07/12 10:25
00:00:02 All right, folks, we're back on record of the Kroenke and Treasure chest on Elliott matter 3 a.m 20-08622Civil Parties and Council are present.
00:00:15 Jury's out.
00:00:16 Are we?
00:00:17 We're ready.
00:00:17 Thank you for indulging me.
00:00:20 Set and ready.
00:00:21 Okay.
00:00:21 Yes, sir.
00:00:22 We can go ahead and get the jury.
00:00:24 Thank you, Enrique.
00:01:01 Thank you very much.
00:01:43 We are on record so as long as it's an on record question We're just debating how long we need for closing so we just want to get some input from you and
00:01:57 So we don't overstep or... You know, generally I want to be reasonable on it, so... All rise for the jury.
00:02:06 To be continued.
00:02:27 Okay, welcome back, everybody.
00:02:28 Please have a seat.
00:02:38 And Mr. Campion, as I recall, you were going to play an audio.
00:02:41 I have it fixed on here.
00:02:42 Okay.
00:02:43 May I approach you with this?
00:02:46 You may.
00:02:50 Thanks.
00:02:52 So, Mr. Elliott, we have marked
00:02:56 and introduced Exhibit I. Have you reviewed the recording for the June 6, 2020 meeting?
00:03:02 I have.
00:03:03 And could you tell the jury, kind of set the stage, who was present for that meeting?
00:03:08 Kevin Clark, Seth Kroenke, and myself.
00:03:12 Where did the meeting take place?
00:03:13 These meetings were all in his office in Mozilla, or Palmer, Seth Kroenke's office.
00:03:19 Okay.
00:03:20 I'm going to play from 11.36 or 7 to 12.03, okay?
00:03:21 Okay.
00:03:27 If Jersey can't hear it, let me know, please.
00:03:32 The wash plan, I'm not, the spirit of this agreement was I wasn't going to charge any of Travis's time to the partnership for the wash plan.
00:03:42 You provided the wash plan and all the parts.
00:03:44 We were going to buy all the miscellaneous.
00:03:46 What do we have right now, 10 million in parts?
00:03:48 You know, that's reasonable.
00:03:49 We have 10 million, but you do too.
00:03:51 That's reasonable.
00:03:53 Actually, I'll tell you.
00:03:54 We're not even able to have done it that way ever.
00:03:58 All right.
00:03:58 Let me have you explain.
00:04:02 At the beginning of the audio recording, who was speaking?
00:04:05 Seth Kroenke.
00:04:06 And what did he just say?
00:04:08 Well, this was before we signed this agreement.
00:04:11 Meaning the second agreement?
00:04:12 The second agreement.
00:04:12 Probably 10 or 15 minutes before.
00:04:14 I was describing how hard it was to get the blue plant there.
00:04:17 I had spent years.
00:04:19 And I just couldn't afford to fix that.
00:04:21 And he said, well, you know, then you heard him.
00:04:24 he told me that it wasn't his intention to charge me for everything that we were doing out there and in particular this thing with the blue plant where Travis had to go and work I really couldn't afford to spend a hundred thousand dollars to fix it which which is plausible I mean and that was why we in May we started talking about they're doing an evaluation program with the small plant and Frank we could have just done that but I wanted to fix the blue plant anticipating that when they found as much gold as I thought was there
00:04:52 They're going to want to mine that, and I only have one functioning crew and plant.
00:04:55 They were going to need a second plant.
00:04:57 They were going to need more excavators.
00:04:59 They came with the SAMI, and after this meeting, he bought the CAT 336, those pictures are from later in the season, in order to mine with that blue plant, and it had to be finished.
00:05:08 But I told him, I don't have the resources this year, especially
00:05:12 To finish another plant they require who knows I mean who knows it took they never really did get it going We used it for several days and it would break we use it for several days with a break But I really wanted to see if that centrifuge would recover enough gold to double our production out of a standard screen and You you heard what he said?
00:05:31 I mean, I've listened to this many times and wondered why I feel so upset now it's because he told me he wasn't going to charge me for all that and
00:05:40 And yet the bill came in, you know, four weeks later, there's $100,000 of Travis labor and time and materials.
00:05:47 That is completely wrong.
00:05:48 I mean, that's what was wrong.
00:05:50 All right, Mr. Elliott, you've heard testimony from various witnesses that you not only stopped or prohibited the RASC crew from mining in that trench that the jury was shown in exhibits B and C.
00:06:05 But when you sent them up the canyon, any time they found gold, you told them to move on because you wouldn't let them mine there.
00:06:11 Could you describe to the jury how you processed that testimony and what actually happened?
00:06:17 The agreement was to continue evaluating.
00:06:20 The only way he's ever going to bring million-dollar investors is if there's enough ground to justify that.
00:06:25 We only knew about this four acres.
00:06:28 and I have 400 acres but it's up a long narrow canyon and there's a little tiny road we open it every year there's a mudslide or a rockslide or whatever and I had tested there in 1987 there's little holes all along the road but I had a rubber tire I wasn't capable of doing a real test
00:06:44 So Frank said, I can take my little test plant, and this is in our agreement, and go up that canyon, and we'll go as far as the road goes, and we'll test all along the way.
00:06:53 There are many benches.
00:06:54 There's big slides that would take a lot of stripping and a lot of work.
00:06:58 Sethkroenke.com
00:07:19 and we were going to shuffle the excavators around but it didn't occur to me that when they went up the canyon they were going to take the 336 I thought we would send something I have other excavators they're just not as nice or they're not as big and that's not what happened his sanding never ran very well so they needed the 336 to do anything and they didn't want to drive my equipment it broke down very easily and very quickly and Frank didn't want to drive it you've seen Frank he didn't want to drive a piece of junk I don't blame him
00:07:46 So they took the 336, they opened up the road, they towed the little yellow plant up there, and they started testing.
00:07:52 But where they tested was where they asked me, well, where do you think there's a bench or something?
00:07:57 Well, I could tell them exactly where I thought they were.
00:07:59 We've driven that road a thousand times, and there were holes.
00:08:02 I said, if you see a little hole behind the road, open that up and do a bigger test.
00:08:06 We took one bucket and we washed it with shovels to see if there was gold there.
00:08:12 That's pretty bad.
00:08:12 That's not how you do it.
00:08:14 So they would go and set their plant up.
00:08:15 They did that four times.
00:08:17 And on three occasions, they found something that could be mined, but they wanted to keep going because it didn't return very much gold.
00:08:25 They were interested in something really good.
00:08:28 And they ended up mining two places.
00:08:29 One of them we call Frank's Bench to this day.
00:08:31 It's been dug up now.
00:08:34 It didn't pay very much, but it looked good when he first started.
00:08:37 But they ended up at the very end
00:08:39 of the road at Dan Creek there's a giant rock inclusion it came out of the bedrock and Dan Creek goes through a little narrow canyon you can barely take an excavator through there they went that far and they dug out a patch of slide and they started mining there and they were getting big gold I have since mined there myself with my daughter
00:09:00 It's big gold.
00:09:00 Like, you could see it.
00:09:01 It's laying here.
00:09:02 You could see it from over there.
00:09:03 But it's just because it's in the middle of Dan Creek.
00:09:06 It's dangerous.
00:09:07 So we do it in the fall and we do it in the spring.
00:09:08 And she was just out there with me.
00:09:10 We're going to do a little bit more.
00:09:12 That's where they ended up.
00:09:14 Sometime at the first week of August, Frank was up there just before that.
00:09:18 They left on the 24th of July.
00:09:20 All of his crew was gone, except for his son.
00:09:22 He stayed with the other crew.
00:09:25 So Frank and Travis, they don't have any other operators.
00:09:27 They only have the one excavator and have the one little plant.
00:09:30 And the Sani is still not running.
00:09:32 It didn't run all summer long.
00:09:33 It was a lemon of all things to get out there.
00:09:36 But they mined there a couple of days before Frank left, and then when he came back, they mined for eight more days, and that's where they ended.
00:09:43 I never, ever told them not to mine.
00:09:46 I didn't even ask for the gold they were finding.
00:09:48 It was visible, but it was maybe a half an ounce a day.
00:09:50 We had an agreement in the second time to give Frank and Travis 2% and 3%.
00:09:54 That's a typical what a guy would get there.
00:09:58 But they hadn't gotten any gold because the blue plant was broken all summer long, and they only had enough equipment to run that one yellow plant.
00:10:05 I mean, we didn't have a pump, but Frank was using a three-horsepower gas Honda pump.
00:10:11 You see the size of those water lines?
00:10:13 That's a six-cylinder, 140-horse diesel you heard running.
00:10:16 A three horsepower gas pump is what you'd use to water your yard, but it ran that little plant of Frank's.
00:10:21 It's very slow.
00:10:23 You mine five yards in a day.
00:10:25 They were actually recovering an ounce of gold out of five yards.
00:10:28 That's how good the ground was there.
00:10:30 But there was a slide there, which I've been working on, more than a million yards is still in front of us yet, and we've mined a little bit of it.
00:10:38 You dig it out and 500 yards comes down, and you've got to dig that out and 500 yards comes down.
00:10:43 And after a week or two, you have a space, a size of where you're setting, and you dig that up and you mine it because that's all you can get.
00:10:50 And I'm using two of those 400-class excavators now up there.
00:10:54 They don't move.
00:10:55 We fuel them and they work right there.
00:10:56 They just constantly bail the dirt off.
00:10:58 When we get a little patch, we mine it.
00:11:00 That's what they were up against when they got to the end of the road.
00:11:03 They had tested the easy places, and without building a lot more road and a lot more infrastructure and a lot more development, that's the way that it would remain.
00:11:11 It's taken me four years to do anything more than they did, and then last year we did.
00:11:15 We actually started to strip that.
00:11:17 Mr. Elliott, let me stop you there.
00:11:18 I'm going to move on.
00:11:19 I want to go back to the communications that you had with Mr. Kroenke.
00:11:24 You testified that there were a series of text messages that were exchanged.
00:11:28 Yes.
00:11:28 And have you reviewed those text messages in anticipation of trial?
00:11:31 I have.
00:11:31 And we've marked those as Exhibit 16.
00:11:34 I'd like to display those to the jury, Your Honor.
00:11:37 Yes, you may.
00:12:07 Okay, I'm showing the jury, Mr. Elliott, Exhibit 16, page 45.
00:12:13 And just to orient the jury, the messages on the left side of this exhibit, who is writing those?
00:12:21 Seth Kroenke.
00:12:22 And on the right side?
00:12:23 Those are me.
00:12:24 All right.
00:12:25 And I'm going to move up just to show the date.
00:12:29 What date do you recall this?
00:12:31 It's mid-July.
00:12:32 You see on page 44?
00:12:33 Yeah, it's July 20th.
00:12:35 Okay.
00:12:37 So, what does Mr. Kroenke write to you, beginning with, if you could?
00:12:43 He'd say, if you could bring... He says, if you could bring my balance of gold paid to 100 ounces, I would appreciate it.
00:12:48 I had paid 43 ounces up to that date.
00:13:01 I have some huge bills coming in and I just cannot afford to be the bank.
00:13:05 I have floated this as long as I can, Randy.
00:13:08 I wish I could do more.
00:13:11 So when Mr. Kroenke wrote this to you, you had already said you had given him 43 ounces of gold.
00:13:17 How are you funding the operations at Dan Creek?
00:13:20 I'm paying for them out of the income from FUBAR.
00:13:25 And when Mr. Kroenke wrote to you that he can't afford to be the bank,
00:13:30 How did you interpret that?
00:13:34 I was shocked.
00:13:36 How did I interpret it?
00:13:37 It's as if somebody gave you a bill for a meal you didn't have.
00:13:40 Okay.
00:13:42 There's some back and forth and then at the entry on page 45 it says Monday, July 20th, 7.24 p.m.
00:13:49 What did you write to Mr. Kroenke?
00:13:52 Monday, July 20th.
00:13:54 We can talk about this when you get here.
00:13:56 What I saw was a cost plus billing
00:13:59 to a contractor or to a customer, and that is not me.
00:14:02 I am not a customer.
00:14:04 And how did Mr. Kroenke respond?
00:14:05 That's not the truth, and you know it.
00:14:07 You also agreed to it in front of three other people, including Frank.
00:14:12 Was there ever a time that you agreed to it?
00:14:16 What did I say?
00:14:17 Did you ever agree to a cost-plus question?
00:14:21 I can fix it.
00:14:22 Sorry about that.
00:14:30 All right, did you ever agree to a time plus material or cost plus contract?
00:14:34 No, I never did.
00:14:35 Okay.
00:14:35 All right, I'm going to move to page 47.
00:14:44 Okay, so you can leave the microphone right where it is.
00:14:48 At the top of page 47, at the very top, what does Mr. Kroenke write to you?
00:14:55 We're talking about buying Dan Creek, and he says, how much for the whole thing?
00:15:00 All of it.
00:15:01 Not four acres, not the north shore, just all of it.
00:15:04 Okay.
00:15:05 And then you respond, you make an offer.
00:15:08 Yeah.
00:15:09 What do you offer there?
00:15:13 I said $2.2 million as a down payment, as a 1031 exchange, 5,000 ounces for 10 years after starting 500 per year on October 1 annually.
00:15:28 Idaho gulch is excluded or a 1031 exchange for another gold mine worth 1000 ounces of gold do you have enough information to do this I do I personally do
00:15:38 Okay, so then Mr. Kroenke responds and says it's $11.2 million.
00:15:43 That's $11.2 million at today's prices, not even counting Idaho Gold.
00:15:48 There are two pieces.
00:15:48 I have a 55-acre piece that's four miles away.
00:15:51 It's related to this property, but it's difficult to get to.
00:15:54 But it has a different history, and it's very, very interesting.
00:15:57 I didn't want to sell that, but he included it in the second agreement.
00:16:00 He wants all of it.
00:16:01 Okay, so then at the bottom of this page, which is page 47...
00:16:08 Do you see how Mr. Kroenke makes an offer to you?
00:16:11 And if you do, please read that to the jury.
00:16:14 I don't see it yet.
00:16:15 Where it says, my offer.
00:16:16 Oh, oh, oh.
00:16:16 My offer would be this, Randy.
00:16:18 Pending me securing a successful investor.
00:16:21 What?
00:16:23 $1.5 million down, a check in your hand or a 1031 exchange to a property of your choice, along with 10% of our gross gold recovery each year for the next five years, payable October 1st.
00:16:36 Idaho Gold should be included in this sale.
00:16:42 And I want to go to page 48.
00:16:49 And there's an entry that says, this is my whole lifetime.
00:16:51 Could you read that to the jury?
00:16:53 I'm defending the price.
00:16:54 I said this is my whole lifetime.
00:16:56 If you divide 40
00:16:58 by 40 for the return and dollars it will be worth very little next year the original terms were as I stated in May you have changed the purchase to make it expensive the neighbor will pay 1 million for Idaho Gulch and I have a performing buyer on the lower ground at 2 million already for the North Shore mines are expensive after development and Dan Creek makes money already now makes money now it sounds like you're finished with the evaluation do you want to continue negotiating
00:17:27 The jury will have the opportunity to read all of this, but I want to talk about page 49.
00:17:34 At the top of this, can you describe or read to the jury how Mr. Kroenke responded to your email?
00:17:40 He said, like I mentioned, if you have people willing to pay you multiple millions right now, I would suggest you sign the papers.
00:17:49 My phone is dead.
00:17:50 I can't reply.
00:17:51 Okay, you can read that.
00:17:52 Now I'm going to page 50.
00:17:58 I want you to read the, not the first short paragraph, but the paragraph that starts with I, too.
00:18:07 I, too, do not want a war.
00:18:10 I have been in plenty of them already.
00:18:12 Hence the reason that RAS has corporate counsel four hours a day, five days per week, already paid for.
00:18:20 I also will not accept spending $200,000 plus and having nothing to show for it but unreasonable purchase price requests.
00:18:29 Okay, I'm going to go to page 52 now.
00:18:32 And again, the jury will have the opportunity to look at all this.
00:18:33 Okay.
00:18:34 Okay, now we're on July 24th.
00:18:37 And I want you to read Mr. Kroenke's text that starts, the paragraph that starts with, at this juncture.
00:18:43 At this juncture, I feel that I must inform you that every one of our roundtable conversations have been recorded.
00:18:51 Is that the first time you knew that you had been recorded?
00:18:53 I had no clue until that minute.
00:18:56 We suspected that you may try to manipulate this situation, so we felt it prudent to make a recorded record if it came to this situation.
00:19:04 Okay, now I want to go to page 52, sorry, page 53.
00:19:19 On July 24th it appears that Mr. Kroenke gives you two options and I want you to read the second option.
00:19:27 The second option is you guarantee payment to RAS in the amount of $225,000 by October 1st of 2020.
00:19:35 This guarantee is secured by all land currently owned by Randy Elliott or Treasure Chest LLC in the Dan Creek vicinity and as described in our written agreement.
00:19:48 Okay.
00:19:49 And again, there's 67 pages here.
00:19:52 We're not going to bore the jury with all of it.
00:19:53 But when, let me ask you to direct your attention to the jury.
00:20:01 When Mr. Kroenke informed you that he had corporate counsel on hand four hours a day or five days a week, how did you perceive that?
00:20:08 What was the impact on you?
00:20:11 That feels like a threat.
00:20:13 Of what?
00:20:14 Well, I don't have corporate counsel.
00:20:16 What is it, $500 an hour, somewhere in that range?
00:20:18 That's a lot of money, meaning I would have to hire a lawyer to defend myself where he already has one.
00:20:27 When Mr. Kroenke said that you had to guarantee payment by pledging the security that you have in your land, how did you react to that?
00:20:35 Getting the title to a gold mine is the most important part.
00:20:38 If you give that up for $200,000, it was worth $10 million to me, and I'm going to sign that over for $200,000.
00:20:46 What if FUBAR fell down, someone got hurt, and I didn't make $200,000 that summer?
00:20:51 I'm risking everything I worked for for 40 years for $200,000 to this guy.
00:20:54 All right, I'm going to now go back to page 56.
00:21:10 Okay, so now we're talking about August 6th, Thursday, August 6th.
00:21:14 And what does Mr. Kroenke write to you?
00:21:17 He says, if I could get another payment in gold tomorrow, I'd be grateful and appreciative, Randy.
00:21:24 So it appears that you guys are communicating in a more positive way at this point.
00:21:27 Yes.
00:21:27 Okay.
00:21:28 And then on August 12th, it looks like Mr. Kroenke is going to come back and visit Dan Creek with Frank and Kevin, and then read to the jury what he says, beginning with, if we cannot.
00:21:39 If we cannot find a written path, this will end badly.
00:21:44 What did you think he meant by that?
00:21:45 It meant he was going to sue me or those lawyers we heard about were going to be involved.
00:21:49 And how did you respond?
00:21:52 We're working up the canyon today.
00:21:53 We'll see you soon.
00:21:55 Who was working up in the canyon?
00:21:56 I was helping... I don't remember.
00:22:01 I had a guy.
00:22:02 I'm trying to remember who it was.
00:22:04 Frank wasn't there.
00:22:05 Travis...
00:22:06 was working on the blue plant, more or less.
00:22:09 I don't really even know that.
00:22:10 I was working up with someone up there.
00:22:12 Okay.
00:22:13 So then you write on August 17th, five days later, what did you write back to Mr. Kroenke?
00:22:19 Time to assess what's next.
00:22:21 We are testing up the canyon and the contractor is trying to start the blue plant.
00:22:25 What does that mean?
00:22:26 What should the jury understand about that?
00:22:29 They had left.
00:22:30 Travis had a medical emergency.
00:22:32 There's no frank.
00:22:32 There's no Travis.
00:22:33 He left his 16-year-old boy.
00:22:35 Nobody is working up the canyon.
00:22:37 Nobody's working on the blue plant.
00:22:40 I said, well, we'll go up and finish the testing they're doing.
00:22:43 We'll see what they're finding.
00:22:44 In the end, we couldn't do it, but I'm opening it up.
00:22:47 We're getting ready to strip and see what more there is.
00:22:49 Okay.
00:22:50 And then the blue plant, Armstrong's a
00:22:54 A good mechanic.
00:22:56 It needed a mechanic.
00:22:57 It was wired incorrectly and the motor wouldn't turn.
00:22:59 He said, well, I can take care of that.
00:23:00 So he's down there working on it because we anticipate that if they're not coming back, we might as well use the blue plant.
00:23:07 I mean, I had no income from all that effort.
00:23:11 Then you write on August 17 in response to Mr. Kroenke saying, as soon as Travis recovers, I think we should proceed as we agreed in our meeting.
00:23:18 What do you write back to Mr. Kroenke?
00:23:21 Okay, the blue plant is or will run for more testing of the valley above.
00:23:25 This will be more difficult.
00:23:27 I don't know what you want to test next or if you want to test at all.
00:23:31 You can talk to Frank about this in a couple of hours and then see what we're going to do next.
00:23:36 Were you giving Mr. Kroenke and his crew an ultimatum that they couldn't mine at Dane Creek?
00:23:41 No, not at all.
00:23:42 I wanted them to come back.
00:23:43 How am I ever going to get my money if they don't mine?
00:23:45 I have no crew.
00:23:46 FUBAR is working for themselves.
00:23:48 This was the problem from day one.
00:23:50 And it looks like Mr. Kroenke says he wanted to spend a couple more weeks mining in the areas that Frank tested.
00:23:56 And how did you respond?
00:23:56 That's okay.
00:23:58 Seth, I'm okay with you mining the areas he tested.
00:24:01 But at the current arrangement, it costs me $1,000 every day.
00:24:03 They're using the little yellow plant.
00:24:06 It's never going to produce... He's charging me $3,000 a day.
00:24:09 For what?
00:24:11 For using his crew and his 336 and his Sani, which doesn't run.
00:24:15 I'm paying rent.
00:24:17 I'm paying their wages.
00:24:18 But not only that, I have to provide all the fuel.
00:24:20 And we were out of fuel.
00:24:22 We were completely out of fuel.
00:24:23 I flew it in in an airplane nearly that same day.
00:24:26 It was $6,000 for flying one day.
00:24:28 And I'm paying for all of that out of FUBAR money.
00:24:31 They're not making any money.
00:24:37 You can tell I was angry about this.
00:24:39 This is not how it works.
00:24:40 You just don't do this.
00:24:42 Okay, now I want to turn your attention to page 59 and sixty You see at the top of the page it says is it your decision to buy or not?
00:24:56 Yeah, I said is it your this is something I was talking to him about the agreement to my new partner etc I said is it your decision to buy this or not?
00:25:03 What do you want to do?
00:25:04 It's up to him
00:25:05 Were you telling him he couldn't mine?
00:25:07 I told him he could buy it, or I told him he could mine, but they didn't have any crew.
00:25:10 Okay, and then he responds, and then I want you to read the last two parts of his response on page 60.
00:25:17 Page 60 is down here?
00:25:18 Yeah, it starts with pretty simple.
00:25:19 Pretty simple, Randy.
00:25:20 I'll give you your choice.
00:25:21 The third option is that you are served a lawsuit in the next week.
00:25:26 It's August, folks.
00:25:28 Then I want to go to page 62.
00:25:50 Sorry about that.
00:25:55 I'm going to page, okay, page 63 is what I meant.
00:26:04 It says Randy, is that, in that text from Mr. Kroenke, what does he write to you?
00:26:11 He says Randy this is the response we have come to expect from you as such the following be filed on 16 October unless an agreeable payment is made before that date.
00:26:21 What is attached to that text message?
00:26:25 It's a legal complaint.
00:26:26 What's a complaint?
00:26:27 What did you understand it to be?
00:26:28 That's a lawsuit.
00:26:28 I mean what we have here.
00:26:30 This lawsuit.
00:26:39 When did the mining season in 2020 end, approximately?
00:26:41 October 20th.
00:26:44 So the FUBAR crew was still mining all the way through October 20th?
00:26:47 They were.
00:26:48 And when did you reconcile all the expenses and gold recovered with that crew?
00:26:53 I saw them on around the 1st of November at their, in Wasilla.
00:26:57 Okay.
00:27:02 Just to highlight this again, the testimony of the plaintiff's witnesses has been that you prevented
00:27:08 Seth Kroenke v Treasure
00:27:28 Yesterday Mr. Kroenke testified about how he had set up a meeting with his crew on or about November 5th and you didn't show up for the meeting correct why didn't you show up for that meeting I had a diesel truck I was in Kenny Lake and I couldn't get it started it was 22 below zero or something we could look it up it's at 300 miles I mean I got to drive there how else am I going to get there when that meeting was set had you already been aware that liens have been filed against your property I had been aware of that for two weeks maybe
00:28:07 Mr. Elliott, were you aware of interest in your property from other people that might have wanted to buy your property in the fall of 2020?
00:28:18 There was.
00:28:18 Okay.
00:28:19 And did you learn that that interest either ended or paused because of the liens filed by Mr. Kroenke?
00:28:28 Can we approach?
00:28:29 You may.
00:28:37 The first thing we learned was that you could ask whether there was any way to market or sell Treasure rings, not about purchasing back out the Treasure rings.
00:28:46 Well, your question was whether interest was paused.
00:28:51 That's my question.
00:28:53 In relation to the particular buyer that you asked about in the prior question.
00:29:01 I don't think that question violates my order.
00:29:03 Did interest stop?
00:29:03 Pardon me?
00:29:05 Did interest stop as a result of liens?
00:29:07 If it doesn't make sense, I don't think you know why the interest stopped.
00:29:14 Interest just stopped, which is fair.
00:29:27 Mr. Elliott, did interest in purchasing your property stop after the liens were filed?
00:29:33 According to the buyer, yes.
00:29:34 Mr. Elliott, I want you to tell the jury
00:29:56 To the best of your ability, what it cost you to support your contribution and your efforts pursuant to the first and second agreement you had with Mr. Kroenke?
00:30:07 The first one I estimated would be about $100,000.
00:30:10 I think we went over that, probably $20,000.
00:30:13 So my half would be $60,000.
00:30:14 I had some serious damage.
00:30:17 I lost a rock truck and maruka tracks, et cetera.
00:30:20 But I can't say that that wouldn't have happened, so I'm going to absorb that.
00:30:25 The net effect was I didn't have either one of those two pieces for several months, so that's an effect.
00:30:31 As they mined later on, I probably spent another $10,000 on support, etc., all my support equipment, my crane, my Volvo excavator, and my welding equipment.
00:30:44 I had two plasma cutters.
00:30:45 Both of those don't work.
00:30:47 They were destroyed.
00:30:48 And we ran through all my steel, all my welding rod, almost everything I had to work on metal.
00:30:53 Travis is good, but he uses things.
00:30:56 So when we were done, I probably spent another $40,000.
00:30:58 And then there was fuel.
00:31:02 They burned almost 3,000 gallons of fuel.
00:31:06 By the time I flew it in, it was close to $7 a gallon.
00:31:10 And we have that.
00:31:11 So that was the basic just to them.
00:31:14 From the beginning of this trial, the jury has heard and have discussed the importance of receipts.
00:31:20 So here you sit four years later.
00:31:22 Where's the binder with all the receipts that support what you just told the jury?
00:31:27 A lot of it was already on the site, so I have no receipts because I didn't keep those.
00:31:32 And then it's in kind.
00:31:33 I mean, I trade gold for the fuel, and I don't keep track of that.
00:31:37 I meet this man.
00:31:39 buy all the fuel in November, I meet him in November, his wife makes dinner, they present the bill and I pay it in gold.
00:31:44 I don't question it, it just has to be this way, because I get fuel all season and I don't keep track.
00:31:49 Airplane fuel, he flies fuel, etc.
00:31:52 The only other expenses that I would have had were on-site, all my welding rod, my equipment was already there, I don't have much to show for that.
00:32:00 I have probably got $5,000 of things I bought at Alaska Hardware or whatever.
00:32:07 But those receipts hardly even matter.
00:32:09 They're nothing compared to the expense.
00:32:12 I don't support my crew's accommodations.
00:32:15 So I have no food.
00:32:16 I don't pay attention to it.
00:32:17 I don't charter them in and out.
00:32:18 They do all of that.
00:32:19 My only expense is I have my own airplane for my convenience.
00:32:23 But I live there.
00:32:25 It's my home.
00:32:26 If you walk into your home today and say, do you have a receipt for everything you see in the room?
00:32:29 Well, you might, but you probably don't.
00:32:31 I know you accountants probably do.
00:32:32 I'm sorry, but I'm just not that guy.
00:32:35 And so I don't have anything to show them.
00:32:37 But you can tell that they ran their machines.
00:32:39 They burned 5 or 10 gallons an hour.
00:32:41 They ran them all summer.
00:32:42 They must have used that much fuel.
00:32:44 And my bills were not accurate in the sense of down to the absolute dollar.
00:32:49 but clearly you can't drive your car from here to Palmer without 30 gallons of gas you know that so it doesn't take any rocket science to figure out what you pay for it oh you paid 350 not 375 I don't even worry about that we were hundreds of thousands of dollars invested every season I can account for the fuel because I could call Roland up and ask him what I paid he keeps track but I don't know taxes on it they're all business expenses everything I spend out there
00:33:16 It's just a push.
00:33:17 The only question is, do I have enough gold to pay those bills?
00:33:20 And when we did this with Seth, I didn't keep track of anything.
00:33:23 All of my effort was from the end of the McCarthy Road to Dan Creek.
00:33:26 There are no gas stations, there's no stores, there's no nothing.
00:33:29 Whatever I bought in town was not
00:33:32 food and personal stuff and it wasn't major equipment and it was only fuel and then the problems that I had we solved them with pieces I bought two years before I was unable and I told him that in the meeting in June 6 I'm going to be unable to document what I'm putting in here
00:33:49 because I already bought all of it.
00:33:50 It's there to be used and it'll be gone when you're gone and I don't have any way to document that.
00:33:55 I knew that.
00:33:57 So let me ask you about that.
00:33:58 You mentioned the June 6th agreement and there's been some testimony about the inclusion of the word anecdotal.
00:34:03 Yes.
00:34:04 Could you describe to the jury why you included that?
00:34:06 Well, I've already been raked over the coals about what anecdotal means but the real reason I used it was because I'm not going to be able to provide receipts for my equipment.
00:34:16 I'm not going to be able to provide receipts for the maintenance of the equipment.
00:34:20 For example, there was a transmission out there, $29,000.
00:34:23 We used it, but I paid for it four years before and I have no way to show that.
00:34:29 So I said anecdotal means if I tell you that I burned 3,000 gallons of fuel and I can relate that to what we did, like 1,000 equipment hours or whatever it is, and make it look reasonable, that's worthwhile.
00:34:42 Just like my time.
00:34:43 They asked me how much time I spent.
00:34:45 When was the last time that I actually punched a clock or kept track?
00:34:49 I've had two jobs in my whole life.
00:34:52 This is what I do, and I would never count my hours.
00:34:54 I'm out there all day long.
00:34:56 Do I count when I eat lunch and deduct that?
00:34:58 I don't get a salary.
00:34:59 Nobody pays me.
00:35:00 I could work my heart out this whole year and still not get paid.
00:35:03 Why would you keep receipts when they're not deductible?
00:35:06 Ever.
00:35:06 The only key here is you have to have everything you need in May, and then November 1st, you go to the bank and say, well, I guess we're ready for another year, and if you're lucky, it's way better than that, and gold prices are up, so we feel good today.
00:35:20 I didn't feel very good that year, but
00:35:22 I don't have any receipts because I never have any receipts.
00:35:25 This is like a farm.
00:35:27 You go and get what you need and you use it because you know you're going to get the animals and the food.
00:35:30 You don't really think about that.
00:35:32 And then I got into business with a company and I could see as we were writing the contract, he's talking about fair market value for rentals.
00:35:39 I've never rented a machine in my life.
00:35:40 You either buy it or it's not there.
00:35:42 You don't have any chance.
00:35:44 They talked about buying at Ritchie.
00:35:45 Where else am I going to shop?
00:35:48 $160,000 per piece.
00:35:49 There's 30 of them out there.
00:35:50 Where would I get that money?
00:35:52 So we buy people's cast-off junk because there's no customer.
00:35:57 The gold doesn't care how pretty your excavator is.
00:36:00 And the people working there are not the people that drive nice pickups.
00:36:04 They're used to running junk.
00:36:05 Their cars are junk.
00:36:06 I had to loan them money sometimes just to get to McCarthy so they could come in and work.
00:36:11 Okay.
00:36:11 All right.
00:36:12 I want to move on.
00:36:15 First, I want you to comment about Mr. Clark's testimony that he referred to you as a simple man and he offered you a simple agreement.
00:36:22 How do you respond to that?
00:36:23 I am a simple man.
00:36:25 If you do what you say, we have no problem.
00:36:27 That's it.
00:36:28 The agreement was just...
00:36:31 It was my attempt.
00:36:32 I'm not a lawyer.
00:36:33 I don't type.
00:36:34 I don't have any of those skills.
00:36:36 It was my attempt to make sure they didn't forget what they said and it didn't make any difference.
00:36:44 How do you feel when Mr. Clark testified yesterday that you are a gold miner with limited resources?
00:36:49 That's true.
00:36:50 All gold miners have limited resources.
00:36:55 Mr. Clark testified that he thought the equipment out at Dan Creek was good enough for gold mining but it wasn't up to his company standards correct what is good enough for gold mining me if you can get it running I mean even if you have to take a screwdriver and lay on the ground and touch it but if you can get it running as soon as you pick up the gravel and I have a saying I tell all of my crew if you if you ever visit me if I can't hear noise if I can't hear gravel running over the screen deck
00:37:21 It's way too quiet because that's the only sound that means they're washing Gravel and that there's going to be money at the end of the day.
00:37:28 And I tell the foobar every single day, I got up this morning, it's 7 o'clock, it's really quiet down there, what are you doing?
00:37:35 And then they get all defensive, well, we just needed two hours off.
00:37:37 I say, you're not making any money here if you guys are going to do it.
00:37:40 It's beyond that now.
00:37:41 I've known them for five years.
00:37:42 I no longer care.
00:37:43 They absolutely get what they have to do.
00:37:46 And when I first start off with new people, I just tell them, if you can't hear the gravel screen running, it starts with that piece of equipment.
00:37:52 And you can put gravel in with shovels, you can drop it from balloons, you can fly it in in 747s, but if it's not shaking, you're not going to get any gold out of it.
00:38:01 So this piece is the first one.
00:38:02 And because the blue clamp is the first piece and it never ran, it didn't matter what else they did, what else they did with their equipment.
00:38:10 It didn't matter.
00:38:11 Did the FUBAR crew get that blue plant running towards the end of the 2020 mining season?
00:38:14 They started it at the end of August after Kroenke's crew Turnbull came in, got his son, moved all their equipment off of Dan Creek to a neighbor's property.
00:38:28 And then they took it, and they couldn't make it run.
00:38:30 It ran two or three days, but it had some serious, not Travis's fault, just serious design flaws from the original guys.
00:38:37 So they fought it the rest of the time.
00:38:39 They've used it two years.
00:38:40 I don't think they've passed a week where they didn't work on it.
00:38:43 And now it's been parked.
00:38:44 They bought a better one, a quarter of a million dollars for a better one.
00:38:49 I think you touched on this, but I want to ask you.
00:38:51 The area that's defined as Idaho Gulch, which is included in the first and second agreements,
00:38:57 just explain a little bit more what is that what is that Idaho gulch 55 acres patented 1911 by hand imagine $2,500 dollars worth of gold times three
00:39:10 In 1911, gold was $20 an ounce.
00:39:13 That's about 150 ounces of gold, and they did it with shovels.
00:39:16 There was nothing up there.
00:39:17 These guys walked in.
00:39:18 It's a crazy, crazy hard place to get to.
00:39:21 I've never been able to mine there, but I've been there a few times in the 80s, and my bucket trip dream was to end up with a nice little house up there
00:39:30 Because if it's by hand all I have to bring is any power piece of equipment and it's gonna be bucket trip for the I've dreamed about it for 30 years.
00:39:38 Is that why you didn't want?
00:39:40 I've never wanted to sell Idaho Gulch ever.
00:39:42 I just never want to sell it.
00:39:44 Did Mr. Kroenke lean Idaho Gulch as part of his lean?
00:39:46 I think he did.
00:39:47 Okay.
00:39:54 What was the first time that the idea of promising
00:39:58 Frank Martin and Travis turnbull a portion of the gold when's the first time that arose as you that happened in June 6 he wanted to give them Seth Kroenke wanted to give them five and six percent I think or you know some range ten percent between the two of them and that gold would come out of the gold that we mined on the blue plant
00:40:18 And I pointed out to him that you can't give each person 5% or 10%.
00:40:22 I mean, pretty soon you're up to, what if his drivers found out they were getting 5%?
00:40:27 They'd want 1% or 2%.
00:40:28 Next thing you know, we're giving 50% to people who are just driving a truck.
00:40:32 And people are getting paid as well.
00:40:33 They're getting paid already.
00:40:34 I said, but okay, they want gold, okay.
00:40:40 In that small binder in front of you, could you just flip to Exhibit 3, please?
00:40:46 I don't know if I can count that high.
00:40:49 One.
00:40:49 You guys can help me.
00:40:50 Two.
00:40:53 Three is Chittender Recording District.
00:40:56 Right.
00:40:57 Is exhibit three, is that the lien that you understand was filed against your property?
00:41:02 This is it.
00:41:02 Okay.
00:41:03 And what's the amount of the demand in the lien?
00:41:05 $513,644.43.
00:41:06 When's the first time you became aware of the amount of the lien?
00:41:14 It was after the suit was filed in November, sometime in November.
00:41:18 Okay.
00:41:18 And you see at the top of page, I'm sorry, at the top of page one of Exhibit 3, the date that it was recorded?
00:41:24 11-13 of 2020.
00:41:26 Okay.
00:41:27 So when you see that number 513, does that, that reflects essentially all of the expenses that Mr. Kroenke claims he had that summer, right?
00:41:36 I guess.
00:41:37 I mean, it's his lien.
00:41:38 But your agreement required you guys to split expenses, didn't it?
00:41:41 That would be correct.
00:41:43 And it's your understanding, you're not an expert in this area, but it's your understanding that this lien encompasses all of the property that you own at Dan Creek.
00:41:53 It does.
00:41:54 And of the 480 acres or so that you own at Dan Creek, how much did Mr. Kroenke actually touch with either himself, his equipment, or his crew?
00:42:05 They mined on six below, and they mined on three and three above, actually, just two.
00:42:11 So that would be two claims, and you said... Twenty-six acres.
00:42:15 Twenty-six acres.
00:42:15 But he's filed a lien for all 480 acres?
00:42:18 All of it.
00:42:23 The last thing I want to ask you about, Mr. Elliott, is Mr. Brzezinski at the beginning of his trial said that this case is about deceit, greed, and a blatant breach of faith.
00:42:31 How did you feel when you heard Mr. Brzezinski call you deceitful?
00:42:36 Well, he's entitled to his opinion.
00:42:40 How would I feel?
00:42:40 How would you feel?
00:42:41 Do you feel like you were deceitful in any way with Mr. Kroenke?
00:42:46 If you listen to all those business meetings, I spent all my time explaining to them what we needed to do to make that thing run, to make it profitable.
00:42:55 I spent all my time trying to explain to them that mining isn't contracting, and they just didn't hear me.
00:43:00 If Mr. Kroenke had listened to you and kept his crew and gotten that blue plant running, at least tried to get it running, if they had stayed, could they have made money that year?
00:43:11 Of course.
00:43:12 How much money did the FUBAR team make digging that left ditch on Exhibit C?
00:43:17 How much gold did they recover that season in 2020?
00:43:20 I think it was 550 ounces.
00:43:22 Raquel disputes that.
00:43:24 Once you split, I have to tell you, it's in the book.
00:43:27 I could look it up.
00:43:28 But once you divide the gold, you know, my 80 or 20 or whatever you're going to get, it's dead.
00:43:34 Nobody ever looks at that again.
00:43:35 You don't need it.
00:43:36 It's just to settle the bill.
00:43:38 So I don't keep track of how much money I have because it's all mine.
00:43:41 This would have been a tougher show because half of it is theirs and I have to account for it.
00:43:45 So I was already off the deep end.
00:43:47 I could have hired an accountant, I suppose.
00:43:50 Why don't you go back to Exhibit 2 in that binder?
00:43:52 Exhibit 2.
00:43:53 Yep.
00:43:57 I want you to read to the jury the second paragraph that starts with, at the end of.
00:44:02 At the end of the 2020 season, November roughly, Randy and Seth agreed to sit down to formulate either a buyout agreement or a partnership agreement with the goal of an exit strategy for Randy Elliott.
00:44:17 Thank you, Your Honor.
00:44:17 I'll pass it with us.
00:44:19 Thank you, Mr. Campion.
00:44:21 Present consequential approach format.
00:44:32 We've got plenty of time yet this morning.
00:44:55 Okay, folks, we're going to take a short break, just give everybody a stretch moment and switch gears, and then Mr. Brzezinski is going to ask some questions.
00:45:02 We're not going to finish with Mr. Elliott today, but we're going to get started, so we'll give you a short break at least.
00:45:39 Okay, jury is out.
00:45:42 So, five minutes set off, quick break, and we'll bring him back.