Former cannabis business partners of Mike Tyson and Ric Flair have countersued the Tyson 2.0 brand in Delaware court seeking access to the firm’s books and records.
Tyson and Flair and the companies Carma and LGNDS sued a group of former Carma executives including Chad Bronstein, Adam Wilks, and Nicole Cosby in Illinois last December alleging breach of contract, fraud, and other claims (Carma is the corporate entity that publicly does business as Tyson 2.0). The defendants filed for an extension to respond earlier this month and the request was granted. Their response to that suit is now due March 16.
Carma and LGNDS collaborate to distribute the Tyson 2.0 cannabis brand, which also includes products in Tyson’s likeness, as well as Ric Flair Drip products.
On Feb. 20, Bronstein, Wilks, and Cosby sued Tyson 2.0 in Delaware’s Chancery Court, saying that they remain shareholders in Tyson 2.0 and that a Jan. 20 request for access to the company’s books and records was ignored (Chancery is where many business disputes are handled due to Delaware’s long-standing role as the preferred state for U.S. companies to incorporate).
“The Company’s recent performance has raised concerns regarding the value of the Stockholders’ investment and the effectiveness of management’s decision-making,” the filing says.
The former business partners of Tyson and Flair want to “evaluate” how Tyson 2.0 is being run and its recent financial performance and determine the current value of their shares so they can “consider potential courses of action or transactional opportunities that may serve the best interests of all stockholders.” The trio collectively owns 1,533,190 shares in Tyson 2.0, the filing says.
“It appears from the limited information available to Plaintiffs here that the value of the Company stock has dropped dramatically since the termination of their employment from the Company, and Plaintiffs, as substantial shareholders in the Company, wish to obtain information about the Company that they are entitled to, but which the Company has refused to provide them,” the complaint says.
Reached by FOS on Thursday, attorneys for Tyson and Flair declined to comment.
When Tyson and Flair first sued, attorneys for Bronstein, Wilks, and Crosby denied the claims.
“These claims are as credible as the people they come from—in short, the allegations are without substance,” Wilks’s attorney Terry Campbell said in a statement at the time. “This is nothing more than an attempt to spit out an earful of salacious headlines and attempt to coerce my client into paying money to them when he did nothing wrong. We will fight these meritless allegations—both the facts and the law are squarely on our side.”
Jonathan Cyrluk, an attorney for Bronstein and Cosby, claimed that “the complaint is fiction dressed up as a lawsuit … Before filing, the plaintiffs tried to intimidate my clients with settlement demands that read more like a shakedown than a legal claim—demanding millions of dollars and attempting to force others to surrender their Carma shares,” Cyrluk continued. “My clients won’t be bullied and are prepared to knock out this meritless lawsuit in court.”
Read the court filing below.
