Robert McNulty,the founder of TheBigStore.com Inc. named in bankruptcy proceedings against the company,is striking back at critics with a defamation lawsuit.
As McNulty’s company fights legal moves by creditors to force it into liquidation, the hard-charging entrepreneur is accusing several members of the online stock discussion board RagingBull.com Inc. of defaming his character, invading his privacy and inflicting emotional distress.
The individuals who posted the messages are identified only by their Raging Bull screen names: “Sandboots,” “Michael_John318” and “Graphixman$$.” McNulty’s lawyers have asked RagingBull.com to hand over their real names and stop them from posting comments about him.
McNulty did not return phone calls for this story. Coincidentally, RagingBull.com is owned by AltaVista Co., which owns Shopping.com, an Internet retailer McNulty started and sold to AltaVisa for more than $200 million.
According to McNulty’s suit, which does not specify damages, the messages have “made him the object of ridicule in his own community” and jeopardized his ability to secure funding for other endeavors by tarnishing his reputation.
Most of the messages criticize TheBigHub.com, a publicly traded San Antonio, Texas-based company with operations in Orange County and ties to BigStore. Some posted comments make oblique references to McNulty’s past troubles with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
McNulty encountered federal regulators at Shopping.com. McNulty left Shop-ping.com during an SEC investigation, though he admitted no guilt and was not named in the case’s outcome. Before Shopping.com, in 1995, McNulty was ordered to divest $70,000 to settle charges stemming from money transfers among a chain of warehouse stores.
Though BigStore officials said McNulty no longer has a management role in the company, he does remain an investor and is named in several of BigStore’s lawsuits.
Bankruptcy proceedings against BigStore are attracting wider attention, with coverage from technology business magazine The Industry Standard and tech news site ZDNet.
Officials from would-be investor Chinadotcom Corp., meanwhile, are distancing themselves from the troubled operation. Despite a press releasing announcing a Chinadotcom investment in TheBigStore and a separate infusion into a HongKong-based joint venture with the company, the two companies now have no relationship, according to Chinadotcom.
“We discovered that you can’t run an e-commerce site in the Asian market using a U.S. model, and so we never finished the investment,” said Craig Celek, Chinadotcom’s investor relations spokesman. “No transaction ever took place, and no money changed hands.”
BigStore.com’s affiliate TheBigHub has taken the Chinadotcom logo and link off its site.
BigStore is fighting a bankruptcy liquidation suit from Santa Ana electronics distributor Ingram Micro Inc., which is trying to recover more than $3.28 million in unpaid bills.
Facing a half-dozen lawsuits from creditors and accusations of fraud by former employees and customers, officials with BigStore, also based in Santa Ana, say they plan to re-launch as a business-to-business operation.
BigStore, which sold everything from books to computers over the Internet, laid off most of its 200-or-so employees a few months ago. But, until recently, the company had continued to offer merchandise through its Web site. Ingram Micro is suing the company for merchandise it says it shipped on behalf of BigStore and never received payment for. Other companies are suing BigStore for smaller amounts they contend they are owed for computer services and equipment.
BigStore’s site has shut down, though company officials insist they’re still in business and plan to get back online soon. n
