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This is an outline of our observations and comments concerning our depositions conducted by Larry McFarland of Keats McFarland & Wilson.

Larry McFarland at the deposition seemed to feel that we had neglected him in our comments on our website. Now we can't have that, can we? This is for you Larry. Be careful what you ask for. Let's start off the story of the deposition. It starts with the law firm of Keats, McFarland & Wilson sending us a notice of deposition that did not comply with the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (F.R.C.P.). We pointed that out to them. They didn't take the correction well. We spent 3-4 seconds being concerned that we had hurt their feelings. Then we cited some more legal stuff, and they re-noticed us. Gosh, guess we were right. Keep in mind that all of our legal research is done on Alta Vista and Google. We don't have a really nice law library or degree. But apparently we understood the F.R.C.P. better than they did. They insisted that since they were allowed two 7 hour depositions that they were going to take them. We pointed out that they didn't have 7 hours worth of questions for each of us. They probably didn't have 7 hours worth of questions for us together. The depositions were originally scheduled for August 26th & 27th. On August 24th they called to reschedule. They gave some kind of "we're still conducting discovery" excuse but we wonder. We doubt that Larry cancelled his plane tickets at the last minute. If he did, we're sure MGA was billed for the cancellation. Anyway the depositions were moved from Denver to Colorado Springs and held on October 14th and 15th. Mike's deposition lasted from 10-12:30 on the 14th, Karen's lasted from 10-12 on the 15th. If you deduct the questions asked and answered in the interrogatories, the duplicate questions asked of Mike and then of Karen, the questions that were answered on the website and all of Larry's breaks, both depositions could have been done in 3 hours total. Tops. Now, were the depositions really moved from August to October because of discovery? You know, that's an excellent question. We're starting to wonder if they were actually moved to October because Larry couldn't get in at the Broadmoor Hotel in August. For those of you who don't know the Broadmoor Hotel is the MOST expensive place to stay in all of Colorado. Rooms start at $300 a night. And that's the starting price, they go higher and that doesn't even include the taxes. And, you don't even get a free breakfast. Or high speed internet. Did MGA approve the accommodations before Larry left for the deposition or were they a pleasant surprise on Larry's bill? Also, inquiring minds want to know if Larry billed MGA for his time when he went to visit The Garden of the Gods? And after staying at the Broadmoor for 2 nights, why oh why did Larry feel the need to go on vacation from November 1-5? Now the depositions were held at the lovely Holiday Inn at the Airport in Colorado Springs. Larry however, flew into Denver and drove down to Colorado Springs. While the drive through Castle Rock is quite lovely we don't know why he just didn't fly into the Springs. We're fairly certain he didn't rent a compact car. If Larry had stayed at the Holiday Inn he would have received a 20% discount off his room rate since he was renting a conference room there for two days. Room rates at the Holiday Inn start at $80.00. And he could have gotten high speed internet access. As far as they needed to collect discovery. Let's review that shall we? At the time of the deposition they had in hand 7,222 pages of discovery. Larry had two boxes of documents Federal Expressed down to Colorado for the deposition. He asked Karen about 4 of the pages. Yup, just four pages. He could have put those in this brief case. That's .04% of documents. Total page count for discovery as of November 5, 2004 is now a whopping 10,170. And speaking of documents, where are those missing documents that Larry was searching for? And called his office about? And really Larry, if you want to keep your phone calls privileged the rules say you really shouldn't conduct any part of the conversation in front of the people you are deposing. Larry was quite clearly heard to say "I don't see them". (Larry makes note to self: open door, step into hallway, close door before talking on phone). Oh, did we mention that Karen had brought the laptop and was taking notes and recording break times? Items "off the record" that the court reporter didn't get were recorded by Karen. So, Larry bills his client for two nights at the Broodmoor Hotel instead of one night at the Holiday Inn (where he would have gotten a discount) and he bills his client for two days of room rental and two days for the court reporter instead of the one day of time the depositions actually took. Toss in the FedEx bill for both ways for two honkin' big boxes of unused documents. What the real tab and what should it have been? Larry spends his client's money rather lavishly. But back to the discovery. Let's do some math here. Let's say someone is reading these pages at the rate of a page a minute. That's 169 hours. Let's say they get an associate at $150/hour to do this. That's over $25,000 they've billed MGA Entertainment. Getting a clue now why the Bratz stuff is so overpriced? It's not the labor to produce these Bratz items. These things are mass produced in China more than likely by forced labor. Oh, and just in case Mr. David Oakes, the VeRO member for MGA feels left out, let's get to him. Mr. Oakes asserts that he has a good faith belief continuing to the present that the item offered for sale by Karen is infringing. Karen used a licensed Bratz appliqué on a fleece hat. MGA was nice enough to release well over a dozen different fabrics, cotton, flannel and fleece. People are using this fabric, handcrafting appliqués and putting them on items for sale. David Oakes apparently does not feel these are infringing. The standard for good faith belief is low. About as low as a lot of lawyers ethics. However, good faith belief does require some subjective basis. We can hardly wait for David Oakes to explain to the court why a licensed appliqué on an item for sale is infringing, but handcrafted appliqués on an item for sale are not. Or will Larry even bring Oakes to court? And don't let us forget to mention that Mr. Oakes is an attorney. Supposedly he should have at least half a clue on the Batlin standard for originality.