Re: 6/22/00 - [STWW] Operating Officer Pays Price For Online Shouting Match
June 22, 2000
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Operating Officer Pays Price
For Online Shouting Match
By AARON ELSTEIN
WSJ.COM
For David Salmon, the night of June 6 added injury to insults.
Chief operating officer of Stampede Worldwide, Mr. Salmon was docked a month's pay and forced to resign as a director of the Tampa, Fla., company, which prints weekly newspapers, catalogs and shoppers. All this after "mental anguish" prompted Mr. Salmon to respond to his online nemesis.
Mr. Salmon's boss told him not to do it. But on the evening of June 6, Mr. Salmon posted several messages on the stock-chat site Raging Bull (www.ragingbull.com). In one posting, he told his accuser to "Ki$$ my ###."
"I personally regret Mr. Salmon succumbed to immature instincts while on his own time," Stampede Worldwide Chief Executive John Whitman said in a prepared statement. In an interview, Mr. Whitman says Mr. Salmon will keep his job as chief operating officer, but will no longer serve on the board or as director of investor relations. Mr. Salmon will also forfeit one month's pay -- about $8,300 -- and won't be eligible for stock options.
"I'm not proud of what I did," says Mr. Salmon. But he says he got fed up after Charles R. Will, a director at Mr. Salmon's previous employer, repeatedly used online message boards to criticize him and Stampede Worldwide. Mr. Will began posting messages in January and continued even after Mr. Salmon and Stampede sued him last month in Florida state court for defamation.
Mr. Will accused Mr. Salmon of being a "bad businessman, committing fraud, being incompetent to perform his duties and being a homosexual," according to court documents. In one post cited in the suit, Mr. Will allegedly says that Mr. Salmon has "quite a history of failure," with four businesses he has run in the past 10 years dissolving, including a real-estate financing company and a flooring contractor. Mr. Salmon says he voluntarily dissolved the businesses to pursue other opportunities.
Mr. Will has been served with a copy of the suit, according to his lawyer, Michael Keane. He acknowledges writing the messages but says he plans to fight the case, in which Mr. Salmon and Stampede seek unspecified damages. "Nowhere in the suit do the plaintiffs spell out what's untruthful or defamatory," Mr. Keane says. "You can't just collect a pile of statements, even if they aren't nice, and say 'Here's a bad guy, give us some relief.' "
Mr. Whitman says that Mr. Will's postings have interfered with his company's efforts to raise money, although he doesn't mention that in the suit.
Earlier this month, Stampede had sold 15.3 million shares in an offering of more than 40 million shares. Mr. Whitman says it hasn't sold more because Mr. Will's negative messages have discouraged prospective investors and caused some stockholders to sell. Mr. Whitman says it is "pretty critical" for Stampede Worldwide to sell the entire stock offering. According to regulatory filings, the company has financed its operations the last two quarters mainly by selling stock. (As of March 31, the company had 42 million shares outstanding, compared with six million a year earlier.)
The company posted a loss $503,000, or one cent a share, in the first quarter, compared with a loss of $916,000, or 15 cents a share, in the same period last year. But while the losses narrowed, sales fell by 37% to $345,000, in part because one of the company's two subsidiaries earlier this year filed for liquidation under Chapter 7 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code.
Earlier this year the company's accountant said there was "substantial doubt" that Stampede Worldwide could continue as a going concern, but in May that language was removed from regulatory filings because the accounting firm said the company had improved its financial position considerably.
Nevertheless, the company's stock has languished; it was quoted Thursday at about 1/8 on the OTC Bulletin Board.
Mr. Whitman says Stampede Worldwide, which in April changed its name from Chronicle Communications, says it hopes to improve its fortunes this summer by introducing an Internet-based catalog that lets people shop for used computers, computer parts and software.
As for Mr. Salmon, he says the bad blood between him and Mr. Will goes back to when they worked at company called Pawnamerica.com. Mr. Salmon says in the suit that he resigned from Pawnamerica.com last October, in part because of problems with Mr. Will, who was a director there.
"I was there to work on investor relations and help prepare a plan to take the company public," Mr. Salmon says. "The perceptions of Chuck Will and the CEO, who is my sister's fianc‚, were different from mine in terms of what it would take to get the deal done." Mr. Will's lawyer confirmed that account of events.
Mr. Salmon contends that Mr. Will has been hounding him online ever since he left, posting on Raging Bull under several aliases, including "IWIDEOPEN." In a posting cited in court documents, Mr. Will wrote that Mr. Salmon "has never been successful at anything in his life. He's had more jobs than I've had cars, and that's quite a few."
Taking the alias "eyeswideopen," Mr. Salmon took to the boards in early June to rebut the negative postings. But things quickly degenerated into the online shouting match that ended up costing Mr. Salmon his seat on the board and a month's salary.
Write to Aaron Elstein at aaron.elstein@wsj.com
Copyright ¸ 2000 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
interactive.wsj.com |
