THE TEXAS LAWYER’S CREED

Just a quick review for those who may not know the Lawyer's Creed of Texas:

I AM A LAWYER; I AM ENTRUSTED BY THE PEOPLE OF TEXAS TO PRESERVE AND IMPROVE OUR LEGAL SYSTEM. I AM LICENSED BY THE SUPREME COURT OF TEXAS. I MUST THEREFORE ABIDE BY THE TEXAS DISCIPLINARY RULES OF PROFESSIONAL CONDUCT, BUT I KNOW THAT PROFESSIONALISM REQUIRES MORE THAN MERELY AVOIDING THE VIOLATION OF LAWS AND RULES.

I AM COMMITTED TO THIS CREED FOR NO OTHER REASON THAN IT IS RIGHT.

Kelly Rogers Speaks out on YouTube!

State v Kelly G. Rogers Delayed for TENTH time!

Is this getting old or what?

For the TENTH TIME IN A ROW, since July of 2009, Judge Suzanne Wooten has allowed Kelly G Rogers and his lawyer-John Charles Hardin to delay his trial.

The new trial date (Yea, Right) is February 20th, 2012. You got it, almost SIX years after the $435,000 had disappeared from the corporate coffers, another trial date is on file and pending.  

In State of Texas v Kelly G Rogers, the State is claiming that Kelly Gordon Rogers removed $435,000 from an oil and gas company in 2006.

Fast forward to 2011 and he's still wheeling and dealing in the Oil and Gas business. In a previous story, it was disclosed by the State of Nevada that Rogers reactivated Falcon Ten Energy, LLC., to presumable conduct more oil and gas deals.

Good Grief Judge Suzanne Wooten.

Bradley Dean vs. Land and Minerals/Kelly Gordon Rogers/Carrie S. Rogers

According to the Collin County website, Bradley Dean has retained James Skinner as lead attorney in his case against Land and Minerals Corporation and Carrie Rogers.

To find this information, simply go to Collin County Courts Records Inquiry and click on "Civil and Family Case Records" and enter the case 366-00485-2010.
The Bradley Dean case is stereo-typical of a Kelly G Rogers deal.  You end up getting to know Kelly Rogers from church, the local community or a friend of a friend. You think he's sharp and impressive. One day, he contacts you with this fantastic opportunity. He has a scheme, he comes  out and pitches it and it sounds really good...so you invest.

However, over time, you begin to notice that NOTHING he promised in the original pitch is working out. You begin to ask questions and eventually it hit you up side the head--this deal is a scam. You scramble to get your money---only to find that it's long gone.

You file a lawsuit, hire expense attorney's and eventually run out of money pursuing justice. In the meantime, Kelly G Rogers represents himself or Carrie S. Rogers (often he puts an entity in his wife's name) at no cost. He simply drags out the process until you give up or run out of money. Cunning. Calculated. Crook.

Could Rogers have met his match? Possibly. According to the Collin County Court Records, Bradley Dean has retained James Skinner. Here's an impressive attorney.

Jim Skinner is a twenty-two-year law enforcement veteran who retired in June 1998 as Chief Investigator for New Mexico’s Ninth Judicial District Attorney’s Office after extensive training and accumulated years of experience in narcotics enforcement, complex white collar crime, public corruption, violent crime, and homicide investigations.

After receiving his Juris Doctorate from the University of Houston Law Center in 2001, Mr. Skinner worked as a complex civil litigator in Dallas before becoming an Assistant District Attorney and Special Prosecutor for the Collin County Criminal District Attorney’s Office.

Mr. Skinner entered the private sector in 2008, where he consulted for complex civil litigators and corporate entities on the discovery and investigation of financially motivated criminal activity.

Mr. Skinner graduated from the FBI’s Narcotics Related Financial Investigative Techniques Training Program and the DEA’s Basic Narcotics/Dangerous Drug Enforcement School and worked as the Eastern New Mexico Narcotics Task Force Coordinator, conducting undercover and counter-drug intelligence operations throughout New Mexico with local, state, and federal law enforcement partners.

Mr. Skinner is a graduate of the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center’s Fraud and Financial Investigations Training Program, the Advanced White Collar Crime Training Program, the Telecommunications Fraud Training Program, MCTFT’s International Money Laundering Training, and numerous other programs related to the discovery and investigation of complex financial crime and organized criminal activity.

Mr. Skinner was featured in the August 1996 Reader’s Digest article “To Catch Three Thieves,” which detailed Mr. Skinner’s actions in bringing to justice three men who stole over $58M from senior citizens throughout the United States and Canada by illegal telemarketing scams.

Well Mr. Skinner...you have your work cut out for you today as you pursue Kelly G Rogers. Go get em!

Update: State of Texas v. Kelly G. Rogers

This time it's different.

This time it would appear the trial of Kelly G. Rogers will proceed with a pretrial conference on December 7th and the trial scheduled on December 12, 2011.

This time an agenda has accompanied the subpoenas sent to SEVEN individuals who will testify against the actions of Kelly G. Rogers. These agendas have never been forwarded with previous subpoenas so something is different this time around.

John Charles Hardin will face off against the DA's office to see who can prove their point.

Can Hardin convince anyone that $435,000 taken from the company was some type of compensation for Kelly Rogers hard work? Or will the DA prove it's just another investment scheme propagated by Rogers Ala:  Rio Grande Coal Mine, LLC v Kelly Rogers, Carrie Rogers, Bradley Dean v. Land and Minerals Corporation, Series C LLP v. Kelly G Rogers, Bill Thompson v. Kelly Gordon Rogers,   SEC v. Kelly G Rogers, etc.

Stay tuned.

Arbitration Undone: 5th Circuit Overturns Awards Against Weyand and Thiessen

The story behind this original suit was all about getting even. If you look closely; KCR Investors stood for "Kelly and Carrie Rogers" and this original lawsuit was all about getting Richard Weyand.

However, this ruling had to be a stunning blow to KCR Investors and other family members trying to nail Richard Weyand to the wall.

The back story to all of this is Rogers and Weyand began their partnership back in 2004. As they developed ideas together, Rogers began soliciting friends, family and acquaintances for money to back these schemes. Rogers also wrote the subscription agreements.

In late winter of 2006, the SEC contacted the company to advise a deposit was made into an individuals bank account who was part of an ongoing SEC investigating associated with the Travis Correll Ponzi scheme. That's when all hell broke lose.

Rogers was named in SEC vs. Global Finance and Investments, Inc--case No; 4:07cv346. Since that time, the lawsuits have been flying against Rogers and Weyand. However, this arbitration award levied a whopping $13,317,381 against Weyand, $311,329 against Theissen and $730,123 against Rogers.

However, the 5th circuit concludes that Weyand and Theissen cannot be held personally liable for the judgement and has overturned the Arbitration award.

As noted in the footnotes of page 4: The arbitration panel also held another individual defendant, Kelly G. Rogers, liable for a total of $730,123. Rogers is not a party to this appeal.

From LAW.com. John Council, Texas Lawyer, On Wednesday August 17, 2011:

When litigants attempt to vacate arbitration awards, they usually don't get much help from the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Yet the court recently ruled that two defendant corporate officers were not individually bound by arbitration agreements and overturned the awards against them.

The Aug. 4 decision in DK Joint Venture 1, et al. v. Richard W. Weyand, et al. is a departure for the appeals court, which has been hostile to arbitration vacatur attempts in the past. For example, in 2009's Citigroup Global Markets Inc. v. Bacon , the court ruled that arbitrators' manifest disregard of the law was not a ground for vacatur. And in 2007's Positive Software Solutions Inc. v. New Century Mortgage Corp., et al., the 5th Circuit, sitting en banc, reversed a three-judge panel decision that had affirmed a U.S. District Court ruling vacating an arbitration award. The en banc court found that the "mere appearance" of an arbitrator's bias was not a sufficient reason for vacatur.

According to the 5th Circuit's opinion, the background in Joint Venture 1 is as follows: The plaintiffs sued Weyand, Peter Thiessen and 15 corporations controlled by them in state court over a business dispute. Weyand is the chief executive officer and Thiessen is the chief financial officer of the defendant companies. The plaintiffs and the defendant corporations had entered into contracts called "subscription agreements" that contained arbitration agreements. The plaintiffs moved to compel all the defendants to arbitrate the state court litigation. [See the court's opinion.]

The defendants removed the case to a U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas. While Weyand and Thiessen protested that they had not agreed to arbitrate anything, the District Court ruled that all of the defendants including Weyand and Thiessen were bound by the arbitration agreements, the 5th Circuit wrote.

Specifically, U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade of Dallas ruled in a Jan. 29, 2008, order that because Weyand and Thiessen conducted the day-to-day business affairs of the corporate defendants, they met the definition of "affiliate" in the subscription agreements, even though they didn't sign them.

"Moreover, under Texas law, where contracting parties agree to arbitrate all disputes 'under or with respect to' a contract, they generally intend to include disputes about their agents' actions," Kinkeade wrote in the order.On April 1, 2009, a panel of three American Arbitration Association arbitrators awarded the plaintiffs $13,317,381 in damages against Weyand and $311,329 in damages against Thiessen, the 5th Circuit wrote. After the District Court confirmed the award, both men appealed.

In a May 24, 2010, brief to the 5th Circuit, the plaintiffs argued that the question of whether Weyand and Thiessen agreed to arbitration was delegated exclusively to the arbitration panel and "no court has the power to decide that issue." The plaintiffs also maintained that Weyand's and Thiessen's arguments were "without merit, without justification, and legally frivolous."

But the 5th Circuit disagreed. "Weyand and Thiessen, as CEO and CFO of the defendant corporations, were the corporations' agents. Under general principles of contract and agency law, the fact that the defendant corporations entered into the Subscription Agreements did not cause their agents, Weyand and Thiessen, who acted only as officers on behalf of the corporations, to be personally bound by those agreements," wrote 5th Circuit Judge James Dennis in an opinion joined by Judges Eugene Davis and Jacques Wiener. The panel reversed the trial court's order confirming the award and remanded it back for further hearings.

Donovan Campbell Jr., a partner in Dallas' Rader and Campbell who represents the plaintiffs in DK Joint Venture 1 , did not return a telephone call seeking comment.

Jeff Boggess, a Frisco solo who represents Weyand and Thiessen, is pleased with the decision — especially given the 5th Circuit's reputation for rejecting attempts to vacate arbitration awards.

"The 5th Circuit's decision is a beacon to wayward federal district judges and others who misinterpret Texas state decisions that decide which agents of contracting principals can be bound by the principals' arbitration agreements and under what circumstance," Boggess

Kelly Rogers Attorney Dallas--Trail Rescheduled

According to the Collin County Website, the Trial of Kelly G Rogers has been rescheduled for December 12th of 2011. This information was obtained from the Collin County website. To get the information, simply click on the link and enter this case number to view a complete listing of the activity. 

As soon as details are available, they will be passed along to our readers.