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Re: The Manhattan Club Lawsuit - RedWeek's Report & Most Recent Info

Update from Jeff Weir, who wrote the [url=http://www.redweek.com/resources/ask-redweek/manhattan-club-lawsuit-info]original article[/url] for us re: the Manhattan Club lawsuit: The legal proceedings in the Manhattan Club case started heating up in April. After a public hearing to review the basic claims of the case, the trial court judge denied the defendants' motion to dismiss the entire lawsuit. Manhattan Club lawyers argued, unsuccessfully, that the new state case should be dismissed because two prior federal lawsuits had been thrown out of court. They also supplied the judge with counter-claims alleging that several of the owner plaintiffs don't have the proper legal standing to sue the Manhattan Club. In any case, after losing the original dismissal motion, Manhattan Club lawyers filed a formal appeal challenging the judge's ruling. While that appeal proceeds on its own legal course, the trial judge ordered both sides to start sharing documents in the "discovery" phase of the case. This pretrial phase is important because it will enable the plaintiffs, in particular, to review previously private Manhattan Club documents about the club's sales program and rental reservation policies. Those club documents, presumably, will either give plaintiffs material to prove their case or, conversely, support the defendants' claims that all owners received full and adequate disclosure about the club's operations when they purchased their timeshares. Barring a change in strategy or tactics from either side, the next formal hearing on the case is tentatively set for early September.