Green Ronin Crowdfunding Legal Defense Fund In Fight Against Diamond Distrubutors

Green Ronin Publishing has set up a crowdfunding campaign to help cover legal fees fighting to get back their inventory from Diamond Comic Distributors in what it describes as "a dire financial threat to our company, not just today, but well into the future".

Diamond, which filed for Bankruptcy in January, still holds the stock of Green Ronin and over one hundred other companies in its warehouse, and has asked the court for ownership of that inventory so that it can liquidate it and pay its creditors. The distributor, while being mainly comic-book focused, also serves as distributor for some toy and TTRPG companies, including Green Ronin, Paizo, Goodman Games, and Roll For Combat.

The GoFundMe had raised $17K at the time of writing, with over 200 donations.

Paizo Publishing, also affected, has announced that its upcoming releases will not be available at major bookstores or at Amazon because the company has stopped shipping products to Diamond. This includes 12 August releases and 10 September releases, such as Starfinder Player Core, Starfinder GM Core, Pathfinder Battlecry, and more.

The court has scheduled a hearing on July 21 to hear objections from the affected vendors.

My name is Nicole Lindroos, co-owner of Green Ronin Publishing. Diamond Comic Distributors' recent Chapter 11 bankruptcy has impacted over 100 independent publishers, including Green Ronin, putting us in a very precarious position. Diamond is attempting to use a legal technicality to claim ownership of millions of dollars worth of consigned inventory, which amounts to several hundreds of thousands of dollars for Green Ronin Publishing alone. This is stock that we still own and have not been paid for.

This is a dire financial threat to our company, not just today, but well into the future. We must secure legal representation immediately before the deadline to do so passes.

While there is no "good" time for someone to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of your property to sell for the benefit of their biggest creditors, it is especially challenging given that Gen Con is weeks away. Gen Con is not just a convention for us, it's our most important annual event for connecting with TTRPG enthusiasts, our business partners, and our community, and this year is no exception. We're launching new products and have already committed significant funds to cover everything from booth space, travel (flights, rooms), and most critically, the production of new books and merchandise specifically for the show floor.

Diamond’s bankruptcy and this legal action also mean that Green Ronin has lost its book trade distributor. We are looking for a new partner, but that will take some time. Book trade sales of literary licenses, currently The Fifth Season and The Expanse, are a key part of our strategies for those games. This is especially bad timing for The Fifth Season RPG because we recently received final approvals from N.K. Jemisin and the game is ready to go to print.

We simply don't have the cash on hand to do all of this, pay for an attorney, or participate in any collective legal actions with other publishers in our same position.

The banks are stopping at nothing to wring every last dollar out of Diamond - including taking several hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Green Ronin product to sell in order to pay Diamond’s debts - but they can't do that, and we've got a legal agreement that says as much. Now, we just need to secure a law firm to represent us in the courts.

The funds raised through this campaign will be used directly to cover the escalating legal fees associated with fighting Diamond's claim in bankruptcy court. This includes attorney retainers, court filing fees, and the costs of pursuing every possible avenue to recover our inventory and protect Green Ronin's assets.

 

[doctorhook]

You aren't quoting what you're replying to, and replying in rapid fashion, making it very hard to follow the thread, at least to me..

Strong bet that Jd_Smith1 has blocked you for some reason, because my experience is identical to yours: JLowder is conversing with someone invisible to me who’s posting prolifically, and if I view the thread while signed out I can see that it’s Jd_Smith1. There’s no one on my ignore list, therefore he must be ignoring me. I have no idea when I was blocked by him nor what I said to earn that block, but it was long before this thread. I had no opinion about him previously, but his weaponized blocking tactics and trollish engagement in the thread haven’t endeared him to me at all, and since I’m blocked I can’t even ask him to lift the block. Meanwhile it’s extremely difficult for me to engage with the thread because others keep replying to comments he’s blocked me from seeing (and the block obscures me from noticing that anything has been blocked at all.)

I relate all of this to illustrate that I understand exactly what you’re experiencing.

 

[mamba]

The reason why people start limited companies is to isolate your personal assets from your business assets, so when things go wrong, you can't be easily held personally liable. So this is how it works always!

the difference is that here Diamond is trying to steal the products in their warehouse that they do not actually own

 

[John R Davis]

And no, its not stealing. That part is in fact silly.

Ta. I thought it

the difference is that here Diamond is trying to steal the products in their warehouse that they do not actually own

Yeah. I'm not silly after all. Wahoo.

EDIT: wife says I am but she's neither a lawyer or a gamer so what does she know!

 

[chuckdee]

Is likely someone being on ignore impacting you - either you are ignoring a poster or they are ignoring you, you should be able to tell by looking at post numbers. If the post number is jumping by 2 each time then you aren't seeing one sides posts.

Thanks! I haven't even really been posting that long or much, so not sure what I did to earn that distinction. But I guess I'm special?

 

[chuckdee]

When I look at the post from me you quoted, I am seeing the post I quoted and replied to. Not sure why you are not.

Sorry. I didn't realize how it worked as I just started posting here. I'll follow as well as I can. Thanks for replying though!

 

[Morrus]

In the USA, malice exists only after a verdict is reached in a court of law. No one in the court is even suggesting that course, so once again, you are in the realm of fantasy.

As to incompetence, the fact they are in bankruptcy is an arguement, but that's not a crime, nor unique to Diamond.

Courts do not define the meaning of words used in conversation. The word ‘malice’ is an English word with, like every word, meaning and usage outside of a courtroom.

If they were only allowed to use legal terminology it would be pretty difficult for people to talk to each other.

 

[Umbran]

Strong bet that Jd_Smith1 has blocked you for some reason, because my experience is identical to yours: JLowder is conversing with someone invisible to me who’s posting prolifically, and if I view the thread while signed out I can see that it’s Jd_Smith1.

Mod Note:
Hey, doc (and others)!

This thread is not about who has blocked who. Nor is it about how to go about circumventing board content controls.

So, if you don't want more than red text, cut it out and don't derail other threads with this sort of thing in the future.

 

[Umbran]

In the USA, malice exists only after a verdict is reached in a court of law.

What? While "malice" does have a specific meaning in law, the word is by no means limited to that context. Maybe you don't use it otherwise, but the rest of the country can and does use it to generally mean "ill will" or "desire to cause harm".

 

[JLowder]

What I don't get is that this happened before (see the example earlier in the thread, but it happened more often then that), didn't they learn from that (publishers I mean)? Green Ronin has been around for 25 years, Chris Pramas and Nicole Lindroos have been in the business for ~35 years... They should have learned by now... I can only assume that they took calculated high risks and that went wrong. This happens. You sometimes (need) to roll the dice, and sometimes that won't go so well. The art of (staying in) business isn't maximizing profit, it's minimizing risk.

The reason why I responded to this thread is because this 'news' is all over the Internet and most twists that are given is "Diamond is bad!", as if this is news... Diamond has been in business and Diamond was already a crap company way before Green Ronin or Enworld existed, and companies kept using them, while they knew they were bad news. Just talk to some retailers that did business with them in the 80s and 90s... And what got my hackles really up was that the reporting 'news' sites essentially framed Green Ronin as blameless victims. Diamond F-ed up, but so did Green Ronin, and I don't see Diamond running a gofundme... Don't get me wrong, Green Ronin did/does some amazing stuff, the launch of WFRP 2e, The Book of the Righteous, Freeport, etc. I own them all! But they F-ed up as well and are now dumping that soley on the goodwill of the fans.

If you don't understand why most mid-tier and large game and comics publishers had to work with Diamond/Alliance in some capacity, you should talk to more publishers in the market. Those same retailers who complained about Diamond and related companies often had to keep working with them, too, especially in the US.

The problems with the earlier failed distributors in the market (Wizards Attic, Osseum) and the problems now with Diamond were all different. Changes to distribution agreements that would have protected people from the bad things that happened with Wizards Attic or Osseum would not have automatically addressed what is happening now with Diamond.

Moreover, business partners can often find ways around even the best contract to shift the costs of their failures on to others, often in legal ways. That does not make those actions any less predatory or malicious. And it does not automatically mean the people and companies impacted by these predatory, malicious actions have "failed."

The problems GR have to deal with now also hit entertainment and retail specialist multinationals Disney/Marvel and Warner/DC. That, in itself, says that the loopholes Diamond is trying to exploit were far from obvious, even to companies with massive, highly paid legal departments.

 

[Von Ether]

The more I read people comments to these situations, it becomes more apparent how much the final customer is oblivious to how their TTRPG products get into their hands. I guess it's my first day on the interwebs!