As I said I would at the beginning of this topic, I have refrained from discussing the Mellon lawsuit on this forum. Recent postings, however, have made it apparent that there is considerable confusion in some quarters about the facts of the case. With the approval of TIGHAR's legal team, we have sent the following review of key events to all TIGHAR members. I'm happy to share it now with all readers of this forum.
On March 30, 2012 Mr. Timothy Mellon made a contribution of a little over a million dollars toward TIGHAR’s NIku VII expedition to Nikumaroro. Mr. Mellon subsequently participated in the expedition as a Sponsor Team Member. On June 3, 2013 Mr. Mellon filed a lawsuit against TIGHAR and me personally. The essence of Mr. Mellon’s suit is his allegation that the wreckage of the Earhart aircraft is visible in underwater video taken during TIGHAR’s 2010 Niku VI expedition and that I withheld that information from him at the time he made his financial contribution to the 2012 Niku VII expedition. Mr. Mellon’s allegations are not only totally illogical but also demonstrably false.
The underwater video in which Mr. Mellon says he sees airplane wreckage was taken on June 7, 2010. There is a piece of rope and what might be a piece of wire, or it could be just “whip coral,” in the video. They were the most interesting objects seen underwater during the Niku VI expedition. The discovery of the rope and possible wire, and the team meeting that night at which the video was reviewed and discussed, were filmed live by the Discovery Channel camera crew and are included in the documentary special “Finding Amelia” that first aired on December 10, 2010. A clip of that segment from the show is on the TIGHAR Channel as “
Finding Amelia excerpt.” It is difficult to imagine how anything could be better documented than the fact that wreckage of the Earhart aircraft was not discovered during the 2010 expedition.
On December 8, 2010, two days before the Discovery show aired, I posted a two-minute clip from the video on the TIGHAR YouTube channel as “
Wire & Rope.” To date, that video clip has been viewed nearly 10,000 times.
Mr. Mellon’s first contact with TIGHAR was on March 22, 2012 (two days after the State Department event with then Sec. of State Hilary Clinton) when Mr. Mellon sent an email to info@tighar.org inquiring about “funding opportunities.” He and I talked on the phone, I sent him some standard project information, and he made his contribution eight days later. I did not meet him in person until April 28, 2012 - nearly a month after he made his contribution. We met for lunch in Providence, RI.
Tim Mellon came along on the Niku VII expedition and I thought we got along fine. In October 2012, three months after the expedition, Mr. Mellon and a few other members of the TIGHAR Amelia Earhart Search Forum began seeing what they believed to be airplane debris in the 2010 “
Wire & Rope” video. I couldn’t see anything but the rope and possible wire but, on November 2, 2012, at their request, I posted the entire eight minute video to the TIGHAR YouTube channel as “
Wire & Rope entire”. That video has now been viewed over 21,000 times. Mr. Mellon soon began posting annotated screen captures from the video pointing out not only aircraft debris but also dismembered human remains, a fly swatter and Amelia’s banjo, guitar and violin. His postings can be seen on the TIGHAR Forum in "Join the Search", “
Summary of Debris from 2010 video.” By January, 2013 I felt that Mr. Mellon’s posted “discoveries” had become so bizarre that allowing them to continue would damage TIGHAR’s credibility so I cut off forum discussion of objects seen in the underwater video. He continued to send me annotated screen-captures of wreckage and body parts he believed he could see in the video, and I continued to see nothing but coral. More recently, based on Mr. Mellon's insistence that the airplane wreckage, musical instruments, and body parts were best viewed in the full-resolution HD version of the 2010 video, I made the full-resolution video freely available via Dropbox to anyone who wished to see it. Only a handful of people asked to see it and none of them reported seeing anything but coral.
The lawsuit in June came as a complete surprise. We expect and respect that different people will have different interpretations and opinions about the Earhart disappearance. That has been true for 76 years. We don’t expect people to resort to legal action to promote their opinion. There were no acrimonious exchanges with Mr. Mellon and we received no demands from him before he filed his complaint. When we learned of his suit we contacted his attorney and offered to meet to work out any misunderstanding, but our overtures were rebuffed. None of this makes any sense to us.
We’re confident that TIGHAR will prevail but even frivolous lawsuits are expensive to fight so we’ve asked the TIGHAR membership and the general public to support us by donating to the TIGHAR Legal Defense Fund. I hope you’ll help.