Chamber holds off on Elmer Fudd case, plans tourism tax presentation

In a midmorning board meeting Brad Dean President of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce said there will be a board action against the Elmer Fudd case but not until after city elections.

Chamber attorney David Slough with Nexen Pruet presented new information about the case involving a commenter on TheSunNews.com who officials say made false statements about the chamber.

Slough said that the screen name Elmer Fudd had posted information on the newspaper’s website about subpoenas being issued to the chamber by Lively Distributors that filed a lawsuit against the chamber for advertising initiative.

“Based on the fact that there were similarities in Elmer Fudd’s information that these subpoenas had been issued to us as attorneys of the chamber were made aware of these subpoenas and of course Lively knew the date of the subpoena,” explained, “the dates of the subpoenas and the comments Elmer Fudd had posted we felt that it was in the chamber’s best interest to follow up with Lively and serve them discovery of information request asking that if they had any knowledge as to the identity of Elmer Fudd.”

Slough went on to say that he received a reply back from Lively that read ‘without any objections by the plaintiff Mark McBride asked Gary Lively about the status of the lawsuit and Mr. Lively showed Mr. McBride copies of one or more copies of subpoenas issued by the plaintiff’s council.’

Lively, Slough went on to explain did not supply McBride with any of the erroneous information that Slough said was posted in Elmer Fudd’s statements and McBride did not admit to being the blogger.

Slough said that given the fact the elections is only a few days the chamber out of respect for the electoral process will not proceed with any further discovery until after the elections.

He said that after the election the chamber and its attorney’s intent go forward with finding who the person is.

Dean also briefly touched on his plans to present to the city council his findings on the city’s tourism tax have been spent for the first quarter later Tuesday. He said that this will be a results and expenditures report to the council.

A media report will be available online at 2pm on the city of Myrtle Beach website.