LAWSUIT:
"You know, all of us, I don't have, I mean, I hardly have to say this, but all of us are unbelievably frustrated that the share price is not yet reflecting the value that we are working to build.
And we believe that our stock has been manipulated and we, we, that was going on for many years and we were very anxious to try to take some action to do something about it, but we had to bide our time and meticulously collect evidence and so forth, because the bar is extremely high, you, the degree of detail that you have to put in a complaint is hard to even describe.
It's, it's, I mean, and our, so we did bide our time until we had what we believe is a very strong case put together.
We filed that in December of 2022.
So just before the last annual meeting and it has gone through a whole lot of back and forth skirmishes, all of them relating to the defendant's effort to have the case dismissed and never go anywhere by filing a motion to dismiss.
And we are very gratified that the magistrate and the court have found that the pleadings in our complaint have been sufficient on all but one of the elements that we have to plead and that's in process, I'll come back to that.
So what they found already is that our pleadings are sufficient to pleading that the defendants engaged in manipulation of our stock and that they did so with science enter with the intent to damage Northwest.
Now again, we're at the pleading stage.
So the court has only said that we have adequately plead this, but that's a very, very big deal because these cases that the companies who've been the victims or targets or never have pretty much not been able to get anywhere trying to seek redress with this kind of case because you have to be able to articulate all the minute details of the transactions that you allege involve the manipulation, and you have to do that first before you can get to the stage of discovery, but you can't get the information unless you get discovery.
So it's kind of like when you get out of school and you can't get your first job until you have experience, but you can't get experience until you have your first job.
And so for years and years, decades, victim companies have been unable to get over that bar.
And I encourage you guys to read the complaint, read it when you want to go to sleep, but our complaint details thousands of transactions down to the millisecond.
We're very proud of this and a lot of work went into that and we've been vigorously pursuing this case.
The only element that the magistrate and the court said that we hadn't pled sufficiently was one element, which is referred to as lost causation, saying, okay, well, if they did manipulate our stock and they did have the intention to harm us, what's the connection between their bad behavior and what damage we say that we incurred, they had to be able to connect the dots.
And there's a time element to it, like, was it the same day?
Was it within 24 hours?
Is there a lingering effect that lasts for all of that complexity?
So the court and the magistrate specifically gave us permission to amend our complaint to strengthen the pleading claims on that one element.
We've done that, it's been submitted, the defendants made their objections, we did our reply.
So now we're just waiting for the magistrate to evaluate all this and give their report and recommendation, which then subsequently the court will act on like before.
So I know it feels like it's taking a long time because it's been a year and a half since we filed a complaint and we've been fighting.
We try to press the schedule as much as we can.
But actually, this is pretty good pace is from what we understand.
It's in line with other cases of this type and actually a little bit faster even than some other cases of this type.
It's just that the wheels of justice grind slowly, but we are pursuing this vigorously.
So you'll see that and there are no guarantees, but we are optimistic about what the ultimate decision will be about the motion to dismiss, namely, we are optimistic that it will be denied and the case will be allowed to go forward.
We believe our case is meritorious and strong and we believe that the case may be an opportunity to recoup damages and to get what we believe is manipulation to stop.
So this is a big area of effort for us and we just want you guys to know that because we're as frustrated as you are about the situation."
AI
