DMG Entertainment has fired back against Chris Fenton, the former head of its motion picture group who filed a $30 million breach of contract suit in February. Get much more data about Feeding
the Dragon
Inside a counterclaim, DMG blasts Fenton as a disloyal employee who advanced his personal interests at the company’s expense. The suit alleges that Fenton “cultivated his persona of a ‘player'” in the sector even even though losing millions of dollars.
“Fenton was terminated for his poor performance, gross mismanagement, and fraud around the companies he served,” the counterclaim states.
Fenton departed in February 2018, and alleges in his lawsuit that he was wrongfully reduce out of the income in the company’s IPO. Fenton claims his put his reputation around the line to defend DMG from an SEC investigation into possible bribery of Chinese officials.
He also says he lost faith in founders Dan Mintz, Wu Bing, and Peter Xiao, concluding that they were engaged in risky borrowing against company stock to finance the purchase of a $30 million jet as well as a $20 million mansion in Beverly Hills, Calif. He also alleges that the founders have run the company into the ground.
The counterclaim accuses Fenton of sloppy business practices, like failing to execute adequate due diligence or sustain suitable business records. “He either was unable or unwilling to carry out even essentially the most standard managerial tasks,” the suit alleges.
The suit also accuses Fenton of claiming credit for others’ work.
The suit states that Fenton, in 2016, cost the company millions in damages on a deal to generate live shows in China featuring the Transformers characters. DMG alleges that the shows were delayed, and that Fenton’s production partner, S2BN, allowed its licensing handle Hasbro to expire. The shows were never ever made.
“Fenton was driven by his own ego and want for personal glorification inside the public eye; in order to cultivate the persona of a ‘player,’ his priority was getting a deal ‘done,’ as opposed to searching out for the most beneficial interest of DMG CC,” the suit alleges.
The suit also accuses Fenton of creating misstatements for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in an effort to gain admission, and that he used his membership “for his own personal achieve as opposed to for the benefit of DMG CC.”
The suit accuses Fenton of fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, and negligence, and seeks $30 million in damages.
Fenton’s attorney, John R. Baldivia, issued this response:
“We locate it interesting that our client, who was accountable for placing collectively the deals for each ‘Iron Man 3’ and DMG’s ownership of Valiant (also as quite a few other productive endeavors that DMG now brags about) is now on the receiving end of a cross-complaint regarding his performance as a former DMG employee. As we've mentioned before, we will permit the information to speak towards the truth about DMG’s actions, at the same time as the actions of our client.”
A DMG spokesperson shot back: “Once again, Fenton is attempting to take credit for work he didn’t do. He made a mess of those deals, which other individuals had to clean up.”
