on the cover / By Bob Doran

Backstage Pass

Testimony at the Reggae Trial reveals years of SoHum backstabbing

(Feb. 21, 2008) There is no backstage at the Reggae Trial.And while it follows the same sort of rules and general form, the legal proceeding is not a traditional trial, civil or otherwise. The Hon. James Warren, a retired judge from San Francisco, presided over the first portion of the hearing, which ran from Jan. 28-Feb. 6 in a makeshift courtroom set up in a conference room at the Red Lion Inn in Eureka. A table laid with coffee, tea and ice water was set up along one wall. Observers were free to come and go as long as they did so quietly. There was a casual air to the proceeding, but the matters at hand were serious. At issue in Mateel Community Center vs. Dimmick Ranch is control over a music festival once known as Reggae on the River, a fundraiser that attracts thousands to a bend in the Eel River every summer.

The hippies of southern Humboldt started putting on the show 25 years ago to raise money to rebuild their community center. For most of that quarter century peace, love, harmony and something they called “the spirit of unity” prevailed, or so it seemed. Carol Bruno, a 61-year-old grandmother, nurtured the festival, turning it into a multimillion dollar enterprise that paid for a beautiful hall on a hill in Redway and, until recently, funded the operation of the Mateel, a community-based nonprofit. It was a symbiotic relationship, a lovely marriage. Or so it seemed.

GALLERY >

A couple of years ago, Tom Dimmick, a young local who grew up with Reggae, stepped into the picture by offering Bruno and the Mateel his family’s ranch for what was supposed to be a bigger, better Reggae on the River. Things did not work out as planned. Dimmick quickly sided with Bruno. The marriage with the Mateel dissolved, and now a team of lawyers in expensive suits is arguing a case that will decide the future of the festival and the nonprofit.

How did it come to this? Speaking to members at a meeting at the Mateel on Jan. 8, of this year, Mateel board treasurer Bob Stern said, “We’ve tried to persuade Carol and Tom to buy us out with an upfront payment that’s substantial enough … That’s gone nowhere. It seems they’d rather go to court. We further don’t think Carol and Tom will agree to any settlement offer that has the Mateel putting on its own Reggae on the River show … Our belief is, once again they’d rather go to court.”

The Mateel’s silver-haired attorney, Bill Bragg, spoke to the perils of pursuing the lawsuit at the same meeting. He warned that even if the suit is successful, financial satisfaction for the Mateel is unlikely, since People Productions would probably not be able to pay should they lose and would instead file for bankruptcy.

The fact that the confidential negotiations between the parties had been made public did not please the Bruno/Dimmick camp — they said so in an open letter, drawing a final line in the sand. They’d rather go to court than agree to unspecified Mateel demands.

So to court they went — or rather to something called alternative dispute resolution, an extra-judicial form of arbitration.

Things got off to a rocky start Monday, Jan. 28, with a pair of motions from Tom Dimmick’s lawyer, Jeffrey Knowles. At a previous non-public hearing Judge Warren had ruled that e-mail communications between members of the Mateel Board of Directors and the nonprofit’s executive director, Taunya Stapp, were not considered private and thus were subject to disclosure.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 NEXT PAGE >SHARE