"Wow---the gall of it all..."out of the blue"..."contacted the Board to help AFTER putting the co. into bankruptcy"..."
The Yiddish word for "gall" is "chutzpah". And there's a famous Yiddish saying... What's the definition of chutzpah? A guy who kills his parents, and then asks the judge for mercy because he's an orphan...
As you say, Marshall's behavior certainly seems to fit this definition perfectly.
The only other perspective on his behavior comes from Marshall himself. He sent me a copy of an email that he sent to a long-time shareholder who had posted here today, which contains the following explanation for his actions:
"Even though retired, I had always maintained positive relationships with all of the people and firms we had worked with over the years. When management fell behind on their financial obligations to Jill and me over the first 4 to 6 months, my initial response was to simply allow them more time to figure things out.
As time went on I became more concerned and started "calling around." What I found was appalling. The financial situation, certainly to my judgment, showed an imminent collapse on the horizon. Without paying the auditors from the 10K report, I did not see how they could even make the first quarter's 10Q filing. Medizone's patent attorneys had frozen them out of further work due to unpaid invoices. One of the engineers had not been paid in a year. Legal teams working on FDA work had not been paid, it went on and on.
Looking at the financial situation Medizone management had gotten into, deep in debt and with only death spiral funding with L-2 Capital and SBI Investments available, a chapter 11 reorganization - in my judgment - was the only possible way out of collapse. A Ch. 11 freezes current debt, and, with significant investment, possibly can allow a re-stabilization of the company. A chapter 7, on the other hand, which the company had a legal right to do, and decided on that path, is normally the end of a company as it is known."
Is he right about the hopelessness of the pre-bankruptcy situation? We will probably never know.
The key words here are "in my judgment". Marshall acted on his information and his instincts, and we are forced to proceed from there, like it or not.
