“I Don’t Think I Owe Anything”; A Timeline of Why I Decided To Sue Dave McCarty

By Chris M. Barkley:

PROLOGUE…

On Tuesday, February 18th at approximately 4:20 pm Central Standard Time, a Cook County Illinois Sheriff’s deputy pulled up to a three story house in a northern Chicago suburban neighborhood. 

Four minutes later, the deputy logged that a Small Claims Court summons had been successfully delivered to the listed Defendant, David Lawrence McCarty on a civil charge of Breach of Contract.

The Plaintiff is myself.

The following account chronicles the how and why Dave McCarty became the first known person to be legally sued for his continuing retention of my, and possibly many others, Hugo Awards.  

THEN…

On the evening of October 21st, 2023, I was seated in the Great Hall of the Science Fiction Museum in the city of Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in the People’s Republic of China for the 2023 Hugo Awards Ceremony. And one of the happiest, and saddest, moments of my life were just about to occur…

• In July, I was invited and flown to attend the 81st World Science Fiction Convention, at the expense of the Chengdu Worldcon Committee and the hosting fan group, the Chengdu Science Fiction Society. 
• At the Hugo Awards Ceremony, I was the most shocked person in the auditorium when MY NAME was called in the Best Fan Writer category!
• At the after-party, Dave McCarty had one of the long tables cleared and called for everyone’s attention. “Anyone who would like to have their awards shipped home, please step up!”, he shouted. The award was placed in a form fitting, custom fitted display box and the lid was closed. I had every reason to believe at that time that my award would be securely and safely shipped.
• That was the last time I saw my Hugo Award, nearly sixteen months ago. 

[The rest of Chris’ column follows the jump.]

THE MIDDLE

• When I returned from China, I knew that it would take time, possibly a few weeks, for the  awards to be clear customs and be delivered to all of the recipients.
• As weeks turned into months, I began to worry. The few emails I sent to Dave McCarty went unanswered. 
• When the unusually late release of the results of the  2023 Hugo Awards were released in early December, I had a little hope that the Hugos would follow. But there was still no word from him. 

Then, on Saturday, January 20th, 2024, the tally of nominations were released on the ninety first day after the close of the Chengdu Worldcon. And all hell broke loose.

Authors and works that clearly had enough nominations, were struck from the Final Ballot because they were deemed, without explanation by the 2023 Hugo Awards Administrator Dave McCarty, as “ineligible”. All attempts to get any answers from McCarty on the subject on his Facebook page were rudely rejected.

And then, in late January, the good news/bad news dropped; McCarty announced that the 2023 Hugos had arrived at his Chicago home…but a majority were damaged in transit and needed to be either repaired or replaced. 

When I queried him directly at the winter Chicago area convention, Capricon 44, he told me that I could have my damaged Hugo, as is, or wait a few weeks and receive it, completely repaired. And, rather reluctantly, and much to my regret, I agreed.

An hour after that conversation, Diane Lacey, her face full of tears and remorse, handed me an envelope containing some devastating emails and a flash drive that implicated Dave McCarty in ethical, moral and highly questionable activities.

When I returned home that weekend, I recruited my fellow 2023 Hugo Finalist Jason Sanford, to co-author a report on the material we had at hand. It was published, here on File 770 and Mr. Sanford’s Genre Grapevine, on February 14, 2024.  

THE END OF THE MIDDLE

All throughout 2024, any inquiry to Mr. McCarty about my, or anyone else’s 2023 Hugo Award was mostly met with silence.

I made a serious attempt to survey all of the 2023 recipients to find out who had not received their awards and had some responses:

• Long Form Editor Linsey Hall was lucky; she missed her opportunity to have it shipped from China so she simply packed it into her luggage and took it home.
• Neil Clarke, the 2023 Short Form Editor recipient and Best Fan Artist Richard Man both reported that their awards had arrived, intact and undamaged, respectively at their homes in New Jersey and California. Mr. Clarke’s award arrived while he was at the Glasgow Worldcon and was accepted from the UPS driver by his son. When informed that a package from Chicago had arrived, Mr. Clarke instructed his son NOT to open it and that he would once he returned. Mr. Clarke said that if the Hugo was damaged he didn’t want to know until he opened the box himself.  
• Uncanny Magazine Editors Lynn M. and Michael Damian Thomas had their awards hand delivered by Mr. McCarty when their late daughter, Caitlin, was hospitalized. As of the publication of this article, the other members of their staff, managing/poetry editor Chimedum Ohaegbu; managing editor Monte Lin; nonfiction editor Meg Elison; podcast producers Erika Ensign and Steven Schapansky, have not received their awards.
• Novelist Ursula Vernon and some of the podcast team of Hugo, Girl received the awards, but they were damaged despite the promise of being shipped intact.
• I exchanged several emails with the personal assistant to Daniel Abraham, a recipient in the Best Dramatic Presentation-Short Form category for The Expanse episode “Babylon’s
  Ashes”, who stated that he and his co-recipients Ty Franck, Naren Shankar and Breck Eisner, have not received their awards.
• Best Series recipient Adrian Tchaikovsky and Best Short Story recipient Samantha Mills outright refused their awards due to the controversy surrounding the vote.

I did not hear from any of the other 2023 recipients nor has there has been no public acknowledgement from Mr. McCarty as to the status of their awards. 

At one point during the summer, he did answer in one email in which he offered the possibility of my award in particular being replaced but he did not reply to my follow up email.

I was elected to be a member of an investigative committee at the Glasgow Worldcon which was tasked with looking into finding any other information or testimony about Mr. McCarty’s actions before, during and after the Chengdu Worldcon.

In a November zoom meeting held before Windycon, I floated the idea of suing Mr. McCarty. Several members pointed out that initiating a lawsuit would definitely be a conflict of interest and would compromise their work. 

And after my near encounter with Mr. McCarty at Windycon, which I describe below, I did my due diligence and formally resigned in an email to the Committee Chair, Warren Buff, on December 11th.

---

I clearly remember the very moment I decided to take David Lawrence McCarty to court.        

This past November, my partner Juli and I were attending Windycon, one of two of the Chicago area’s fan oriented sff conventions (the other being Capricon, which was held several weeks ago).

Several weeks prior, I had texted and written an email to Mr. McCarty stated that we were going to be at the convention Saturday and Sunday and if, by some chance, the Hugo Award that I was the recipient of was repaired, he could drop it off at the hotel’s check in desk and we did not have to either speak or encounter each other.

We arrived at Windycon on Saturday morning. At one point I returned to the hotel garage to retrieve something from our car. As I started towards the car, I noticed that Mr. McCarty, accompanied by two other people I did not know, passed by 20 feet away going into the hotel. He did not acknowledge me nor I him. Most notably, he was not carrying anything inside with him.

We did not encounter each other during the rest of the convention. And, although I checked in with the front desk repeatedly, nothing was left there for me.

And that, as far as I was concerned, was that. 

My late parents, bless them, had raised me to be patient, polite and kind. But, they also said that I should not tolerate being ignored, bullied or disrespected. Being ghosted, in his presence, was the last straw.

I mean I get it; I was, and, let’s face it, continue to the present day, an irritant to Mr. McCarty. And in turn I respond that if he had done his due diligence to myself and others, none of this would be happening at all.

So, at the end of that weekend, I decided that if columns, emails and direct messages wouldn’t be enough to get Mr. McCarty’s attention, an official, legal civil action would be something he could not easily ignore.

I have known for quite a while that Mr. McCarty was a resident in the city of Chicago. Upon our return home, I accessed the Cook County Court website and got to work. Since I could not afford an out of state attorney to sue him directly, I began researching how I could file a claim in the Small Claims Court.

I quickly found out that I could not file suit against Mr. McCarty directly for the return of the Hugo Award, but I do so indirectly by lodging a small claims action against him for the maximum monetary amount allowed, $3,000.00, the amount I could arguably place as the value of my Hugo award, a sum I hope would properly induce a prompt and proper response.

Towards the latter portion of January, I was ready to act. 

First, I outlined a brief summary of my complaint against Mr. McCarty on the Cook County website and to fill out the preliminary filing forms for the formal complaint and printed a copy for myself. 

Then I compiled an appendix of exhibits as a case file to be submitted with my complaint.

[Three documents are in the slideshow below.]

Next, I gathered and copied all my correspondence and requests from Mr. McCarty, photographic evidence that I had actually traveled to Chengdu and was the actual recipient of the Hugo Award. I also attached a copy of the Report on Censorship and Exclusion, samples of media coverage of the Report and, to establish the value of my (and other Hugo  Awards, several recent examples of auctions and sales of other awards were attached as well.

Since I currently live on a fixed income, the funding for such an ambitious plan, on short notice was quite limited. Under the circumstances, I reluctantly decided to open a GoFundMe account to raise funds.

I say reluctantly because I am loath to ask others for money for any reason and especially for a cause that I would have to vaguely describe since I did not want to give Mr. McCarty any advance warning of this legal action.  

Since I was providing my own transportation by driving to Chicago, I thought that a target of $750 would probably be more than enough to cover all of my expenses. 

THE EXPEDITION: “OPERATION BROADSWORD”

On January 27th, I initiated “Operation Broadsword”, my tongue in cheek codename for this effort. (I named it after the 1969 Richard Burton-Clint Eastwood film “Where Eagles Dare”, a WWII thriller involving intrigue, double crosses, gunfire and lots of stuff blowing up. Joe Bob says Check It Out.) 

My pitch on GoFundMe went as follows:

Join Chris Barkley in an Exciting SFF Adventure

Hello,

I am Chris M. Barkley and I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. I am raising funds for the next few weeks for what I am calling An Unspecified SFF Fan Related Project.

This year marks my 49th year in science fiction and fantasy fandom. I have been involved in running local, regional and World Science Fiction conventions, fan activism and fan writing (whose works won a Hugo Award in 2023).

Over the next few weeks I will be engaged in an exciting and unprecedented project that I think will surprise, excite and thrill sff fans around the world.

I am being intentionally vague about what I have in mind but those who have heard my proposal are very enthusiastic about it and have strongly urged me to bring it to fruition.

In order to do that I’ll need some financial assistance and fortunately, it will not cost thousands of dollars but hundreds. I am on a fixed income and I don’t have the wherewithal to pull this off by myself.

But, with your donations over the next few weeks, I’ll be able to pull this off successfully.

This GoFundMe will only last a few weeks with a goal of reaching a total of $750.00. This fundraiser will close once this goal is reached.

I thank you for your time and attention…

Chris M. Barkley, Cincinnati, OH, USA

I had previously hosted one other GoFundMe for another sf fan in need but I had never contemplated doing one for myself. Once it was active, I posted the GoFundMe link over several dozen sff Facebook pages and my BlueSky account.

I may have been very apprehensive about doing this but, as it turns out, I need not have worried a bit. I also regret the cheesy title but, in my defense, it seemed like a good idea at the time…

Over the next two days, twenty-two donors met my goal, which astonished the hell out of me. 

By January 30, $721.62 dollars had been deposited into my account, less $28.38 in fees collected by GoFundMe. I could have (and maybe should have) left the site open for more donations but I decided to close it off because I did not want to appear to be gouging anyone just for the sake of extra money.

I also decided that if there were any funds left over from the operation, they would be donated equally between the Trans-Atlantic and Down-Under Fan Funds, two well known fan-run charities that I have greatly respected over the years.

The first thing I did after confirming the funds was to make a copy of the brief I was filing with the Court. The bill at the FedX store came to a little less than $40, which did not surprise me that much because of the volume of material in the brief and that there were many images and several photographs that were reproduced in full color.  

And now I was ready for the most difficult part, filing the suit.

The early morning hours of February 5 were cold and overcast. 

I set out in my 2013 Toyota Prius at 6:00 a.m. to beat the inevitable local traffic jams. From Cincinnati to Indianapolis on I-74 and I-65 to Chicago, trucks were seemingly everywhere, going fast. I reached the Gary, Indiana, interstate exchange around 11:0 0 a.m. CST. I still had an hour’s worth of driving to go.

I did not take the Chicago Skyway because I knew from decades of previous experiences that I-90/Dan Ryan Expressway is, like cake, IS A LIE! 

Because Every SingleTime I have deluded myself into thinking that IT MIGHT BE DIFFERENT THIS TIME and I’ll just sail into downtown Chicago, I have been burned with traffic snarls and long waits and terrifying merges while changing lanes. But this time around, I had a different plan…

I navigated to I-294 northbound, which completely bypasses the downtown area. My destination was Libertyville, which was another 40 miles away. 

My driving experiences in downtown Chicago were spotty at best. I was also leery of either finding a parking space or a nearby garage, which might charge a hefty fee during business hours. 

So my plan was to park in the suburbs where my good friends and local fans, Terry and Dan Berger, lived and had generously offered me a place to stay overnight. I would then take the commuter train into the city.

The train station in Libertyville was a small building with an immense parking lot. Luckily I found a spot right across from the entrance. I stepped out from my warm and comfy car into more overcast skies with the temperature well below the freezing level and a brisk 15-20 mph winds for good measure. 

In other words, perfect Chicago Cubs weather…for March. 

It was 1:30 p.m. As I approached the station, an automated voice announced that the next southbound train was due in minutes. After an abortive try with the ticket dispenser inside the station, I braved the cold and bought a ticket outside at the trackside dispenser. After briefly considering two one way tickets, I settled on buying an all day pass instead, which, again, was a very, very fortunate choice on my part.

The last time I boarded a passenger train in Cincinnati, it was well before the turn of the last century. For me, one of the pleasures of visiting Chicago is riding the commuter and subway trains. 

I got on the sparsely populated train, took a seat and waited for the conductor to come by. The train started with a slight lurch and we were under way. I didn’t have long to wait; the conductor glanced at my pass and I settled in to take in the view.

Then, I remembered seeing a sign in the parking lot that plainly stated that there was a fee for parking in the lot.

Which I had NOT done.

Because the train was due any minute.

I whipped out my phone and frantically texted Dan, who was working nearby. I explained my dilemma and he took care of it. I promised to take the family out to dinner that evening.

Even though it was a grey day, approaching the city and seeing the Chicago skyline is a quite imposing and beautiful sight to me.

Soon, we pulled into Union Station, a place I had never been in before. I looked at the map on my phone and saw that I was almost a mile away from my destination, Daley Plaza.

I went outside and was surprised by the near gale force winds I encountered. I was dressed in a parka, with a hoodie, a sweater, shirt and a t-shirt, thick pants and it STILL felt as though I was walking through a neverending freezer. There were plenty of people moving about and they all looked like they rather be anywhere else 

After consulting my phone several times, I rounded a corner and I was just across the street from Daley Plaza, the place where the Bluesmobile infamously committed harakiri in the 1980 film starring Dan Acrkoyd and John Belushi.

After clearing security (‘Remember to take off your belt next time,” the guard said to me with a glare and an edge of menace in his voice), I took the elevator to the sixth floor.

When I entered the Cook County Clerk of Court’s office I was shocked; I would have thought they would have been quite busy on a Wednesday afternoon but what I found was only one other person in front of me and ten other clerks at their stations waiting to help. 

A kindly clerk named Maria called to her station to help me. As she went over the sheaf of papers I had, she pointed out that while I had all of the online forms correctly filled out, I still needed to fill out an in-person registration form and a Civil Action Sheet to indicate a precise reason for filing the civil action.

When I sat down to check the box for a reason, I went down the checklist and narrowed my choices to Breach of Contract and Fraud. I couldn’t decide so I checked both.

When I brought my papers back, Maria gently pointed out that I could only pick one of the two choices, so I chose Breach of Contract.

After I came back with the corrected form, Maria, she collected my court brief and the filing fee of $384.00. Before she directed me towards the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, Maria gifted me a fortune cookie from the office’s Mardi Gras party which happened the day before. Many hours later, I opened it:

How appropriate.

Next, a trip up the escalator to the Sheriff’s office to pay for the Summons. I had chosen to have a deputy serve the summons in person, which required an additional $80. I specifically did this to convey to Mr. McCarty that I was quite serious about this endeavor.

A cordial, but serious looking officer processed my payment and gave me the receipt.

My hopes for having it delivered the next day, which was the opening of Capricon 45, and was going to start at Sheraton Grand Chicago just a short distance away. When I asked the officer when I might expect the summons to be delivered, she replied that there was a lengthy backlog and that she could not guarantee a confirmation before March 4th, a date that was printed on the receipt. 

She did note that there was a website portal I could check on a daily basis to see if the summons had been served. I thanked her, exited the building and made my way back through the blustery and frigid air to Union Station.

I was a bit tired when I trudged into the station, which is why I descended the stairs and just assumed that the very same train platform I had come in on was the train I needed to take back to Libertyville.

Which is why I was taken aback when the train announced that I was on an outbound express train whose next stop was Downers Grove.

I texted the Bergers and told them I would be a little late to take them out to dinner due to my mistake. Got off at the Downers Grove platform and luckily for me, I had purchased the all day pass instead of the two one way tickets as I had originally wanted to do. After fifteen minutes of shivering,  I was on a train back to Chicago.

Once there I realized how I had made my mistake; I was on the wrong side of the terminal. I walked over, found the next Libertyville train and happily boarded.

It was dark by the time the train pulled in. I set the GPS for the Berger residence and ten minutes later I pulled into their driveway.

I first met Dan Berger at Chicon 7 in 2012, when I was running the press office and he was randomly assigned to me as a staff member. He was an invaluable member of my team and showed me on more than one occasion that he was smart, resourceful and, as bonus, quick witted as well. And his wife Terry, simply put, is even more so. They’re a delightful couple and I am glad they’re good friends of mine.

I took Dan, Terry and their son Ryan out to dinner at a nearby Culver’s restaurant; they serve some of the finest hamburgers, fries, blended drinks and desserts I have ever tasted. Since they were showing their hospitality to me, I told them they could order A*N*Y*T*H*I*N*G they wanted off the menu. 

I was slightly disappointed when they kind of wimped out and ordered modestly sized meals and drinks. For the record, I ordered the jumbo butterfly shrimp dinner. Delicious!      

When I woke in the morning there was several inches of snow on the ground. Dan and Terry had already left for the day so Ryan relayed their goodbyes. I wished him well and I was off.

The ride home was long and, thankfully, uneventful. I arrived home just before dark and I was very happy to be safe at home with my darling Juli.

RECENTLY AND NOW…

Although the receipt from the Sheriff’s office stated that I should not expect to see the confirmation of the delivery of the summons until March 4th, I checked the IFile website several times nearly every day upon my return from Chicago but after a week I gave up thinking that the county must have a tremendous backlog of cases to serve.

Twelve days after I returned from Chicago, I posted the following update on the GoFundMe page:

Dear Donors,

I am writing to you today to inform all of you that the first part of a very audacious action has been completed as planned and phase two is well underway. 

The very few of you who are privy to what I have been doing are probably grinning ear to ear right now while others are righteously puzzled. 

To those of you who are among the latter, fear not, all will be revealed very soon. 

In fact, I can tell you in a very definitive way that either on, so soon after March 4th, I will be making a VERY public statement on File 770.com that will lay out, in detail, exactly what your contributions have brought forth and what I have been up to.

In the meantime, I apologize for the significant delay and ask for your patience in this matter while it is diligently pursued and executed.

Best Wishes,

Chris M. Barkley

But little did I know that less than twenty four hours later, I was in for a fortuitous surprise…

Late in the morning of February 19th, I received a text from a close friend who tipped me off that Mr. McCarty may have been served. (I am not disclosing the friend nor how they came to that conclusion to protect the confidentiality of the person involved and the sources and methods by which they came to that conclusion.)

A quick check of the Cook County iFile website confirmed that this was indeed the case; at approximately 4:24 pm local time, the summons’ status was certified as SERVED by a Cook County Officer.  

During the time up to the date of the court hearing, I felt incredibly nervous. In fact, I was so discombobulated about it that I had somehow tricked myself that the actual hearing date was on Friday the 28th of March. 

I let March 4 come and go without comment because I realized that I could announce that Mr. McCarty had been served with the summons, I really did not have anything else of substance to add to that. So I decided to wait until after the first hearing to report what happened and hoped my donors would understand.

As the days passed, I grew more apprehensive. And not because I was appearing before a judge; I have had my share of courtroom drama, fighting traffic tickets, battling debt collectors and other smaller legal conflicts.

My concerns were whether or not Mr. McCarty would show up, his demeanor on the call and whether or not he would agree to settle this ongoing situation or not.

Luckily, I checked my court documents on Wednesday to double check the time of the hearing and was shocked to see that it was on the day before I thought, on Thursday instead of that coming Friday. I checked the digital calendar on my phone and saw that I had the right date and time; the calendar would have notified me 30 minutes before the hearing anyway. But still, that mistake only amplified my fears.

In the morning, I fixed a large cup of tea, and I placed my laptop and a copy of the casefile in the living room for the hearing.

When I logged into the Zoom call at 9:20 a.m., I was surprised that the video feed was crowded with other people waiting for their cases to be heard. I was called out by the clerk for my case number and was asked to mute my microphone until my line number, 35, was called by the judge.

At exactly 10:30 a.m., I noted that Dave McCarty had entered the Zoom portal. He was seated in his office with the camera tilted upward to show shelves of books in the background. For the record, I was seated on a couch with two rows of sf and astronomy art behind me.

Our case was heard second after a payment dispute that required a Spanish speaking interpreter for the defendant.

The judge (whose name I did not catch) greeted both of us and addressed Mr. McCarty first: “What do you have to say about the issue before you?” she asked him.

And Mr. McCarty replied, “I don’t think I owe anything.” 

THIS, I think, was a very, very unfortunate choice of words on his part.

Now, to be fair, Mr. McCarty was probably referring to the amount he was being sued for, which is $3,000.00.

But to me, it was much, much more; the way I heard it, he was saying that did not owe me, my fellow Hugo Award recipients or fandom in general, ANYTHING.

When the judge asked me for comment I stated, for the record, that I was willing to work with Mr. McCarty to resolve the monetary and any underlying issues.

The judge replied that the defendant has stated that he doesn’t owe anything and therefore has rejected arbitration. She then set a pre-trial hearing over Zoom for April 24th. She also said that if Mr. McCarty changed his mind about arbitration, he could contact the court directly on the 6th floor of Daley Plaza. 

Well that’s certainly not happening anytime soon, I thought.

And with that, the hearing was over. We both thanked the judge and left the zoom hearing.

And so, David Lawrence McCarty, with his singularly oblivious and dismissive statement in the hearing, has amply demonstrated that he should never be allowed to hold any position of authority in any fannish activity again.

Mr. McCarty, through a documented series of actions, words and deeds, has ably demonstrated that he does not care for courtesy, diplomacy, equity or the Constitution of the World Science Fiction Society.

Mr. McCarty, in a mere five minutes, could have agreed to send out any remaining Hugo Awards owed to the 2023 Hugo Award recipients, including my own, and satisfied a major complaint of his stewardship as the Chengdu Hugo Award Administrator.

Mr. McCarty has deliberately, and needlessly chosen to prolong this legal proceeding and keep any remaining recipients, including myself, waiting for their awards. 

Mr. McCarty has not only dishonored himself, he has, by continuing to evade responsibility or accountability for his actions, is also dishonoring his friends in sf fandom, both here and in the People’s Republic of China as well.

And, frankly, I don’t enjoy hammering Mr. McCarty on his ethical and moral lapses. I just want him to do the right thing.

I am not responsible for his various plights, I am just unlucky enough to be caught in the eye of the hurricane of his troubles. 

They say the pride goeth before the fall but I would also opine that a person’s ego precedes it by mere milliseconds.

More as it happens; watch this space…