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Microcap & Penny Stocks : Ben Ezra Weinstein (BNEZ) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: Zbyte who wrote (4130)11/1/1998 5:49:00 PM
From: Leroyt  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 9391
 
The publicity from the AOL suit is undeniable. I must assume (I sure hope they understand) that BNEZ puts out a PR on Monday or Tuesday referencing AOL in the PR. The PR will then be viewed by A LOT of people.

PR is a big part of the battle.

later, leroyr



To: Zbyte who wrote (4130)11/1/1998 9:18:00 PM
From: Jud  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 9391
 
Yes, as the news of the development in the lawsuit becomes public there will be beneficial publicity. I think it is unfortunate that the publicity centers on Ben Ezra Weinstein & Co. rather than PMA. Its PMA that we want people to hear and be thinking about.

And, as for the lawsuit, from Mitchell's post I assume that the judge made two decisions. First was a response to BNEZ's motion for discovery. He said yes. Second was a response to AOL's motion for summary judgment. He said no.

Both decisions are very important. The first allows BNEZ to go down the road of proving its case. If you read the pleadings, the BNEZ attorneys constantly argue that in order to prove the case they need discovery. They proved this to the judge, got a yes, and now they will start *discovering*. BNEZ does not need to issue a press release for AOL's benefit informing them of what a pain this is going to be for them. I imagine the powers that be are stewing over it right now. AOL does not want discovery. Period. What will this cause them to do? No one knows. We will just have to watch the unfolding of events.

The second decision relates to AOL's defense. Although they probably have multiple defenses to make, the basic one is that BNEZ's lawsuit is without merit since AOL essentially just provided the medium for the posting of third party information and the CDA protects them from lawsuit over just such a situation.. BNEZ claims that AOL did more than this, i.e. providing the medium for the posting. (As I read the pleadings, BNEZ claims that AOL changed, manipulated, formatted, etc the information so that it became different from what a third party had provided, and then this different information was posted using the AOL infrastructure.) The point is that this first line of defense for AOL, the one that they have effectively used in other situations, did not come through for them this time when AOL asked for summary judgment. The protection the CDA offers is still there. IMHO the judge is saying that BNEZ may be able to make a case that AOL was publishing information of its own and, therefore, the protection of CDA does not apply. (A favorite way for me to look at this is that the CDA can be used as a shield, but not as a sword.)

Who knows what this will mean for our stock. I'll tell you one thing, though. I like it that the judge said yes and no (see above), rather than no and yes. By going down this road it is reasonable to believe that some economic benefit will accrue to the shareholders. What were the numbers? $1.70/share...20% drop....How many shares? ... Say 20,000,000?.....$6,800,000 damages...and that counts nothing for future declines that BNEZ could argue came from the initial misinformation. How does the market discount this? I guess we'll just have to see what we're going to see.

Long on BNEZ.

Is it true that Elio and Mitchell are vacationing together this December in Albuquerque? Anyone know for sure?