On Tuesday, former Gearbox lawyer, Wade Callender, filed a motion in Dallas County district court for contempt and has requested sanctions against Gearbox. The filing allegs "discovery abuse" and a failure to produce various court-ordered documents. This is the latest is a very long back-and-forth legal battle between Callender and Gearbox that started back in late 2018.
In November 2018, Gearbox sued Callender. The company says that Callender had borrowed money from Gearbox in order to pay for a home loan, tuition, and other personal expenses such as family vacations, the purchase of firearms, and much more. Gearbox says that Callender did not fully pay this money back to the company.
Roughly one month after this initial lawsuit, a countersuit was issued against Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford that says Pitchford harassed Callender and accused Pitchford of taking a secret $12 million bonus from Take-Two Interactive. This is in addition to accusations saying that Pitchford syphoned profits from Gearbox in order to fund "Peacock Parties" where adult male guests ahd "reportedly exposed themselves to minors, to the amusement of Randy Pitchford."
It was also in this lawsuit that the infamous USB drive was first mentioned. Callender's lawsuit says that in 2014, Randy Pitchford lost a USB drive in a Medieval Times in Dallas, Texas. This USB drive allegedly contained sensitive information related to Gearbox and its partners (2K, Take-Two, Sega, Sony, and Microsoft). It also allegedly included "Randy Pitchford's personal collection of 'underage' pornography." The lost USB story was actually confirmed by Pitchford just one day after the lawsuit was filed. During a December 22, 2018 recording of The Piff Pod podcast, Pitchford said that he had lost a USB stick. He went on to say that there was a video on the USB stick of a "barely legal" camgirl faking female ejaculation.
Pitchford said that he had saved that video because he was using it as research for a new magic trick.
This week's filing from Callender says that Gearbox and their current lawyers "continue to violate (the) Court's order and hide documents." In February 2019, Callender had served Gearbox with eight interrogatories, to which Gearbox provided a response to in March by way of a single page document. Callender claimed that the single page response to those eight interrogatories was deficient and requested an amendment. One week later with no response prompted Callender to file a motion to force Gearbox to respond to the deficiency letter. Gearbox finally agreed to provide the amended responses by July 3 but a 30-day extension pushed this date back to August 2.
Gearbox did provide a response by August 2. The response included text correspondence between Randy Pitchford and a "member of the press that he had a podcast with," which would be The Piff Pod podcast mentioned above.
In the text message correspondence with this unnamed member of the press, Pitchford was asked, "Is the USB stick falling out of has the internet moved on now?" Pitchford replied with, "Internet is fine. All they care about is if my next video game is good or not."
On Monday, Dallas County Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied a request for relief from Gearbox. Gearbox claims that the "trial court abused its discretion by overruling numerous objections to requests for production of documents and compelling production of certain documents." As part of their denial for relief, the court says that Gearbox "have not shown they are entitled to the relief period."
This also isn't the first major legal rodeo for Randy Pitchford or Gearbox. The company dealt with a class-action lawsuit over Aliens: Colonial Marines in 2013. Pitchford has also been accused of numerous abusive actions by former Gearbox vice-president and voice of Claptrap, David Eddings. Some of that abuse includes verbal abuse, shoving, and even a report of a wet-willy given to Eddings from Pitchford.
I can't help but notice that in all of these legal battles and accusations, there seems to be one person that is a common linking thread... Really makes you think.
(via GameSpot)
