Posted in: Comics, Ike Perlmutter, Marvel Comics | Tagged: conrad black, ike perlmutter, marvel

Now Conrad Black Involves Himself in Ike Perlmutter/Harold Peerenboom Legal Fight

Published Sat, 28 Dec 2019 11:00:45 -0600

Last updated Tue, 14 Mar 2023 05:37:22 -0500

Two recent court cases related to the ongoing legal issues between Marvel chair Ike Perlmutter and Canadian tycoon Harold Peerenboom have gone against Harold. One, critical of Peerenboom's acquisition of the DNA of Ike and Laura Perlmutter in an as-yet unsuccessful attempt to prove they were behind a hatemail campaign (though they have admitted to being behind an earlier anonymous mailing) and a Canadian court decision dismissed against a former employee of Peerenboom who was accused of masterminding such a campaign. And all still spinning out of a disagreement over who should run the tennis court in their shared private residence in Palm Beach, Florida, a decade ago. #OnePercentProblems.

Well, fellow Canadian tycoon Conrad Black, former publisher of The Daily Telegraph, Chicago Sun-Times, The Jerusalem Post and the National Post has spoken up in defence of Peerenboom. This may cause interesting conflicts – Black was a convicted fraudster, eventually sentenced to 42 months in jail but who has granted a full pardon by Donald Trump back in April a year after he wrote a book of praise, Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other. Perlmutter is best friends with Trump and spent last year's Thanksgiving at Trump's table, rather than Trump's own family. The Perlmutters are Trump's biggest donors and have played roles in his inauguration and in the administration's Department of Veterans Affairs.

Black writes an editorial for The National Post, with a URL that unfortunately reads 'ed-black-do-not-post-this-under-review', giving further details regarding the mailing that may not have been as well known,

Harold, shortly after the tennis incident, was the victim of an anonymous mailing of over 200 letters to neighbours and business connections enclosing negative press coverage and generally besmirching him and inciting the inference that he was regarded as unethical and retrograde by those who had known and worked with him. This mailing became a subject of a police investigation in Florida, and in 2012 was succeeded by a systematic anonymous mail assault of 20 mail-outs of a total of nearly 2,000 letters over three-and-a-half years, accusing Harold of sexual assault against a minor, complicity in a double homicide in Hallandale, Fla., and ultimately was broadened to include smears against his wife and family. There was no truth to any of these outrageous accusations, and while those who knew him saw at once how scurrilous this campaign was, it was distressing and a major inconvenience with credulous recipients, who included scarcely acquainted people with whom he had significant commercial relations.

As well as stating Peerenboom's suspicions of Perlmutter's involvement in both campaigns and that he had, as a result of the latter campaign, been considered a murder suspect. Skipping forward half a decade, he re-reported the case against a former employee of Peerenboom and his arrest with an alleged accomplice, but that the Toronto case had been dismissed as "there was no reasonable prospect of conviction," and that it was "not in the public's interest to proceed." Conrad counters the first part ofthat, saying,

The first explanation is untrue: I am assured that the Crown has a video-taped confession from one of the accused, although it is unclear whether the senior crown was aware of that evidence when he pulled the charges. Furthermore, the distinct possibility that Perlmutter bankrolled the whole smear campaign gives this case a much more serious potential scope and it should not simply be scheduled for court and then stayed arbitrarily and with cavalier parochialism without regard to its much wider implications. The American Peerenboom-Perlmutter litigation, now involving many hundreds of millions of dollars, would be well-served and perhaps decisively influenced by getting to the bottom of this. It may be congestive injustice to shut down this issue at this point. Andrew Locke, director of Crown Operations, the chief law officer in the jurisdiction, says there has been a suitable inquiry into the manner in which this case has been disposed of, but if these charges were withdrawn with wilful refusal to take account of important evidence, this is a very alarming indication of incompetence.

I wonder how Thanksgiving went this year?