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The guys kick off the week discussing how Sno Kone Joeallegedly stalked and harassed Mr. Ding-A-Ling and what crosses the line for fair competition. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business in the news and add our legal twist. My name’s Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. You remember last week when we recorded? NASIR: It was a week ago but I do remember. MATT: The people trying to break into the room? NASIR: Yeah, that was crazy. Who was that? MATT: It was a rival podcast of ours. NASIR: No way! MATT: Yeah, they tried to break in and yell stuff while we were recording. You know, it’s competition for them, so they didn’t want us to be recording. They thought, maybe if they came in and yelled things, that’d get us out of sorts or maybe people would stop listening because they’d just hear people yelling in the background and no one wants to listen to that. NASIR: It was disrupting. MATT: But, yeah, apparently this happens in other spots as well and much more hilarious names than ours. There’s a battle between Sno Kone Joe and Mr. Ding-A-Ling – two ice cream truck vendors that are in Gloversville, but I don’t know what state that’s in. The lawsuit was in Upstate New York. NASIR: It must be in New York then. MATT: Yeah, I would think so. This is very town-centric because basically you have Josh Malatino – he’s Mr. Sno Kone and he’s had his business, I guess, for a while in Gloversville – and there was a new guy that came in town, Mr. Ding-A-Ling – you know, new into town, just trying to give ice cream presumably to kids. Kids love to hear that sound of the ice cream coming through. I actually hear it every now and then at my house. NASIR: Well, I’m trying to figure out if the Sno Kone guy, what’s his name? Sno Kone Joe? MATT: Sno Kone Joe, yeah. NASIR: Well, snow cones are different than ice cream so does Sno Kone Joe also sell ice cream? I feel like he does because the one that was upset, I suppose, they would follow the other competitor’s ice cream truck and then give out ice cream, basically killing the business. You know, I thought this was a joke but, you know, people get pretty competitive in the food truck business, right? And, apparently, I think there’s a Simpson’s episode about that, if I recall, which is also about franchises. So, interesting tie-in for us lawyers. MATT: Yeah, and let me get to some of the things that happened. Basically, Sno Kone Joe got upset that there’s this new competition in town. He would just follow around the other guy, just yelling at him, “You don’t have a chance! This is my town!” You know, he did get arrested for stalking or bullying – however you want to, I guess, more so stalking. He would just pull up behind the guy and yell “free ice cream!” to people as the second guy was trying to sell his product. NASIR: So, what makes this a little bit more interesting, and I was trying to find more information about this, but the Mr. Ding-A-Ling owner, Brian Collis, Ding-A-Ling says that he and the previous owner of Sno Kone Joe had an agreement not to bring in Mr. Ding-A-Ling trucks into Gloversville. Okay. Just to follow what’s going on here because I know these names are confusing, Mr. Ding-A-Ling had an agreement with the former owner of Sno Kone Joe’s business saying, “Okay. We’re not going to bring any Ding-A-Ling trucks into Gloverville,” but that arrangement ended as soon as – let’s see – Malatino, who is what? MATT: Mr. Sno Kone. NASIR: He’s Mr. Sno Kone or Sno Kone Joe or whatever. So, as soon as he took the business over, that agreement somehow went out the window. And so, Ding-A-Ling trucks took advantage of that. Now, the question was, okay, if this agreement existed, was it in writing and, by Malatino or Sno Kone Joe, by taking over the business, did he take on that agreement as well and as restricted in that respect? MATT: So, such a very professional and legal actual substance to this with two hilarious names...