It appears as though Richard C. Davis was successful in proving A&E owed him royalties based on a verbal contract, which is a tough case to prove. However after 5 hours of deliberation a federal jury sided with Davis. This quote from the The Post and Courier really shows how sincere Richard and his crew are:

Davis put his right hand over his eyes and sobbed from his chair upon hearing the decision. His employees and reality TV co-stars Ginger Alexander and Dawn Nosal cried together from the second row behind him Davis’ attorney, Frank Cisa, argued in his closing remarks that his client should receive more than $7.5 million in damages from three seasons of “Flip This House.” Only the show’s first season, in which Davis was credited as a creator, featured him and his Trademark Properties team. After splitting with A&E, the crew joined competing network TLC for the series “The Real Deal.”

The celebration may be too early, however, as A&E plans to appeal the decision.

With luck, the decision will stick. It serves A&E right, the Trademark team is what made “Flip This House” a success. The clowns that attempted to follow in Trademark’s foot steps were sleazy, shady, and didn’t appear to know the first thing about running a successful organization.

I’d love to see their show move to the Internet and let their true style come through. TLC did an ok job with it, however some parts just didn’t feel like Trademark.

Oh, and I have a request to Richard C. Davis and Trademark properties: Please invest in a good web designer or Internet marketing company. I love you guys to death but your websites are horrible.

For the full story see The Post and Courier: A&E told to pay Davis

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I was really going through withdrawals, waiting for this episode to premiere. I was a bit worried that there would be a lot of changes in the move to TLC, however I can say now that those fears have been alleviated.

It still amazes me how fast they can get a job done. Even more amazing is when they encounter a major hurdle and still finish on time. They really do pull off the impossible; it’s very inspiring to watch.

It will be interesting to see what the ratings were last Saturday, TLC vs A&E as the new season of Flip This House aired at the same time. It’s a shame I only have one tuner on my ReplayTV, I would have liked to see both.

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Mediaweek is reporting that Trademark’s new show ”The Real Deal” which will feature renovation and resale with Richard Davis, will be on the air in April. More details as they develop.

Lawsuit Updates

There are several upcoming deadlines. A&E must identify their experts, and mediation must be complete by March 1. All discovery should be completed by April 1. Motions are due by April 16.

I have pulled the new court documents and docket, and am in the process of writing a post to include the recent developments. One thing that stands out to me, however, is that the parties appear to be having a dispute in discovery about the privacy of documents relating to the financial affairs the Defendants, with the fear that Richard Davis and Trademark will share them with TLC or other entities. They also point out (quite well, I think) that the Plaintiffs’ claim that there was to be a 50/50 split of the profits from the show hasn’t been yet demonstrated. Unless Richard or Trademark can demonstrate that such an agreement existed, the Defendants’ financial affairs may not even be discoverable. The Court has entered an order that allows the attorneys to mark documents as confidential; if they choose do so, the distribution of those documents will be tightly controlled.

The Defendants also seem to make inaccurate or misleading statements about my website in their pleadings. This website is not operated by Richard Davis, Trademark Properties, or any of their employees or attorneys. This website is operated by Mark Lyon, a fan of the original “Flip This House”. None of the parties to the lawsuit have the ability to do anything other than post comments to this website, though I will happily consider publishing anything they submit to me.

Woohoo! I’ve been watching the old re-runs, going through withdrawls. I can’t wait.

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I cannot tell you how much your continued support means to everyone at Team Trademark! It has been unbelievable. I just wanted to update everyone! We are still filming and things are going great! The new show is still unnamed but we will let you all know the details the moment we get them. I just want to ask everyone to please continue to make your comments on http://www.imdb.com/ under the “Flip This House” page (you can search for it on the homepage). This is where we are getting the word across with the most emphasis! All of the networks look here so it is where support is needed the most!

Good to know, hope they really stick it to A&E.

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I was shocked when I tuned into the new season of Flip This House to not see the usual Trademark Properties gang, but instead these Montelongos. I did a little research and it turns out that A&E decided to move ahead with a second season of Flip This House with out Richard and his company, even though Richard created the series. So Richard and Trademark filed suit against A&E and are now signing on with Discovery Communications for a similarly themed series on TLC.

Armando Montelongo on the other hand is a pompous, arrogant, gangster wanna be; who, while has made some progress in the real estate market, has no track record and no excuse to act like “the man”. Anna Johns says is best:

He constantly degrades his wife and sister-in-law. He made them dress up in beekeeper outfits and exterminate a colony of bees so he could save $300 on a professional beekeeper. While they were running around choking on bug spray, he was drinking a beer and watching the action. When his sister-in-law proposed a website, he filled out a form she gave him, giving her a $0 budget. She made an ass of herself, calling around website companies and asking them to do it for free. He makes his wife negotiate her own pay for selling his houses. (What is wrong with these women?) He treats the labor like dirt, brings a big dog to intimidate a new contractor, and micro-manages foundation and drywall issues of which he has no knowledge. Please, television gods, don’t let this guy get his own show.

Well, too late Anna, they already filmed it. I was really curious to see how his free website turned out but I never watched another show after the first one, so I don’t know if it ended up being free or not. After A LOT of searching I finally found it, (obviously no SEO was used). Now, I’ll say it’s not the worst website I ever been to, but the front page has about half the space dedicated to the website designer. The designer, Myers Internet, appears to be one of those website mills that just sell the same template over and over again to a specific vertical market, like real estate. I laugh hysterically when I click on “Residential Properties” to find “We found 0 matching listings.” Not sure if it’s the fault of Myers Internet or the Montelongos not bothering to update their site. I’m guessing the latter of the two.

The worst part is, the Montelongos are getting so much free national advertising with Flip This House ( A&E reaches 88 million homes ) that spending $10,000 or even $20,000 on a well designed and maintained website could literally pay for itself in a few days. Having that kind of national TV exposure for free is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars if not more; why not spend some of that money on the one tool that will work for you? The site design has all the usual features that attract unsuspecting customers like Calculators and an “online” loan application which is just a PDF for the “Uniform Residential Loan Application”, at least it’s an Adobe Form so you don’t have to hand write.

In any case, I don’t wish the Montelongos any ill will, but for the love of god drop the bad ass gangster I obviously beat my wife because I can not perform sexually and if you don’t believe me I’ll sic my dog on you act and just play it cool; there will be plenty of time to humiliate your wife and sister-in-law off camera. I know that if I were looking for a house in San Antonio, I would not walk, I would RUN away screaming from the Montelongos based on the first impressions I got from that episode. And before you say “well the editing makes it look that way” I took that under consideration, as Anna said those guys are just A-holes.
According to a comment on Anna’s blog, there is hope:

Don’t worry guys. Richard and the crew will have a new show on the Discovery Channel and TLC soon. Trademark is currently in the process of suing A&E over the contract of the show because Richard actually created it (still says so in the credits). He elected to not renew the airing contract because A&E wanted a more “scripted show” (which is EXACTLY how the San Antonio group comes across….seriously, who has a water fight in the middle of a construction site with their spouse?).

And I found it here

Some Comment’s from Anna’s blog (but don’t let that stop you from going over there)

A&E went and ruined a really good show. These people act like they are in high school, how can anyone stand them. The southern guys had good personality and charisma. These people are annoying.

This MTV style ‘drama’ crap is driving me insane and it’s a shame that A&E is airing this trash.

Yeah, the guys are jerks. And the women have some of the whiniest valley-girl-type voices I’ve hear in a while. Not to mention the boy/girl competition came across as something totally scripted by the producers: “Wouldn’t it be great if you hired a bunch of bimbos in a pickup truck to lure away the crew? Let me make a call…”

Really makes me appreciate the South Carolina group. They’ve got class!

I certainly agree the new bunch from San Antonio is annoying! The new guy from Atlanta is also full of himself and gives the impression that the reason these guys are working for themselves is because nobody would keep them as employees. I like the team in SC much better. More house info/details less comedy/drama.

Visit www.flipthislawsuit.com for a letter from Richard C. Davis

And be sure to check out the Flip This House discussion board over at IMDB. (registration required)

And the unofficial Flip This House message board at http://64.177.235.123/FTH/. (registration required)

Original “free” website, I’m sure they stole this template from the guy that created it and moved it to their current site (I’m awaiting confirmation of this from the site developer, stay tuned!). Notice the “Join the Montelongo Get Rich Club.” Smells like late night paid TV programming. Frankly I think the original one looks better than the current one, but I don’t know what’s considered hot for ganster wannabes.

Melina Montelongo’s Modeling Website

One Google cache of message board posting deleted by A&E criticizing the new format and characters.

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