A former Central Motorcycle Roadracing Association (CMRA) racer who was stripped of his membership and banned late in 2014 has launched a broad legal battle with the organization, accusing several of its officials of personally profiting from the non-profit operation and committing fraud and other acts of financial malfeasance.
CMRA officials call the allegations groundless, and in court filings have depicted former racer Peyton Inge as “offensive and argumentative,” particularly after his second run for election to the CMRA Board of Directors failed.
The litigation, which started in State Court and has since been moved by the CMRA into a Federal District Court in Texas, already has proceeded for more than a year. It has generated piles of motions and documents, with CMRA attorneys arguing that the organization has provided documents that would stack up more than 30 feet high.
Among a wide-ranging list of complaints, Inge maintains that the board has engaged in a pattern of financial misconduct over several years, and he contends that documents he has filed with the court demonstrate such misconduct.
Inge’s filings, for example, allege patterns of unexplained cash deposits into the personal accounts of CMRA officials, and that a purchase of motorcycle parts by a CMRA representative for personal use showed up under a heading of “generator parts” on a staff expense report/reimbursement claim form.
“The CMRA is a non-profit corporation, but its employees have used it as their personal piggy bank for years,” Inge told Roadracing World. “The goal of the lawsuit is to make sure the CMRA is run in the members’ best interest–as intended. That means it complies with all laws, including the by-laws that govern it.”
“Mr. Inge’s allegations have been investigated and found to be without merit. As the litigation progresses, Defendants will present their side of the story fully and expect that they will ultimately be exonerated,” Laura O’Leary, an attorney with Fanning Harper Martinson Brandt & Kutchin, a Dallas-based law firm representing the CMRA, told Roadracing World.
Inge, himself an attorney with the Dallas-based law firm of Chamblee, Ryan, Kershaw & Anderson, raced with the CMRA from 2010 to 2014, most recently competing in the big-bore classes aboard a Kawasaki ZX-10R. Court documents filed by the CMRA attorneys indicate that Inge and the organization’s paid staff members clashed from the beginning, stating, “During that period (2010-2014), Plaintiff repeatedly treated the CMRA’s two full-time paid employees, Defendants (Nancy) Selleck and (Walter) Walker, in a manner they found offensive and argumentative. In Mr. Walker’s experience, Plaintiff responded to instructions by race day staff in an argumentative and offensive manner, refusing to comply with simple instructions, some of which concerned Plaintiff’s own safety, and responding rudely when told to change his conduct.”
In addition to CMRA employees Walker and Selleck, the suit names as defendants the CMRA itself; CMRA racer Tom Anderson; current CMRA Board members Ted Phillips, John Orchard, Steven McNamara, Ty Howard, and Bill Syfan; and former CMRA Board members James Dugger and Eric Falt. Current Board members Danny Dominguez, Allen Dye, and Shandra Crawford are not named as defendants, and neither is former director Joe Caruso.
In 2013 and 2014, Inge ran for election to the board, but lost both times. After the second loss, he “expanded the scope of both his questions and his accusations, and he publicly accused CMRA board members and staff of wrongdoing,” documents filed by CMRA counsel state. “On December 10, 2014, Directors determined that Plaintiff had engaged in conduct which negatively reflected upon the CMRA, and the Board voted unanimously to terminate Plaintiff’s membership according to article 2.4 of the CMRA’s by-laws.”
Inge said that using the discovery process, he has found electronic communications between members of the CMRA board and employees showing that they conspired to keep him off the board by disparaging him to other CMRA members and allowing non-members to vote, and that they preferred to “have sheep” on the board. Inge also says that he found messages between CMRA officials demonstrating malice toward him, including talking about beating him with a baseball bat and having him killed.
Inge also claims that when his 2014 membership was terminated and his application for 2015 membership was denied, CMRA board members and officials did not provide him with the due process of holding a formal hearing, as required in the CMRA bylaws.
According to one of the CMRA board members named in the suit, by early December of 2015 the organization had used up about $300,000 of the $1,000,000 in legal fees its insurance will cover in cases of claimed board malfeasance, during the discovery process alone. Inge said that he estimates that the CMRA’s legal bill has now reached about $500,000. The case is currently scheduled to go to trial in late 2017 in Federal District Court.