get others to get things done. Getting things done is not the same as doing them.” Herman Shooster - Frank taught me everything I knew about answering services. One of the things he explained is that the operators have to be supervised. Frank built a device that allowed him to tap into any of the switchboards and listen to the agents. Today, calls are recorded for quality control. He did the quality control manually. Frank’s second answering service grew nicely to about 400 clients when two of the telephone operators opened a competing answering service using their experience with his clients to steal them. One of the tactics they used was to call his accounts and leave phony messages for them. The clients would get upset making them willing to find a new service. Frank figured out what was happening and called the girls at their new office. Distraught, he told them, “You can’t do that, you have non-compete agreements.” One of them trans- ferred Frank to her father, Mr. Glenn Fedder, a banker. Fedder said, ‘Welcome to the business world, tough.’ Frank was determined to fight back, but the customers continued to disappear. He hired a law firm and sued the new compa- ny. He also tried to get an injunction which was denied. Before long, it was looking like the non-compete agreements were invalid, so the law firm said, we can’t take this case on contingency any longer. That is when my son, Frank Shooster, graduated from law school. He was already writing the legal collections letters for both of our clients when they failed to pay. This made him very familiar with answering services. Since the case against the girls was look- ing like we were going to lose, it was offered to my son. My son squashed the original case and opened a new one. This time suing for conspir- acy based on tortious interference including Glenn Fedder, the bank he worked for, the new company, and everyone related. During discovery, he also found that Glenn Fedder
used his position at the bank to get a loan for his daughter. Basically, they were taking advantage of insider information. While this case was going on we bought another answering service, Hotline Commu- nications. Incredulously, one of the clients and our midnight agents colluded to steal that customer list, too! This time they were caught and someone went to jail. Meanwhile, we were heading for trial. During the discovery, Glenn Fedder was supposed to disclose his financial statement. He never did. At the courtroom during direct cross-examination, it came up and he said it was in his car. The trial was paused to give him a chance to present the evidence. We discovered his net worth was 11 mil. a stag- gering sum at the time. The defendants changed tactics and tried to turn the case directly against Frank Shoost- er for the collections letters. They claimed his letters were malicious. The clerk was deposed who issued the letters and stated they were routine. The high point of the case was the cross-examination of Glenn Fedder. My son got an expert to prove that Fedder was a secret partner of the new company in surprise testi- mony. He also got a former employee to testify that one of the defendants admitted they were going to steal the client list from us. We won! The case closed with damages of 400K, plus 400K in legal fees, and anoth- er 400K in penalties. We traded the damag- es and penalties for their business. Plus, they were required to agree never to go back into the answering service business again. After the trial, both Mr. and Mrs. Fedder pleaded to Frank Brooks not to do this, but Frank stood by his principles and told them to close the business down. They put us through a lot of pain. I became Frank’s partner. We combined all of the customers from both the old office and the newly acquired one, bought new equipment and the business grew nicely. That was over thirty years ago. Palm Beach
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