In a March 17, 2006 issue of the Star-Bulletin, Mesa Air Group’s CEO Jonathan Ornstein told the paper, in reference to a lawsuit his airline had filed against Hawaiian Airlines, “Frankly, I always view lawsuits as negative energy, and a lot of time spent on lawyers’ pay with very little good coming out of them.”

Not withstanding his comments then, apparently Mr. Ornstein feels that our recent coverage of the Hawaiian-Mesa trial was defamatory to his company.

I first received a letter from a legal firm representing Mr. Ornstein and Mesa on October 18, which was basically one of those “threat before we file suit” types of letters. The trial was over, but had not yet been decided. The letter demanded a retraction of several PlaneBuzz blog posts. In fact, the demand was for an immediate retraction. I did not feel there was a basis for the retraction of the posts, so I did not do so.

Those posts are:

Here

Here.

And here.

My attorney, who represented me against another similar lawsuit that Mr. Ornstein filed against me in 2002, Dan Barr of Perkins, Coie, Brown and Bain in Phoenix, was out of the country on vacation.

I replied to the law firm that sent me the letter that I would like time to discuss this with my attorney.

Neither he nor I received any additional response from the other firm. Nor did I receive any communication from Mr. Ornstein.

This past Friday I was served at the PlaneBusiness Worldwide Headquarters with the lawsuit. It was filed on the day the ruling came down in the Hawaiian case.

So folks, here’s the deal.

I am going to publish everything that is relevant to this case here. Publicly.  As it continues.

You can read for yourself and judge the merits (or demerits) of the suit.

Here is a .PDF of the original letter that was sent to me.

Here is a .PDF of the complaint section of the lawsuit. (There is more to the actual filing, but this will give you the gist of the assertions that are being made without you having to download 35 pages. However, if you want the whole thing, just drop me a note. I’ll be happy to send it to you.)

As my attorney told me Monday, “Just tell your readers that you are going to vigorously defend yourself in this matter.”

And folks, that is exactly what I intend to do.

Ticker: (MESA:Nasdaq)

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