Last week I blogged that paint manufacturer Kelly-Moore, "May begin the year with a bankruptcy filing."
After posting THE blog, I reached out to Kelly-Moore's now former (more on that later) CEO Charles Gassenheimer providing a link to my work and offering him an opportunity to respond-as my journalistic ethics require.
And ethics is about to become THE topic of conversation!
In Gassenheimer's response, he stated that my work had included "numerous factual inaccuracies." So many in-fact that would take him "too long to correct the record," Gassenheimer further implying his assurance that were I to know his truth, I wouldn't publish it anyway!
I mentioned some of the process I go through to ensure THE veracity of my words and offered him two means to correct any record, one of which was to supply evidence impugning any assertion I had made.
Which he chose not to do!
Instead Mr. Gassenheimer chose door # 2, allowing him to address THE followers of these pages directly. My lone condition: his promise to limit his response to 500 words or fewer.
Which turned out to be the only promise Gassenheimer kept last week!
As further inducement I assured the soon-to-be former CEO that were he to respond, I would neither edit his words nor detract from their impact by responding that same day.
And with all that opportunity, this is what he chose to say?
A Response to Mark Lipton from Charles Gassenheimer-CEO of Kelly-Moore Paints.
"You published this story without verifying the facts with either myself or any member of the current Kelly Moore senior leadership team. Rather than correct the record, I would rather spend whatever remaining time I have focusing on trying to raise bail-out financing to salvage a business for the benefit of those dedicated and hardworking employees that still wish to work for Kelly Moore.
As for Flack’s Group intent - we invested in Kelly Moore to achieve success, unfortunately, the Company’s true financial picture was masked by the Moore Family and the previous board at the time of the sale in September of 2022. As this may be the topic of future litigation I will not comment further.
Finally, as to your numerous postings on Flacks Group’s or my previous endeavors, having fraudulent intent, that is also demonstrably false. We exited Corizon and doubled our money. In the case of the Ener1 settlement with the SEC, it was PriceWaterhouseCoopers that made the accounting error which caused the financial restatement, not management or the company. The audit partner at PWC received a two year ban from practicing due to his negligence. I chose to settle the matter with no admission of liability or bar or ban on being able to serve as an officer or director of a company."
