December 31, 2007

To: All RROC members

From: William Pritchard, Mid-Continent Director, RROC

The purpose of this letter is to notify or inform you of developments at the national club that I believe should be of great concern to the membership as a whole.

A New York State Court granted a $350,600 default judgment against the RROC on 10 th of December, 2007.

This is just one of two lawsuits against the RROC; the other is a federal lawsuit in the amount of $450,000. The additional amount may be offset by the NY judgment, so that the total payable by RROC, in addition to legal costs, may be only about $500,000. This, of course, is bad enough. In the New York lawsuit, from what I can determine, the club legal counsel allowed the court to enter a default judgment into the record by failing to appear timely, as demanded by the summons, without any explanation offered to the board. The financial implications are staggering, but the effect this affair is having on the membership of the club is erosion of its very foundation.

What I see is a small group of people running the club, circling the wagons and preparing for total war. Any voice of reason that urges finding a way to settle these, now very deep, problems is being called traitorous and threatened with removal from office. The board members are kept in the dark and don't even know the name of outside legal counsel representing RROC in court. The problem, as I see it, is that RROC legal counsel advises only confrontation and battle. I have found, over many years and witnessing many lawsuits, that such a legal tactic is rarely the best approach. It invariably causes the opposing side to react in kind and you need to have very deep pockets to pull this tactic off. RROC legal counsel and its advisors are fond of predicting the future, yet it appears to me that none of their predictions ever seem to bear fruit. First, they told the board that our insurer would provide coverage in the event of a lawsuit against the club. The insurer has now disabused us of that possibility, so RROC legal counsel advised suing the insurer, saying that they were sure that the club would prevail. Now they say that the default judgment is a nullity and not worth the paper it's written on; yet in reality, it appears that an appeal must be filed and that the RROC must be able to show a meritorious defense to overturn the default judgment, a very high hurdle. As this fight drags on, the club will continue to be torn apart, producing damage that will last for many years after the courts have settled this matter for us, with the possibility of pushing the club to the edge of bankruptcy. Whatever the result, we all lose.

The chronology of events outlined above may be viewed at www.imicom.com/RROC/chronology.htm .

I know that the members to whom I have spoken do not want all of this animosity and turmoil in their club, nor do I. Now at the end of my three year directorship, I will be concentrating on helping make my own region's focus the cars and fellowship. I look forward to enjoying myself, and I pray that sanity will prevail at the national level.

Also, of great import are the proposed new bylaws, which will do away with area directors and thus your traditional representation on the board. These amendments are scheduled to be presented at the time of the annual meeting. They will then be discussed and voted on at a telephonic board meeting 90 days later and not connected with any member event and without even notice of the meeting to the members. In conclusion, all of this seems intended to run the RROC out of the view of the members.