I was a latch key kid in the days before smartphones. Sometimes, while my mom was still at work, she’d call me and ask me to look for a certain item in the freezer, so I could pull it out and thaw it for dinner.
At least once a week, I’d call her back and say “I can’t find it.” Inevitably, she’d get home, march to the freezer, and — in 2 seconds — find the thing I was supposed to find.
She’d say, “Did you actually look?” Or (my favorite): “If it'd been a snake it would have bit you.”
Maybe my mom should have a chat with the lawyers working for the FTX investors.
As you have heard, FTX collapsed and a bunch of investors lost money [fn: but $7.3B has allegedly been recovered, so the amount of money lost is YTD]. Edwin Garrison has filed a proposed class action against FTX founder and ex-CEO Sam Bankman-Fried and several celebrities. Tom Brady, Steph Curry, Naomi Osaka, Shaquille O’Neal and many others were paid to endorse the cryptocurrency platform FTX.
When you initiate a lawsuit, you have to serve the defendant the summons and a copy of the complaint. All the defendants have been served except for Shaq. The judge has given the plaintiffs a deadline of April 17 to serve Shaq, or he will be dropped from the case.
Here’s the drama: the investors hired Fancy© lawyers and they have been bellyaching to the judge about how they cannot find Shaq anywhere. A brief overview of where and how they looked:
“Process servers made 12 attempts at O’Neal’s Georgia residence, and were unable to locate or contact O’Neal “
“Plaintiffs’ counsel also sent the summons and operative complaint via FedEx to O’Neal’s Georgia residence and his office at Turner Sports in Atlanta (from where O’Neal regularly appears on TNT).”
“Shaquille O’Neal owns and has owned a large number of homes all across the country, from Florida and Georgia, to Texas, to Nevada and California, and sometimes resides in Bahamas. Plaintiffs’ Counsel’s investigation showed, however, that while Defendant O’Neal is regularly on the move between these locations (making personal service of process more difficult than with an average American).”
“Since obtaining the [Texas] address, the process server has made numerous attempts at effecting service on O’Neal at his Carrollton [Texas] address, including through personal service and through FedEx (serving the summons, complaint, and the pending MDL petition), and Plaintiffs’ Counsel have directed them to continue attempting service.”
“In addition to the previous attempts to serve O’Neal outlined above, Plaintiffs have also attempted personal service on Defendant O’Neal at his Texas residence on eight additional occasions over nearly a month.”
But one place they did not actually look is….at his job.
Shaq is on live TV two nights a week for NBA on TNT for at least 3 hours each night.
The show films in Atlanta, GA at the Turner Sports studio. The NBA season is winding down and the playoffs are starting, so one could venture to guess that Shaq isn’t spending much time in Texas (the only place the process server actually looked).
These Fancy© lawyers sent a FedEx to Shaq’s attention at Turner, but that letter probably got lost in the fan mail (i.e. junk) pile.1 The lawyers never asked a process server to serve him personally at Turner Sports. Personal service is permitted by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the Georgia Rules of Civil Procedure, and the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure (the suit was filed in Florida).
Why have they not attempted personal service at Turner? We’ll never know, but I think it’s because they can get more attention for their lawsuit with catchy headlines like this:
Or this:
Or this:
Never mind that the truth is a little more complicated and…these Fancy lawyers never actually looked for Shaq.
3 Things To Do This Weekend (4/14/2023)
Bing the Night Agent on Netflix: political thriller based on the novel of the same name. Think House of Cards meets Jack Ryan (season 1, of course).
Watch Leanne Morgan’s first comedy special “I’m Every Woman.” Incredibly funny (and it was filmed in Lexington, KY, one of the best cities in America).
Listen to the new Jonas Brother jam, Waffe House.
This reminds me of the time I bought a Bruno Mars vinyl record, sent it via FedEx to the Atlantic Records office in NYC, with a self addressed FedEx slip and a letter, asking Bruno (real name Peter) to sign it the cover of the vinyl record. I got a call from a very nice man in the mail room who asked me, “What am I supposed to do with this?” I never got that record back. That’s what I think happened to this Fedex to Shaq.