All inventory as well as personal belongings were momentarily confiscated. To ASL'rs, this is old news. But for those of you not of the ASL lifestyle, what a fascinating & disturbing turn of events. This has striking parallels the the infamous Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games several years ago. This summary of events, written by the recipient of the raid tells the story:

Tuesday, November 04, 1997 8:03 PM

A statement from Raymond J. Tapio, President of Critical Hit!, Inc.: This statement is issued with the authorization of Federal Court Judge, Hon. Marvin J. Garbis. It is made for the sole purpose of preventing false information from being spread over the internet.

On Monday October 27, 1997 representatives of Monarch Avalon in the form of Jackson Y. Dott, President and A. Eric Dott, Chairman, entered my private residence at approximately 7:50 AM, accompanied by counsel Charles J. Morton of Wright, Constable and Skeen, a Baltimore law firm. They were also accompanied by a Federal Marshall using a court order obtained ex parte; an ex parte order is one obtained without my counsel present.

Our position is that this order was obtained based on misleading information presented to the court by plaintiff and their counsel. Case law including Time Warner Entertainment Company against Jane Does #1-2 and John Does #1-10 calls for serious sanctions against plaintiffs and their counsel in the case of improperly seeking an order for seizure. A hearing on the appropriateness of the issuance of the order and the manner it was carried out by Avalon Hill in our case will take place in the future.

On Friday, October 31, 1997 the Critical Hit legal team assembled in Baltimore to begin the process of addressing this case. The result of this long day of hearings was a judicial order returning ALL records and inventory of Critical Hit!, Inc., including my personal effects. Following the hearing, the judge ordered that the TRO [temporary restraining order] with respect to certain product, be lifted. Specifically, we will continue to sell CH merchandise Platoon Leader 2.0 and all PL 2.0 products, including Armored Stand, Dzerhezinsky Tractor Works; any ALL AMERICAN products, Gembloux the Feint, Critical Hit magazines, ASL News Pack 1, and the Aussie '97 Pack.

Dean writes:

Latest word on this is that Tapio recovered all inventory & personal effects from the feds. He agreed with AH to include small labels that reflect the independent character of the Critical Hit mags & kits (i.e., separate from AH). But he's back in business.

How things could go so far south in the first place is a real question. Can you imagine the total disruption to your life if the cops confiscated the source of your livelihood including all business records, plus personal effects? That they gave them back the next day is really the least of problems--putting your life together once again would take weeks. As a small business owner, this sends shudders thru my spine. And I'm guessing that it ticked a lot of ASL'rs off to boot. What was AH thinking???

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