our American Way of Life is under attack — and it’s not just the dark forces of al-Qaida and Wal-Mart after us.
Just listen to Barbara Radloff‘s story:
For two years, the 51-year-old Chesterfield homemaker and mother has been locked in combat with the forces of political correctness in the most unlikely of places: her local Y.
At issue is a policy at the West County Family YMCA that’s designed to prevent malleable minds from being unduly influenced by, of all things, daytime television.
The policy bans the showing of soap operas or any other “morally offensive” programming, including Montel Williams and Maury Povich, on any of the TV sets in the Y’s fitness room.
Radloff learned of the policy that bars soaps and some daytime gabbers when she asked to switch the channel to watch one of her shows. She’s a fan of Young and the Restless, All My Children, and One Life to Live, but it really doesn’t matter which one’s on, she says: “When you’re on a machine, you want to watch something you want to watch!”
Incredulous, she asked executive director Sean Allison to explain the policy. “He said to me, ‘There’s too much nudity on soaps.’ I got very upset. There’s no nudity on soaps — I mean, they’re under covers, you might know what they’re doing, but there’s no one nude!”
Radloff says Allison suggested that she bring in her own TV and headphones, but her family’s already paying $64 a month for a membership — why should she bear the cost of a silly policy? And what about inconsistency? Other talk shows, on which there’s often frank discussion of sex, aren’t banned. And what about reruns, Radloff wonders: “Do you know what’s on Will and Grace? That’s not banned — and it deals with homosexuality!”
Allison wouldn’t be interviewed, but he e-mailed a statement saying the policy was upheld by the Y’s volunteer board, which “represents our members and community.” He writes: “The YMCA relies on the board to help us make these kind of decisions, creating an environment where all people feel comfortable.”
This isn’t the first time the West County Y has made an RFT appearance. Last year, a community-theater company based there packed its bags and relocated after Allison scrubbed plans to stage La Cage aux Folles. Allison’s explanation? Most of the popular gay farce “took place in a bar.”
Radloff’s says she’s taken her complaint “through many, many channels” and that talking to the RFT was a last resort for a person who describes herself as being “as straight as you can get.”
Except, of course, for that nasty soap-opera addiction.
Lead Balloon: There’s some heavy mettle at work in Herky
(Published by the Riverfront Times on Oct. 30, 2002.)
Juanita typed the wrong address.
Instead of e-mailing the agenda for the Tuesday meeting to other Doe Run Company execs, poor Juanita accidentally forwarded the memo to twenty news organizations.
An easy mistake:
It was Monday morning.
And the memo was titled “Media-Strategy Meeting.”
And media folks, as we all know, do need to have meetings about strategy.
Anyway, one of Worm‘s trusted snitches shared a copy.
Here’s the skinny:
According to the memo, Doe Run, a punching bag for far too long, is finally fighting back. It’s about damn time.
Before we get to the good news, let Worm explain why he’s tickled.
See, Worm always has had a special affection for Doe Run. Whenever he needs to feed his head, he slithers south for a few days of stupefied bliss in the steaming pile of slag next to Doe Run’s Herculaneum smelter. No need for champagne or cocaine to fry this brain. Not when there’s plenty of lead, cadmium and arsenic. Not when it’s everywhere and it’s free.
That’s the kind of company Doe Run is: Generous. Caring. Spreading its fairy dust in Herky homes. Fortifying fish with extra minerals. Helping its poor company owner, Ira Rennert, put a roof over his head.
Instead of praise, Doe Run gets egged by journalistas, enviro-nazis and, for chrissakes, mothers. All because a few dozen kids have high-octane blood and are pooping fishing weights!
Such a distraction forJeff Zelms, Doe Run’s gentle bear of a chief exec. Don’t people need car batteries? Don’t they need ammunition? Don’t folks know lead’s the solder that holds our electronic society together?
Jean Carnahan obviously doesn’t. Missouri’s appointed senator — another mother — was busy this summer urging a government advisory panel to toughen the threshold for what’s deemed lead poisoning. That was enough to get Zelms and other company execs busy writing checks to Jim Talent.
Electing Buzz Bait isn’t enough. When good guys are on the ropes, they need a man in a ten-gallon hat.
Enter George W. Just this month, the president’s men replaced experts on the lead-advisory committee with a bunch of industry shills. One of them argues that lead is safe for kids at seven to ten times the current standard.
The good news doesn’t stop there: Insiders say that at this rate, it won’t be long before lead gets a place on the government’s food pyramid.
Worm couldn’t be happier.
Whack Job: Phoenix columnist howls in protest at La Russa’s threat
(Published by the Riverfront Times on Oct. 23, 2002.)
In Jane Eyre, Rochester has nutty Bertha under lock and key. Goofball ex-presidential candidate H. Ross Perot keeps crazy aunts in basements. Michael Jackson lives in Neverland.
Here, in the NT Media family of newspapers, the Worm‘s wacko relatives work and play out west.
Take Bob Nelson, ace columnist for our oldest sister paper.
Nelson, in a blistering column in the Phoenix New Times, says the Cardinals should sack manager Tony La Russa for, of all things, having “ordered a hit” on Phoenix shock jock Beau Duran.
As St. Louisans remember, Duran is the 22-year-old sack of protoplasm who, in a KUPD-FM radio stunt, asked Darryl Kile‘s widow for a date to a division series game. Slimebag to Flynn Kile: “I saw you on TV — you’re really hot.“
Flynn, who buried Darryl in June, wasn’t in Phoenix to make a love connection.
Shaken, she called La Russa.
“Whoever is responsible,” La Russa fumed at a press conference, “should suffer severe and dire consequences. If we could get our hands on them, we would deal with them physically. It was so brutal that something should happen to them.”
Ordinarily Tony’s a mellow dude. A philosopher. A vegetarian, for chrissakes!
It didn’t take La Russa long to chill and rescind his call for retribution.
But angry fans buried Duran’s station with calls and e-mails. Beleaguered, the folks who paid Duran to be obnoxious, caved. First they suspended him. Then they fired him.
So it should have ended.
Stories have shelf lives — and this one’s expired when Duran filed for unemployment.
Enter Bob Nelson. Bob’s in a bad mood. Bob’s got space to fill. So last week, Bob dusted off a yet-unexplored news angle: jackass as victim.
Phoenix’s “best morning show lost an integral cog” when Duran was pink-slipped, Nelson writes. It’s all La Russa’s fault.
For real.
See for yourself at www.phoenixnewtimes.com.
According to Nelson, La Russa’s “hit” could even get Duran killed. After all, the ex-jock’s received “numerous death threats.”
“It’s time for Tony La Russa to say he’s sorry to the employees of KUPD,” Nelson writes. “Then … La Russa should be fired for putting people’s lives in jeopardy just to win a baseball game.”
Wrong. If La Russa gets fired, it should be for leaving relief pitcher Rick White on the mound for one too many pitches in game four against the Giants.
Bad baseball trumps a fatwah any day of the week.
This is America, after all.
Members of the Firm: Employee apparently didn’t see enough dicks at the office
(Published by the Riverfront Times on Dec. 11, 2002.)
IS THAT A DILDO IN MY BRIEFS? The sharks at Bryan Cave must be eating well these days, considering one of their own allegedly made off with more than a million simoleons before somebody said what the?…
Kelly Layne Mullins worked in collections for the city’s stuffiest corporate law firm, but according to charges filed recently by the St. Louis Circuit Attorney’s office, she was busily collecting for herself. The 45-year-old is accused of laundering nearly $1.7 million from the firm — money she allegedly used on life’s necessities.
Among those necessities: A 2002 Infiniti I35. Computers. DVD players. Stereos. TVs. Camping and exercise equipment. More than two dozen watches, including a couple of Rolexes. Autographed sports memorabilia. Cases of popcorn. Lots of purses, including seven still in a Dillard’s shopping bag.
St. Louis cops hauled off those goodies — and lots of other swag — from Mullins’ Bridgeton home in October. Of course, the daily seed catalog dutifully reported the charges (the case has yet to go before a grand jury, and no indictment’s been returned), but there were some details the Post-Dispatch didn’t share with readers.
That’s Worm‘s job.
According to a property inventory, police also seized several boxes of brand-spanking-new sex toys. Not just run-of-the-mill novelties, either. Mullins’ collection included at least two dozen vibrators, including some with lights! The magical middle managers are now under lock and key at police HQ — exactly where dildoes belong.
According to the charges, Mullins set up a collection company that submitted phony invoices to Bryan Cave for the past five years. Police were called to investigate in August.
A police-department dick insists the case isn’t all that unusual: “Every major business has somebody stealing from them” — even this place, where former senator Jack Danforth hangs his miter. What is unusual: the discovery that Mullins needed so many pleasure probes. “Three or four of ’em — past that, what the hell would you want that many for? I mean, do they wear out?” the detective wonders.
Rick Sindel, Mullins’ lawyer, doesn’t have an answer either. He’s still waiting for copies of prosecution records: “Anyone who looks over the search-warrant list will think and believe they took a lot of pretty minor things of very little value but that would be personally embarrassing to her.”
Because so many items were still in original packaging, Worm figures Mullins intended to give them as presents. Police have already tracked gifts to boyfriends and family members; the dildoes, Worm figures, were likely stocking-stuffers for needy co-workers.
But it’s only a theory.
Roland Klose 