Rossi vs. Darden developments [CASE CLOSED]

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When I tell him that Darden knew the test wouldn't be valid, he tells me that Darden was betting on the customer. Then when I tell him that Darden had good reason to not trust the customer, he agrees with me and just tells me they were trying to keep Rossi happy while trying to get his technology to work back in Raleigh. I find that highly dubious. I have not seen any indication in the documents that the test was necessary to keep Rossi "sweet." I have not seen anything to indicate they would spend something like $200,000 (roughly) to make that happen. I have not seen any indication in the documents where they say that this was their motivation. But perhaps I stand to be corrected.

I nevertheless have the strong impression that Huxley is not engaged in an honest debate...

I nevertheless object to somone with a weak case (in the sense that you have hunches that you present here as likely but don't back up with facts) calling me dishonest.

Ignoring the personal slur. You are misrepresenting my argument. I do you the credit of viewing this as a lack of attention, and not dishonesty. You force a binary choice on this matter of Darden's motivation, and note the $200K out of context. Remember he had already by this time spent $10.5M to get his hands on Rossi IP. $200K is another 2%. Surely worth it if either it can provide a truly working system, or keep Rossi on side. Darden would be very concerned to make absolutely sure whether or not the IP bought for $10.5M contained the Grail - or not. If he judges 2% of the purchase price will help that process he will pay it. You would judge differently? Maybe, but I can understand Darden's call here. Remember Darden does not care about a PR test. Either he can get Rossi's stuff working in his own labs, or not. That is the validation that matters. A real customer would be interesting because it would be a strong data point on the positive side and encourage continued efforts to get Rossi's stuff to work. But no real customer does not alter the situation. Darden would have to be an idiot not to be aware that this claimed test done on Rossi's terms is probably fake.

Personally I think that in paying the $10M IH made a big and high risk gamble. But I can understand it. Having put themselves in that position everything else is plausible.

You assume that Darden was betting on the Doral test (the 2%). In reality, they bet $10M, and added $0.2M as a judgement call because it would annoy Rossi not to go along with his request, and because perhaps they wete seduced by the independent external customer. I'm sure they would like to have knowm who it was, and I'm equally sure Rossi would not let them check. It is quite clear from Rossi's character and the way he treated this test that it was dear to his heart - presumably because of the possible $89M.

What you find inconsistent is perhaps that Rossi treated this as the GPT and IH did not. Anyone studying Rossi should not be surprised at this misrepresentation.

Personally - I'd not have backed the Doral test. But then I never credited Lugano as showing positive results, and never thought Rossi could have anything, his initial demos were so transparently false. I'm in no position to judge Darden. Calling him dishonest, on your hunch, is just as slimy as calling me dishonest.

Quote from anotherTroll

At least we know that Woodford based it's view of IH/Darden mainly on the core Rossi asset. They said so. No doubt Darden sold that view to them.

Please give me a reference for that claim. The information I was give was just the opposite, that when Paul and Harry visited the US Paul was more taken by the other researchers and was "put off" by Rossi and his secretive nature.

It is only in Rossi's mind that his work was the best.

In the interests of marginally improving the quality of discussions on this thread, I'd like to suggest that there are three general areas of interest in "Rossi vs. Darden" that I can think of:

1) LEGAL: The legal events, evidence, procedures and what they say about the outcome of these court cases (Rossi vs. Darden, Darden vs. Rossi, Darden vs. 3rd Parties).

2) ROSSI EFFECT: The question of whether the information being released in this case supports or refutes Rossi COP >1 (to a 'substantial' amount defined as either greater than 'noise level' or large enough to have some potential utility) Since the physics of energy is related to this area, they would reasonably be made WRT this category.

3) PSYCHOSOCIAL: The Social, Psychological and 'Moral' aspects of the characters in this case and the perceptions of those affected (including those contributing to this thread).

Since the thread is 'Rossi vs. Darden' other related (or unrelated) topics might best be made on a separate thread'.

There may be other categories, or ways to categorize these areas of interest, so if others have a better way to group the discussion, please have a go.

And obviously, there can be overlap on two or all three areas for any given topic.

The idea here for marginally improving discussion quality is that a commenter may want to make a point in one area without the implication that they are also committing to another area. For example, comments about a LEGAL event or outcome do not automatically imply support for or against the ROSSI EFFECT or the PSYCHOSOCIAL aspects of 'the Players' (Rossi, Darden, Johnson, etc.) or the 'posters'.

Often this thread degenerates into a kind of 'food fight' with little information or discussion occurring. This is actually NOT a criticism of this thread per se, NOR a call for any changes in moderation, as the 'food fight' phenomenon is quite common on many blogs. Nor am I proposing that anyone be bound in any way to 'declaring' their category of discussion. It's just that now, with all these Motions and Exhibits, we have so much information to process, filter and comment on, that using these foci in our discussion vocabularly might help improve the quality and efficiency of discussion.

So moving forward, if it seems helpful to a discussion point I am making, I am going to use these categorizations when it might help clarify the focus of that point. If it is helpful for others, please feel free to do so as well.

I'll be posting momentarily on an excellent comment by Bob Higgins as an example.

Quote from BobHiggins

I am surprised of no discussion followup on the issue of "spoilation" and adverse interpretation. From a legal standpoint, it now appears established that Rossi dissassembled and/or destroyed portions of the apparatus on both sides of the warehouse at the end of the test. This is the "spoilation" of evidence. This is very bad for Rossi's case. That causes the court to be required by law to interpret evidence for things that can no longer be shown due to the "spoilation" to be legally interpreted "adverse" to the Plaintiff (Rossi) and in the favor of the Defendant (IH). If the spoilation changed or affected the position of the flow meter, then the flow meter results must be legally interpreted in favor of the Defendant (IH), for example. How can any Rossi supporter defend this behavior?

Rossi's lawyers could have told him this. Did Rossi do this against the advice of his council (which apparently he had engaged before the end of his test)? No matter what, the "spoilation" of the devices in the 1MW plant and the JMP apparatus is evidence of deception, if not outright fraud. There would be some justification on the basis of this to pursue criminal fraud charges.

Remember, as I have said before, Ni-H LENR is not on trial here. The outcome of the trial will provide no evidence of whether Ni-H LENR is real. In fact, it will likely not even say whether Rossi's devices (some or all) produce excess heat. The outcome will only determine whether IH owes Rossi for the completion of the contract.

I think this is an excellent point regarding 'Spoliation'. My understanding of 'adverse interpretation' in this specific example is that were Spoliation established by the Court, the Judge (and Jury if a trial occurs) would then interpret Rossi's data as demonstrating that there was no excess heat. Note that this is different than Rossi's data being inconclusive. Missing data is inconclusive, so it's already interpreted that way by virtue of being missing. But adverse interpretation would say that the data 'proved' that there was NOT excess heat, a much stronger conclusion.

If this ruling is in fact made and applied in this way, the Court (or Jury) could not possibly rule in Rossi's favor, since performance was 'shown' (by adverse interpretation) to not have been achieved.

Conversely, in the Counter Suit, this interpretation would seem to put Rossi at higher risk of having to pay damages to IH.

This observation, as Bob helpfully points out is regarding the LEGAL outcome of the case and does not have any direct implication on the ROSSI EFFECT specifically or NiH LENR generally

Quote from sigmoidal

In the interests of marginally improving the quality of discussions on this thread, I'd like to suggest that there are three general areas of interest in "Rossi vs. Darden" that I can think of:

1) LEGAL: The legal events, evidence, procedures and what they say about the outcome of these court cases (Rossi vs. Darden, Darden vs. Rossi, Darden vs. 3rd Parties).

2) ROSSI EFFECT: The question of whether the information being released in this case supports or refutes Rossi COP >1 (to a 'substantial' amount defined as either greater than 'noise level' or large enough to have some potential utility)

3) PSYCHOSOCIAL: The Social, Psychological and 'Moral' aspects of the characters in this case and the perceptions of those affected (including those contributing to this thread).

There may be other categories, or ways to categorize these areas of interest, so if others have a better way to group the discussion, please have a go.

And obviously, there can be overlap on two or all three areas for any given topic.

The idea here for marginally improving discussion quality is that a commenter may want to make a point in one area without the implication that they are also committing to another area. For example, comments about a LEGAL event or outcome do not automatically imply support for or against the ROSSI EFFECT or the PSYCHOSOCIAL aspects of 'the Players' (Rossi, Darden, Johnson, etc.) or the 'posters'.

Often this thread degenerates into a kind of 'food fight' with little information or discussion occurring. This is actually NOT a criticism of this thread per se, NOR a call for any changes in moderation, as the 'food fight' phenomenon is quite common on many blogs. Nor am I proposing that anyone be bound in any way to 'declaring' their category of discussion. It's just that now, with all these Motions and Exhibits, we have so much information to process, filter and comment on, that using these foci in our discussion vocabularly might help improve the quality and efficiency of discuss.

So moving forward, if it seems helpful to a discussion point I am making, I am going to use these categorizations when it might help clarify the focus of that point. If it is helpful for others, please feel free to do so as well.

I'll be posting momentarily on an excellent comment by Bob Higgins as an example.

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I agree, and as somone who has definite views on all of these things except legal (where I'm pretty unsure) I apologise for a lack of clarity and not sticking to specifics, were facts and interpretations can be more easily stated.

I just get very annoyed by people like Josh casting slurs on others like Darden who take risks I certainly would not, with no evidence. It is not that I know Darden is honest - but I've no evidence to think him dishonest and it is just not proper to suspect people in business of such dishonesty without good reason. Even less proper to suspect people engaged in research - and Darden is both. I also get annoyed at being called dishonest myself. Debate on a forum like this is not helped by that. If Josh described a particular argument of mine as dishonest (with reasons) it would be OK. But he is generalising and claiming I am "engaged in a dishonest debate" which is quite different and I'd rather leave this please for all time than be viewed as such.

However, the fact that I'm not able to put those feelings aside clearly shows I should be keeping quiet for a bit till I calm down.

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Isn't it strange that you KEEP forgetting that Darden USED the 1MW plant to raise at least $50M from Woodford and who knows what from the Chinese.

Evidence?

I'd just support what others have said here. The outcome of this trial has no relation to whether LENR is real, nor whether Ni-H LENR is real, nor much relation to whether Rossi LENR is real. And all three are potentially separate.

In fact it does not even much tell us whether Darden is principled and an altruistic, or a selfish and unscrupulous capitalist.

All these matters, that raise strong feelings, are tangential.

Quote from anotherTroll

What are you talking about? Evidence of what? $50M? Woodford stating Rossi asset was a "core element"? What is it that you do not understand?

As I understand it Woodford was primarily convinced by Lugano. No? Not the Rossi weird test. Unless you think his guys were very very gullible.

And a core element in a high risk portfolio is not low risk!

Evidence? it would seem so, but proof, no no proof. (search 55. & Lamacraft)

Quote from anotherTroll

214-36 screenshot above

That was only their initial investment. I don't think that was true for their added investments nor their current support.

Quote from Bob

I would feel ashamed to put the name Rossi in the same sentence as F & P, stating they are similar!

F&P were respected scientist, who answered questions truthfully! They did NOT make up fake customers, fake sales, fake factories, fake, fake, fake ...... lies. Their reputation was built on solid work. Truly examined by others and with sound results.

They were badly misjudged by a few in key positions with agendas and that unfortunately tarnished their fine work. HOWEVER.... they did not tarnish it themselves! Rossi has only Rossi to blame for this mess. No one else.

If Rossi had a working product, he could easily dispell all these conflicts. He could easily arrange real and legitimate replications. What does he do.... fake, lie and cheat.

Comparing F&P to Rossi is a slap in the face to them!

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Maybe Rossi saw how P&F were straightforward and honest, and what it brought them: abuse, insults, various accusations, and ongoing stigma?

Maybe Rossi thought "oh wow I'm on a path to validate an incredibly disruptive energy productions means, which will make pseudo-skeptics irate, will threaten quite a few industrial interests, and a lot of other people. There will be dudes who will get a salary from spreading FUD on the Internet, and it's more than possible that people who will pretend to fund my research or production, will really be trying to slow down or silence my work... how to proceed about all this? should I be honest and straightforward as P&F, or should I practice ruse and deceit to fool those people who don't want CF/LENR/CMP to take their rightful place in the scientific and industrial world?"

The biggest loser in this whole story is definitely Woodford. Is it true that their $50 million was only 5% of IH? A $1 billion valuation at this point is NUTS.

And, as they state, Rossi was to them the core element of the initial investment.

$1 billion valuation! At this point I would say IH is worth their cash on hand + whatever they invested into LENR research outside of Rossi. Probably less.

If I was invested into Woodford I'd be worried that the IH investment might have lost 90%+ of its value.

Quote from THHuxleynew

What you find inconsistent is perhaps that Rossi treated this as the GPT and IH did not. Anyone studying Rossi should not be surprised at this misrepresentation.

I think one problem here is that it seems you have not read the legal documents much if at all. Or at least less than I have. So I'm basing my statements on my reading of the documents, whereas you are basing yours on... I'm not sure what.

What I've read makes it very clear that Darden et al. were trying to have it both ways: they appear to have deliberately mislead Rossi, leading him and others to believe it was the GPT while trying to make the case in their depositions (poorly, I might add) that they did not view it as such. But the evidence from some of their own personnel indicates that they viewed it as the GPT and Penon as the ERV. Basically, they wanted to have it both ways: "heads I win, tails you lose." (Where heads is 'if the test is positive' and tails is 'test isn't positive'.)

It's actually an interesting question: they say in their depositions that they didn't view it as the GPT, that the proposed second amendment was not valid and that the time for the GPT had already passed. So I wonder if they would have paid the 89 million if they felt the 1MW test was actually a success. In any case, it's quite clear that they are not innocent victims, even if Rossi is a fraud.

Quote from anotherTroll

What are you talking about? Evidence of what? $50M? Woodford stating Rossi asset was a "core element"? What is it that you do not understand?

Oh, no. I'm having second thoughts, please don't write me an essay about that last one - it would take forever to read

No, at least by my understanding. Woodward had and "initial investment" that relied on Rossi but the $50 M was later and based on additional items.

Quote from joshg

What I've read makes it very clear that Darden et al. were trying to have it both ways: they appear to have deliberately mislead Rossi, leading him and others to believe it was the GPT while trying to make the case in their depositions (poorly, I might add) that they did not view it as such. But the evidence from some of their own personnel indicates that they viewed it as the GPT and Penon as the ERV. Basically, they wanted to have it both ways: "heads I win, tails you lose." (Where heads is 'if the test is positive' and tails is 'test isn't positive'.)

I've read the document and do not find any evidence that Darden 'deliberately mislead' Rossi. Please show how you know Darden's motivation.

Quote from THEDEBATEISUSELESS

Murray thinks the output pipe likely had an internal diameter of DN80. Thus, one huge problem at least partially mitigated.

He also did testing with identical flow meters at identical slopes/reaches to those at Doral and didn't find obviously huge errors using Penon's reported water flow. Thus another problem at least partially mitigated. Of course, it sure would help if the photograph of the meter would be provided to see if it was positioned higher or lower than the input to the plant.

Another issue he brought up was the pressure gauge on the output only being rated for 50C and not 103-104C over a year. I wonder if he performed a test to see if such a pressure gauge would fail at such temperatures? Of course a year long test just to determine that would be expensive and complicated. I wonder if the manufacturer of the pressure gauge has any torture test data from subjecting their gauges to high temperatures for long periods?

Penon had promised to have all the instruments rechecked by the manufacture after the "testing". However, I have not seen if that happened and what the results of the instrument testing was. I have often wondered if the instruments were actually IH's (paid for??) and what has happened to them.

Surely any instruments and pipes paid for by IH and anything in the container (owned by IH- I think) would be returned to IH and not have been stolen and not returned as required by contract. If owned by IH and not returned then that is another (criminal theft?) legal question.