A US Federal Court has awarded Oxebridge Quality Resources and its founder $1.6 million in compensatory damages in the defamation lawsuit against the certificate mill operators Daryl Guberman and Don LaBelle, along with their company Guberman PMC LLC.
The suit was launched by Oxebridge as an “omnibus” defamation suit against multiple defendants; the other defendants settled with Oxebridge prior to trial, under confidential settlement terms. Guberman and LaBelle opted to take a “sovereign citizen” defense, consistently refusing to recognize the Judge’s authority over them. At one point, Guberman appeared to threaten the judge in an email sent to the judge’s chambers. The judge warned the two that they faced “coercive incarceration” for their failure to recognize the court’s Orders.
Guberman and LaBelle have collectively published over 200 separate URLs of defamatory material, falsely accusing Oxebridge and founder Christopher Paris of fraud, terrorism, anti-Semitism and theft. They then filed dozens of fraudulent DMCA notices with Oxebridge web hosts, in attempts to shut down the Oxebridge website.
Daryl Guberman
The two operate a series of websites and alleged companies that offer a variety of ISO related certification services, none of which are independently accredited. Guberman-PMC certifies companies under the accreditation banner of “ABAC,” which appears to be a website operated by Guberman and LaBelle themselves; “ABAC” itself does not appear to ever have been legally formed. They then claim various other “accreditations” by citing companies such as IndustrialPR and MfgPartners, none of which are actual accreditation bodies but merely websites created by LaBelle for other purposes entirely.
In 2014, Guberman agreed to certify a fictional company named “Life Sink” that alleged to manufacture life vests made of cement. Guberman uses the photos of dead veterans to falsely claim his staff includes veterans. He was arrested in 2015 for DUI.
Despite his troubled past Guberman found support from US TAG to ISO TC 176 leaders Paul Palmes, Alka Jarvis and Lorri Hunt. The standards developers colluded with Guberman to convince ASQ’s Jennifer Admussen to prohibit Paris from appearing at any ASQ event. Prior to that ban, Paris’ appearances at ASQ Section events were routinely some of the most-attended.
More Damages Likely Forthcoming
The Court had previously thrown out all of Guberman and LaBelle’s filings, and gave a blanket judgment in Oxebridge’s favor. The exact amount awarded to Oxebridge was “$1,614,350.00 as compensatory damages, together with post-judgment interest.” The Order is not likely to be the only one coming from the Court, as additional injunctive relief is expected, such demands to remove the defamatory material and to cease publishing new material. Statutory damages may also forthcoming, for illegal wiretapping and DMCA fraud.
Don LaBelle
Despite this, Guberman was recently discovered to have been using official Court filings to cold-call additional companies, in order to defame Oxebridge and Paris further. It’s not clear how many such companies he has called, but the number could be over 100. If so, then Guberman will face additional sanctions by the Court.
Guberman had openly attacked his own lawyer, Bruce Minnick of Tallahassee, and then took to YouTube to accuse Florida courts of being a judicial “hellhole,” suggesting the Judge was being bribed and the attorneys on both sides colluding to defeat him. He did not name the Judge directly, however.
Despite being the attorney on record, Minnick was largely sidelined when Guberman openly ordered him to stop representing Guberman PMC. US Federal Civil rules require a corporation to be represented by an attorney.
It is not expected that Guberman or LaBelle will comply with the latest orders, nor make any actual payments, setting them up for additional battles with the US Federal Court system.
To date, Oxebridge has emerged as the prevailing party in every single lawsuit it has been involved in.
UPDATE 20 May 2020: In a bizarre post on the Guberman PMC website, Guberman and LaBelle have declared “victory” in the lawsuit, while also indicating they will be announcing that they have won a $2.1 million judgment. They then claim the case is going before the Supreme Court; further on the page, the two write that the case was already decided and that they will be publishing the Supreme Court decision “soon.”
In the US, it can take a decade for a case to wind through various Federal appeals courts before reaching the Supreme Court, and even then the high court may not take on the case. Guberman and LaBelle have not filed any appeals at all.
The post makes more false claims, all but ensuring the current award granted to Oxebridge will be increased and that a permanent restraining order will be issued against Guberman and LaBelle. This includes a false claim that Paris attempted to have “Americans incarcerated for expressing their freedom of speech,” that Oxebridge is “failing,” that Paris is “a mouthpiece for ANAB,” and that Oxebridge promotes China.
The article then makes a number of increasingly disjointed claims which appear to pander to fringe right-wing groups:
The $2.1M victory will be announced in your honor as freedom loving Americans with support of the TEA PARTY (thank you!!) as well as fellow liberators IndustrialPR and The MAGA Group. We must bring this tyranny public… just like our founding fathers! AMERICA WILL WIN! LONG LIVE FREEDOM!
The same page includes a video by Guberman alleging the summons originally served on him was fake, implying that the entire trial never happened.
