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.

 

[Jd Smith1]

No one claimed it was a "great evil plan," but yet again your posts dismiss the events as "feces occurs" in ways that are, frankly, repulsive. And, yet again, not the flex you seem to think.

I'm not clear on what a 'flex' is in this context.

But yes, it has been claimed that Diamond was involved in a malicious scheme. You just have to read the entire thread, which I don't recommend.

 

[Jd Smith1]

I am utterly boggled how you are able to distinguish “mismanagement”—again, which definitely includes some shady-as-Hades-stuff going back years and years—as being apart from “some great evil plan”.

Would you, perhaps, allow “some lame banal plan”?

Or “some weak-sauce shady plan”?

Or some other permutation that doesn’t involve the pedantry?

Intentionality matters. Well, at least it seems to to most of us….

So, you believe that Diamond execs planned to end up in a bankruptcy, losing their jobs and tarnishing their resumes?

They ran fast & loose because they could, and for many years it worked fine. But they ignored the warning signs that conditions were changing, and here we are.

Never aspire to conspiracy what is attainable by simple incompetence.

 

[Doctor Depravo]

I'm not clear on what a 'flex' is in this context.

But yes, it has been claimed that Diamond was involved in a malicious scheme. You just have to read the entire thread, which I don't recommend.

Diamond’s “maliciousness” goes well and beyond just this RPG-centric thread. Comic book companies have been dealing with their nonsense since the ‘90s.

As I said earlier, you don’t seem to know much about ‘em beyond the current kerfuffle. And yet you definitely have opinions, that’s for certain.

 

[cranberry]

Well, firstly, they committed no crime. Second, a major point of the LLC, ever since it was invented by the Romans, is to remove individual responsibility. Why is this still news?

It's not illegal to take inventory that's not yours? I guess I'm in the wrong business.

And the courts on rare occasion do lift the corporate veil, so it's not perfect protection.

 

[Doctor Depravo]

So, you believe that Diamond execs planned to end up in a bankruptcy, losing their jobs and tarnishing their resumes?

They ran fast & loose because they could, and for many years it worked fine. But they ignored the warning signs that conditions were changing, and here we are.

Never aspire to conspiracy what is attainable by simple incompetence.

Of course I don’t think execs planned on doing anything negative to themselves, because they get golden parachutes and retire / move on to the next venture.

You said earlier that you were “sorry for even getting involved” in this thread a few pages back. And I’m (and, if I may be so bold, other posters seem to be, too) sorry you can’t acknowledge the nuanced middle ground between “BIG ILLUMINATI CONSPIRACY!!!1!1!1!1!” and “golly-gee-whiz, that’s just Capitalism, y’all—suck it up”.

 

[Jd Smith1]

Diamond’s “maliciousness” goes well and beyond just this RPG-centric thread. Comic book companies have been dealing with their nonsense since the ‘90s.

As I said earlier, you don’t seem to know much about ‘em beyond the current kerfuffle. And yet you definitely have opinions, that’s for certain.

I always have opinions. And I'm aware of Diamond's legacy, which existed for decades without effective recrimination.

I'm simply pointing out that running a hostile business model is not a conspiracy, nor is a bankruptcy a smash & grab.

Again, you keep assigning emotion to a business matter. What is happening now is simply a bankruptcy proceeding; Diamond is hardly the first or last distributor of goods to see its consignment inventory liquidated. It doesn't matter to the court if Diamond was a beloved or loathed institution, the end result is the same: every goes, and the proceeds get split up in a ratio the judge deems proper. Which nearly always means the big lenders got most of the pot.

 

[JLowder]

But yes, it has been claimed that Diamond was involved in a malicious scheme. You just have to read the entire thread, which I don't recommend.

Diamond set up their operations and deals in ways that we see now endangered their partners. They did so in a way that got past even the corporate counsel at Disney and Warner-Discovery, so pretending the small game companies should have caught this is ridiculous. Malicious is, in fact, the generous read, as it allows the people at the company might have been making deliberate choices rather than just being grossly, dangerously incompetent. But even there, incompetence of a great enough level--and since this is now an extinction-level event for many of the publishers involved, we have reached that level--is functionally indistinguishable from malice.

Defending predatory businesses ruining the lives of others because those actions are not illegal is, yet again, not the flex you seem to think. The same with dismissing the potential damage to lives and companies as "feces happens."

 

[Jd Smith1]

It's not illegal to take inventory that's not yours? I guess I'm in the wrong business.

And the courts on rare occasion do lift the corporate veil, so it's not perfect protection.

It is not, in bankruptcy court. And you probably are.

 

[cranberry]

It is not, in bankruptcy court. And you probably are.

So, you think it's ethically OK to take someone else's stuff?

Yes or No.

Stop hiding behind "but it's the law"...

 

[Jd Smith1]

Diamond set up their operations and deals in ways that we see now endangered their partners. They did so in a way that got past even the corporate counsel at Disney and Warner-Discovery, so pretending the small game companies should have caught this is ridiculous. Malicious is, in fact, the generous read, as it allows the people at the company might have been making deliberate choices rather than just being grossly, dangerously incompetent. But even there, incompetence of a great enough level--and since this is now an extinction-level event for many of the publishers involved, we have reached that level--is functionally indistinguishable from malice.

Except your entire theory is based entirely on speculation.

And you are misusing the word 'partner'. The terms 'client' and 'lender' are what you mean, and of course they did: they ended up bankrupt.

But for it to be malicious, the actors in your great conspiracy have to have a happy ending. This is not some dire cabal, its simply bad management. Again, assigning emotion to to the ordinary.

Had pdfs and various economic issues not entered the scene, Diamond would have kept chugging along for the foreseeable future.

Now maybe Amazon will take over, and people will have a new target to complain about.