Officially Official: Mr K Files Bankruptcy

Next Exit…

Rumor has persisted for many a month now that Mr. K. was knee-deep in bankruptcy proceedings, but no official confirmation was discovered (on PACER) until now.  In response to the threat of a summary judgment against Mr. K. in the State of Ohio v Unmistakably Premier Homes/Stephen Kovack case, lawyers for Mr K filed a last second “Suggestion of Bankruptcy” with the court:

Defendant Stephen M. Kovack, by and through the undersigned, hereby serves notice that he has filed a Chapter 7 Voluntary Bankruptcy Petition on December 20, 2012 in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida.  The case is styled as U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of Florida, Case #12-40209-AJC.

The proceedings herein and any and all acts, including, but not limited to judicial and administrative proceedings, are automatically stayed pursuant to 11 U.S.C. Section 362 of the Bankruptcy Code.

In the big euchre game of life, it appears the Bankruptcy Code trumps all other civil laws.  Medina County Common Pleas judge, James L. Kimbler, issued  an automatic stay until further notice.

Now that we have an actual case number, we’ll bring you more information as we sift through it, so stay tuned!

Why May 22nd Is Important

Houston, Apollo 10 Does Not Have a Problem… But UPH (Mr K) Does

If you do a Wikipedia search on the day May 22nd, among the important events you will find:

• 1928 – T. Boone Pickens, American businessman is born
• 1969 – Apollo 10‘s lunar module flies within 8.4 nautical miles (16 km) of the moon‘s surface
• 1990 – Microsoft releases the Windows 3.0 operating system
• 2003 – In Fort Worth, Texas, Annika Sörenstam becomes the first woman to play the PGA Tour in 58 years

What you won’t find, however is:

• PLT’S MOTION FOR DEFAULT JUDGMENT IS SET FOR HRG ON 5/22/2013 AT 10:30 A.M. BEFORE JUDGE KIMBLER IN COURTROOM 2

For that, you’ll have to mosey on over to the Medina County Clerk of Courts website, and do a search on Case Number 12CIV1691, State of Ohio v Unmistakably Premier Homes, Inc, et al.

It looks from court documents, the Ohio Attorney General is looking to close the book on this case via a default judgement.  What that means is a ruling in the state’s favor without a full blown trial.  Seeing as the defendant, UPH and Mr K, have not formally replied to the accusations asserted by the Ohio AG, a default judgement may actually occur.

Comment below if you plan to attend the proceedings!

The Usual Suspects

Maybe?

In the movie “The Usual Suspects”, Kevin Spacey’s character, Verbal Knit, spins a tale describing the mysterious mob boss known as Keyser Söze.  During his story, Verbal utters “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist…  And like that, he’s gone.”  Is Mr K a fan?

After repeated attempts by the Ohio AG to serve Stephen Kovack, a praecipe has been filed with the Ohio Secretary of State’s office pursuant to the Ohio Revised Code 1701.07(H), which states:

If (1) the agent cannot be found, or (2) the agent no longer has that address, or (3) the corporation has failed to maintain an agent as required by this section, and if in any such case the party desiring that the process, notice, or demand be served, or the agent or representative of the party, shall have filed with the secretary of state an affidavit stating that one of the foregoing conditions exists and stating the most recent address of the corporation that the party after diligent search has been able to ascertain, then service of process, notice, or demand upon the secretary of state, as the agent of the corporation, may be initiated by delivering to the secretary of state or at the secretary of state’s office quadruplicate copies of such process, notice, or demand and by paying to the secretary of state a fee of five dollars. The secretary of state shall forthwith give notice of the delivery to the corporation at its principal office as shown upon the record in the secretary of state’s office and at any different address shown on its last franchise tax report filed in this state, or to the corporation at any different address set forth in the above mentioned affidavit, and shall forward to the corporation at said addresses, by certified mail, with request for return receipt, a copy of the process, notice, or demand; and thereupon service upon the corporation shall be deemed to have been made.

So, in not so many words, since Mr K and UPH could not be served through normal channels, the AG has brought in the power of the Secretary of State, which apparently fulfills the requirement of service.

So now we wonder.  Is Stephen Kovack just like Keyser Söze – a figment in our collective imagination?

So, Uh… Come Here Often?

Giggity, Giggity…

Periodically, we at Mistakably Premier peer into the statistics of who has been visiting (okay, it’s more like every hour!), to get an idea of where most of our traffic comes from.  It’s probably no shock that a majority of it comes from the greater Cleveland area.  Sometimes, Google will bring a visitor from some distance place like Santiago, Chile, or Seoul, South Korea, or Cincinnati, Ohio.  They quickly see that this is not the site they’re looking for, and then click off to the next site.

But every now and then, we get a flood of traffic from a particular location that peaks our interest.  For example, when 19 Action News was preparing their story, we saw traffic from Atlanta, Georgia.  Just after the announcement of Mike DeWine’s actions against UPH, we got a bunch of hits from Columbus, Ohio.  Just prior to the Ohio Attorney General re-serving papers to Mr. K in Miami, we saw a bunch of hits from Miami Beach, Florida (was that Mr. K himself doing a bit of recon?).  It’s pretty interesting to see the patterns form.

So that got us wondering, why do you come to Mistakably Premier?  What’s the draw, and why do you come back?

Mr. K – Lebron’s New Neighbor?

Looks like Mr. K has decided to take his talents to South Beach.  Court documents filed on January 4th indicate that the Ohio Assistant Attorney General’s office (Cleveland Office) sent a summons to Mr K at a Miami Beach address.   A quick Google Map search shows the address to be a posh condo located on the shores of Biscayne Bay, just spitting distance from the arena where King James plays.  We wonder how many caved-in stoops, unfinished homes, leaky windows, nail pops and squeaky floors the residents have to deal with…

Hide and Seek – Where’s Mr K?

The Search Continues

Continuing coverage of the State of Ohio vs UPH:  According to the Medina County Clerk of Courts, attempts to serve Mr K and Unmistakably Premier Homes via Mr K have been unsuccessful.  In documents dated December 19th and 27th of 2012, both attempts failed due to “unclaimed, unable to forwards summons and complaint.”  Both summons were addressed to the (former?) UPH offices at 1392 High Street in Wadsworth.  Independent attempts to contact Mr K by non-legal entities have also gone unanswered.

If you have any information as to where Mr K may be residing at this time, please feel free to post below.  We’re sure the Ohio AG will appreciate the help!

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 16,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 4 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Mr K – You Got Served

Yeah – Something Like That…

Quick State of Ohio v UPH update:  UPH and Mr K have been served as of November 27th.  As per Rule of the Ohio Rules of Civil Procedure, Mr K has 28 days to submit an answer to the Attorney General’s office, and an additional three days after that to file that answer with the Medina County Court.

Start the clock!

Black Friday and Project MOHR

Project MOHR is No More

It just so happened that Thanksgiving Day marked the very last day of the Project MOHR fundraising campaign.  While we were all busy stuffing ourselves with turkey, turducken, or maybe even tofurky (yeck!), the clock on the Indiegogo site ticked its way down to zero, matching the amount of funds raised over the last 60 days.  Unfortunately, the cause did not garner the amount of love from the internet community as we had hoped.  But we’ll keep trying, perhaps after a few months off, and after the holidays.

Thanks to all that tried to spread the word of our cause.  We guess it just wasn’t meant to be…

Case Number 12CIV1691 – State of Ohio v. UPH and Stephen Kovack

Earlier, we mentioned reports of the Ohio Attorney General’s Office filing a multi-count complaint suit against Unmistakably Premier Homes, and it’s owner, Stephen M. Kovack.  After doing our happy-dance, we decided to take a closer look into the suit so we can see exactly where Ohio AG, Mike DeWine is going with this.  Here’s what we can gather…

The AG goes to great lengths in documenting exactly why they are bringing this action against UPH.  Nearly a third of the document outlines all the issues we as UPH home owners (or potential owners) have faced.  It almost reads like this blog!  But in reality, the examples match up with all the complaints that have been posted on the AG’s website.

There are five counts in the complaint.  Each of these counts are separate violations of the Failure to Deliver Rule of Ohio Admin Code 109:4 and/or Consumer Sales Practice Act, ORC 1345.

• Count 1 – Failure to Deliver:  Essentially, this count asserts that UPH has accepted “substantial down payments” and then “failed to deliver the good/services purchased.”
• Count 2 – Failure to Perform in a Workmanlike Manner and Failure to Correct Such Work:  This one’s self explanatory.  This is in violation of ORC 1345.02(A).
• Count 3 – Performing Contract Work in an Incompetent, Unsatisfactory and Unworkmanlike Manner:  Similar to Count 2, this is also in violation of ORC 1345.02(A).
• Count 4 – Failure to Honor Express Warranties: UPH gave warranties, just never honored them.
• Count 5 – Stalling and Evading Obligations, Including Failure to Promptly Deliver Services for which Consumers Contracted:  This is the one that affects us at Mistakably Premier the most – basically, giving excuses and delaying work.

All these accusations, according to the complaint, have been previously been found by Ohio courts to be in violation of ORC 1345, so UPH should have known doing so would, in effect, bring them legal trouble.

So, if the State proves their case in front of the court, what are they seeking in terms of relief?  Again, citing the complaint:

• Keeping Mr. K, UPH, and any of it’s agents from “engaging in consumer transactions within the State of Ohio until full restitution is made to all consumers…”
• “Issue a declaratory judgement” declaring UPH violated ORC 1345 as stated previously
• Impose a fine of $25,ooo for each violation of the Consumer Sales Practice Act
• Reimburse consumers who have been injured by UPH’s alleged practice
• Order UPH to retain the last five years of all business records and make them available for the Attorney General’s Office to review them within 24 hours of the request (as an added jab, the cost to copy and deliver would rest solely on UPH)
• Reimburse the State for any costs in bringing this action
• “Grant such further relief as justice and equity require”

Make sure you peruse the entire document on the AG’s Website, or by clicking HERE.