​United Screen Actors Committee​

William Richert V Writers GUILD of America West, Inc et al"
May 19 at 6:08pm ·

(FOLLOWING IS DRAFT PETITION FOR SAG-AFTRA MEMBERS AND SAG-AFTRA PENSIONERS AND DISABILITY RECIPIENTS)

TO: SAG-AFTRA NATIONAL BOARD

PETITON FROM UNITED SCREEN ACTORS

RE: BOARD MEMBERS COMPLICIT WITH EXECUTIVE CORRUPTION
ARE INDIVIDUALLY LIABLE FOR MALFEASANCE

Gabrielle Carteris, President
Rebecca Damon, Executive Vice President
Jane Austin, Secretary-Treasurer
Clyde Kusatsu, Vice President, Los Angeles
Mike Hodge, Vice President, New York
Ilyssa Fradin, Vice President, Mid-Sized Locals
David Hartley-Margolin, Vice President, Small Locals
Samantha Mathis, Vice President, Actors/Performers
Catherine Brown, Vice President, Broadcasters
Dan Navarro, Vice President, Recording Artists

Don Ahles * Ed Asner * Bobbie Bates *Randal Berger * Susan Boyd Joyce Rodger Brand * Suzanne Burkhead *Bob Butler *
John Carter Brown *Joanna Cassidy * Bill Charlton*
Ellen Crawford *Jane Daly* Joe d’Angerio* Maureen Donnelly
Nancy Duerr *Abby Dylan*Hal Eisner*Debbie Evans*Jim Ferguson*Charles Ferrara*Frances Fisher*Anne Gartlan *Margie Ghigo*Traci Godfrey* Holter Graham* Kathryn Howell*Jon Huertas* David Jolliffe*Ezra Knight*Joe Krebs*Chris Lacey*Diane Ladd* Elaine LeGaro*Ana Lilia*Jodi Long*Art Lynch*Mel MacKaron*Adrian Martinez*Mary McDonald-Lewis*Elizabeth McLaughlin*Helen McNutt*Bill Mootos*Esai Morales*Sue-Anne Morrow*Christine Nagy*Debra Nelson*Jenny O’Hara*Janice Pendarvis*Robert Pine*Jay Potter*Linda Powell*Autumn Reeser *Patricia Richardson*Robin Riker*Scott Rogers*Woody Schultz*Richard Shavz* Martin Sheen*Leslie Shreve*Susan Snyder*Jeff Spurgeon*Peter Tocco*Sheila Ivy Traister*Stacey Travis*Monica Trombetta*Lisa Vidal*Pamela Weaver*Vivicca A. Whitsett*Liz Zazzi

FROM: UNITED SCREEN ACTORS AND THE SAG-AFTRA CLASS OF ACTORS REPRESENTED IN THE SETTLEMENT KEN OSMOND VS. SCREEN ACTORS GUILD INC. BC377780

FROM: ALL THOSE ACTORS AND STUNT PERFORMERS WRONGFULLY DENIED PENSION AND DISABILITY PAYMENTS

NOW COMES THE FOLLOWING:

AMERICAN ACTORS PETITION THE SCREEN ACTORS GUILD CORPORATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS TO DO THEIR LAWFUL DUTY AND IMMEDIATELY:

1.) Direct SAG attorney David White to restore at once all benefits due to Leslie Hoffman, pioneer stunt woman who is suffering each day because her disability payments were stopped arbitrarily, because SAG pension bosses were openly afraid that other similarly situated SAG victims would file a class action lawsuit against the union for millions. SAG Executive Director David White and CEO Duncan Crabtree-Ireland (who de facto elect and control the SAG President) are responsible for the payoffs in settlements to such whistleblowers as Bruce Dow at SAG Pension and Welfare.

ACTORS INJURED OR APPROACHING RETIREMENT need to know what was "settled" that allows accountings to be hidden, which directly affect payments to hundreds of injured performers like Ms. Hoffman, who have been denied basic life-saving benefits, which they paid for.

2.) Direct self-appointed CEO Attorney Duncan-Crabtree Ireland and Bob Bush-appointed David White to remove the LA Superior Court seal temporarily placed on SAG foreign royalty records dating backwards from 2011.

Actors' attorney Neville Johnson told sitting Judge Wiley that the sealed records involved fraud, "ARE fraud," said Mr. Johnson, yet the records remain sealed as Johnson has been paid off and David White and Duncan Crabtree Ireland paid both sets of attorneys to keep the records sealed against the interests of members whose performances earned millions in the decades before 2011. AS he has ignored numerous requests by members both in and out of court, it is the duty of the SAG Board to insist that David White must come clean with immediate and total transparent accounting of the records involving funds owed thousands of actors from 105,000 "titles" that SAG, WGA and DGA divided among themselves and studios without permission from members,

3.) Remove Bob Bush from all dealings with the Screen Actors Guild and provide an accounting to membership of all fees paid to his law firm Bush Gottlieb in Glendale, who pays him also using SAG funds, paying with special attention to those millions in lawyer payouts and settlement payouts which were authorized by Ken Howard, Crabtree- Ireland, and David White in the class action lawsuit filed by Neville Johnson against the interests of his clients, the actors writers and directors, union and non-union, whose rights remain clouded by bogus settlements which are really pay-offs to protect bogus contracts and union executives,

4.) Mandate the immediate accounting of all foreign royalties owed to the dozens of actors in the independent film THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK, which serves in the class action lawsuit as a representative indie cast, all actors under SAG contracts; a film that is representative of thousands of other films sold abroad. THE MAN IN THE IRON MASK (INDIE) serves as the accounting template in SAG, and also in the related class action foreign royalty lawsuits against the WGA and DGA.

Documents show that SAG has admitted receiving foreign levies for THE MAN IN THE IROM MASK since 1999, without providing any records to any of the actors whatsoever, and transparent accounting of these records can lead to the liberation and total accounting of all actors records and millions in actors' withheld money SAG split with major studios in the years before 2011, when actors made the most royalties, sometimes owing individual actors many thousands of dollars, all unaccounted for;

5.) Direct SAG CEO Attorney Crabtree-Ireland to provide complete transparency in the accounting of the millions held in trust by SAG which are called "producer deposits" -- which "deposits" mean that SAG, using secretive in-house arbitrations and rulings against independent producers without studio clout -- and unable to pay SAG the amounts SAG demands -- has taken control of the negatives of hundreds of independent films. Far from being an affront to SAG's rules, these independent films never see the light of the projector or get to be seen by an audience, yet they contain the earnest performances of thousands of actors, now denied forever the possibility of their roles being seen by anyone, and being seen is required for actors to progress; the negatives and the actors involved must be publicly accounted for, to benefit of the actors writers and directors who made these films at great personal cost and hopes,

6.) Demand restitution of all funds paid to Neville Johnson, Tony Segall, Paul Kiesel, David Shechter, Bob Bush and others who took million from union [guild] members in 3 related class actions, starting with WILLIAM RICHERT VS WRITERS GUILD OF AMERICA, WEST ET.AL., ALL those involved in the class actions as lawyers for SAG or lawyers to the class were engaged in a colossal fraud against the real interstices of their clients, a purposeful literal "fraud" as Mr. Johnson admitted to the court, and all were participants in prima face obfuscation, squelching of transparency, and conduits in the illegal division of billions of dollars meant for U.S. and other writers actors and directors worldwide, as well as the theft of copyright and performance opportunity for tens of thousands of artists.

It is the legal duty of the unpaid Board of Directors in a Non Profit Tax Except Corporation to ensure that the paid executives do not benefit from any theft or embezzlement or bad contracts made against the true interests of the actors who depend on them to supervise the executives in the union and prevent even the appearance of criminal activity.

In the case for Leslie Hoffman: SAG seeks to literally extinguish all actor opposition to its pensioned welfare partitions by letting enough time pass so those wrongfully denied will become too sick or dead to fight, yet the pensions and welfare are all paid for by the working actors and are owed to them. Leslie Hoffman is one courageous example of how a stuntwoman was blatantly denied her rights.

As this is written, Ms. Hoffman has been denied her benefits for months, and been publicly derided by Duncan Crabtree Ireland and members of the SAG Pension Board.

The National Board has access to all of the written documentation on Ms. Hoffman's treatment, yet SAG Executive Director and P&A Attorney David White allows this blatant mistreatment to continue -- while at the same time there is no indication that any SAG Board Member has been ever denied any kind of disability payments, and get better treatment than actors do, as SAG self-appointees mimic the way government employees in Flint got to drink the good water, with the rest being poisoned.

Lawyers originally hired to enact guild business instead have created a kleptocratic empire within the union, controlling the outcome of lawsuits by paying lawyers like Neville Johnson and Paul Kiesel and law firms like Bush Gottleib tens of millions for signing SAG into "settlements" which hide the facts.

The settlements in the 3 class action lawsuits against these "GUILDS" are nothing more than contrivances and conveyances of money; not one of the settlement provides for any actual accounting beyond accountings from the unions own paid accounting firms. The SAG settlement is particularly onerous, and written by SAG attorneys to be signed by "Plaintiff" attorneys representing a single actor missing the "similar situated" aspect entirely. The WGA settlement is being challenged by its lead plaintiff William Richert as a cynical moneymaking device for lawyers, the union, and the studios acting in unison against the screenwriters they purport to support. All the challenges to the SAG settlement are fought off with actors' money paid to actors' lawyers working against them.

It is an outrage that decades of money owed to thousands of US actors has been blocked and denied the rightful owners, r in settlements which paid the most amounts to the same handful of lawyers working for the same insider takeover artists like Crabtree-Ireland, and David White burnt into the SAG landscape by Bob Pisano of Paramount (or was it Universal) and today concealing facts from the membership while fighting the members in the courtroom.

This kind financial tyranny is only possible because actors are so different from each other, and don't come in constant daily contact like real workers do in supermarkets or assembly lines; actors are artists and separated by individual careers; some work all the time, some hardly ever, so there can be mass deception without direct oversight.

The guild becomes the patriarch to the tribe, so to speak, but the patriarch at the Screen Actors Guild is a bunch of greedy self serving lawyers, no actor among them, and they have got to be exposed for the obstruction of justice they have perpetuated, and the cycle of fear and intimidation they have allowed to fester on Wilshire Blvd by the palm trees.

Crabtree entered false data in the Ed Asner lawsuit, telling the Judge, EMANUAL REAL, that Judge West approved the permanent sealing of the accounting records, when in fact the issue of sealed records at SAG was never in the actual settlement or adjudicated in court as Crabtree claimed -- that case is being re-filed, but meanwhile thousands and thousands of trusting actors are being deceived and only the SAG board can change that.

There can be no explanation for the continuing lawsuits against SAG except continuing lawlessness and deception.

According to common law, The Board of Directors acts as the white blood cell acts against invading viruses and inflammation, no pun intended.

It is the obligation of the Board of Directors to maintain the integrity of the corporation SAG Inc., -- that is the lawfulness of the corporation - along with assuring that the non-profit WGA Inc. does not engage in any criminal activity, like "passing off" or "conversion" -- or making deals with studios that do not meet the required membership agreements and assents, or sealing records in court against the monetary interests of the members.

It is a real shame, and a crime too, that a woman like Leslie Hoffman goes without help she paid for out of her earnings; she has gone almost one year without disability payments, and is being obstructed in the courtroom by payouts by David White to lawyers, and David White is also on the Pension Board of Directors.

You, the Board of Directors, are each and all famous or beloved actors, but also you have been aware, or should have been aware, that your SAG President, CEO, Executive Director and others at the Pension and Welfare section of the SAG-AFTRA edifice, have paid millions of dollars to lawyers in what can only be called a shush-up fund.

You are aware, because it is in guild meeting reviews and in the press, that Leslie Hoffman has had to fight the entire SAG-AFTRA legal militia for a long time, and has lost her savings and health to a system that promised to "be there" for her. You are aware that hundreds of millions have gone missing at the pension mansion built by SAG, controlled by the same men and women.

"Fiduciaries must act prudently and must diversify the plan's investments in order to minimize the risk of large losses. In addition, they must follow the terms of plan documents to the extent that the plan terms are consistent with ERISA. They also must avoid conflicts of interest. In other words, they may not engage in transactions on behalf of the plan that benefit parties related to the plan, such as other fiduciaries, services providers, or the plan sponsor."

Inasmuch as this petition ought to be brief enough to circulate, we will not cite the documents to back up our demand to the Board of Directors at the actors union to act on the actors behalf -- we ask that those who read this demand for the Board to do its job will do the job of research, and read the cartoon of the SAG settlement, and check out the court records where Neville Johnson calls the union actions "fraud" -- but then does nothing about it.

You may begin research at the political site www.usac.net. The link to the SAG settlement and other info can be found there.

The Board of Directors at an actors union have special responsibility to the artists whose rights they must protect, since the protection of rights and transparency of actions are inherent in the legal and actionable obligations of the Board of Directors of a corporation handling millions and billions of other people's money-- A Board of Directors who work for free on the promise to look out for their brothers and sisters while allowing backroom double-dealings at their picnics should pay attention to duty.

The Board of Directors at a corporation, which the Supreme Court has ruled to be a ‘body’, is the final payer of money doled out to lawyers to hide the facts. We cannot forget how David White was ushered into office with most of the Board unavailable and uninformed, and how guild information outflow immediately stopped and never resumed, and we cannot forget that Crabtree Ireland told Judge Real that the SAG foreign royalty lawsuit was finalized when the case Judge said it was nowhere near "finalized" and that the actors should continue in the courtroom. We must not forget how deadly the new administration at SAG has been for the industry as a whole; forced to digest lies it knows should never be swallowed

And now we put you all on notice that you are each one of you liable, and liable as a group, for losses by actors from lawyers who conceal in court. You must get rid of bad corporate actors who damage the SAG-AFTRA brand and morale and legal standing.

We demand immediate action before losses grow greater, and we are able and willing to fight for our rights under the law.

IF YOU ARE A UNION ACTOR OR A NON UNION ACTOR, OR A STUNT PERSON OR BACKGROUND PERSON OR ANY ARTIST WHO WANTS FREEDOM FROM BULLY BOY LAWYERS, AND THOSE WHO PAY THEM, PLEASE SIGN BELOW: