Update regarding the CommunityBound/My Mountain Town Dispute

Dear members and advertisers of 285bound.com and mymountaintown.com

A MESSAGE FROM SHARON TRILK AND SCIENCE SENSE, LLC

As some or many of you are aware in this small community, a dispute has arisen between myself and Robin Honsey. I share the status of this dispute, in an effort to respond to certain inquiries or posts that I have observed, and to attempt to share some of the more pertinent facts, since this dispute unfortunately involves my community website, MyMountainTown.com, and the URL currently licensed to me ( http://www.285bound.com ).

In March, 2011, I entered into an agreement with Robin Honsey’s company, Community Bound, LLC. In that affiliate agreement, I agreed to pay, and did pay, a considerable sum to Community Bound, for the exclusive use of the http://www.285bound.com URL for a period of at least 3 years, with a renewal period. I was also paying that money so that I could have an exclusive geographic territory and so as to ensure that I would not have to compete with Robin herself, or any of her companies or affiliates. Robin’s company was to host the website, but nothing else. My understanding of the agreement was clear: my company (Science Sense LLC) and I had the exclusive right to manage the website in the 285 Corridor. I understood our agreement to mean that Robin would refrain from competing with me herself, as she is now doing, and I understood that she would refrain from selling or licensing any similar community oriented websites to any other affiliates in my geographical territory.

The money I paid to Robin and her company represents a significant investment in a company for me and my family. We also paid her ongoing monthly fees for hosting, among other things. In my view, my company and I met our end of the bargain. After negotiating that deal, I relied on that agreement in making the decision to invest my time and energies into making 285bound.com into a valued community resource, and into growing the membership and advertisers.

Unfortunately, it is my view that Robin did not understand the contract she had signed. She decided she still had rights to the URL despite accepting money to license it to me, and she often interfered with my right under the contract to manage the URL. Further, although she agreed to host the website, and although I paid her/her company monthly fees to host the website, her hosting abilities were not up to par, and I did not feel that I could have a successful business if I continued using Robin to host my website. At the time I raised hosting issues with her, Robin seemed to understand that her hosting efforts left something to be desired, because she agreed with me that I could migrate the site if I was not happy with her hosting, and she even informed me of this in writing in January, 2013 and in other conversations.

I relied on what she told me, and invested quite a bit of time and money to migrate the website at issue over to mymountaintown.com with the full expectation that Robin would cooperate with me to redirect all traffic.

Once I migrated the membership I cultivated in http://www.285bound.com over to mymountaintown.com, as I believe I was legally allowed to do, Robin changed her mind. She decided, our contract to the contrary, to begin actively operating 285bound.com and actively competing with me for members and advertisers.

After taking my money for this URL and entering into a bargain that promised that she would not compete with me in this geographic territory, I had some difficult choices to make as a business owner, and I concluded that I needed to stand on my contractual rights and seek relief in the Court and essentially try to get Robin to honor her agreement and to do the right thing.

As many people who have been in business for a while know, it is unfortunate, but business disputes arise and sometimes where negotiation is impossible, the only resort is the courts. Given Robin’s various breaches of the contract and tortious interference with our company’s agreements, which are outlined in my complaint against her, I felt that I had no choice but to make the business decision to move forward and to stand on our contractual rights in court. Our complaint against her for breach of contract and tortious interference with contract, as well as our request for an injunction to enjoin all of her improper competitive conduct, is now pending before the Arapahoe County District Court.

Regarding the status of the case, after filing our case and reviewing her claims and defenses, we have shared various documents in good faith. The case now moves into the discovery phase, with Robin’s deposition to take place in February, 2014. Further, Robin attempted to move to dismiss several of our claims, but the court rejected those arguments in significant party in an order dated November 27, 2013. On December 19, 2013, we attended an initial case management conference, and as part of setting deadlines in this case, we set a trial date in September, 2014.

I continue to suggest early mediation of the case to Robin, but to date, she has rejected that and apparently, it is her wish that she wants to litigate for several more months before sitting down to try to settle the matter.

I will note that I have made several good faith settlement offers to Robin that would allow us to put our disputes to rest, while honoring the license and making things fair and reasonable given the actions to date. Those efforts were not met in kind. I invite Robin to make a counteroffer in good faith.

Finally, I would like to say that I consider the dispute with Robin to be a distraction and secondary to my main goal which is to build my business, and to continue to work on building MyMountainTown.com into a valued community resource for the community, all members and all of my advertisers. Your membership, business and referrals are most appreciated. I invite all 285 corridor residents and businesses to check out mymountaintown.com, and see what we offer. I hope those in the 285 corridor realize that I am committed to operating my website in this community for a very long time, and that I am committed to fair competition, and to provide good value to this great community.

If you have any questions about my position, or want to discuss membership or advertising, please do not hesitate to contact me at 720-608-0285, as I am happy to share a position on this dispute.

Sincerely,

Sharon Trilk
MyMountainTown.com

Interesting, I was having that problem with another site today, but not this one. Is anyone else having that issue happen here?

TM, are these mymountaintown.com links that are slow (such as trying to open a thread), or are they links to other websites from here (say, a news story someone posted). Please let me know and I'll pass this along to my developer and see if he has some suggestions of what might be happening and how to fix it.

My apologies for the trouble you are having. I'll get back to you as soon as I can.

Edit to add: Anther question occurred to me: Is this only happening when you are accessing MMT at one location, or does it happen no matter where you are with your laptop or iPad (work, home, shopping, library, etc)? Thanks, that'll help narrow down a cause.