Trouble follows shows manager

Sarasota Herald Tribune

Sarasota businessman Richard Garden still promotes his shows, and conflict still follows
close behind.

Over the last two decades, Garden's businesses have been fined or barred from operating
in at least six states. He faced criminal charges for a circus bleacher collapse that injured
70 people in New York, and his companies have been sued more than a dozen times in
Sarasota County alone.

Now, ice skaters are accusing Garden and his son, Niles, of skipping out on an Ice
Capades tour in Canada, leaving them in the lurch, and officials at Robarts Arena in
Sarasota say the Gardens stopped payment on a check for a home show.

On Tuesday, a dozen Ice Capades performers from across the globe learned Garden
Family Shows, Inc. abruptly canceled the rest of the North American tour and reportedly
drove away before dawn without doling out paychecks or plane tickets home.

Media reports said the Gardens informed the skaters of the cancellation by slipping a
letter under their doors at 4 a.m. The letter also told the performers to send in their bank
information with account numbers so they could receive payment.

"They owe us money," performer Gabor Balint, who is from Hungary, told the Williams
Lake Tribune.

The Williams Lake arena where the Ice Capades held two shows heard about the Garden
Family Shows reputation from another arena manager, and required full payment before
letting them on the ice.

"I owe one of my colleagues a case of beer for the heads up," said Geoff Paynton, who
has heard from a several Garden Family creditors who hoped the arena still had the box
office revenue from two shows.

The Rona Home Center in Williams Lake was not warned. It rented 150 sheets of plywood
to the Ice Capades for $1,000. Niles Garden never paid, but did give the staff six
complimentary tickets to the show, the manager there said.

Back in Sarasota, Robarts Arena manager Rory Martin said Niles Garden did not pay
$5,100 rent for a lackluster home show in February that also left vendors fuming. They
will not be invited back, and Martin said he gave the case to his legal staff to pursue.

"We got a check on Saturday," Martin said. "Then at 3:10 p.m. on Monday, I got a letter
that they stopped payment on the check."

Neither Richard Garden, 66, nor son Niles, 35, returned phone calls for comment on
Wednesday. An employee of Garden Family on the Ice Capades tour said that
arrangements and payments are being sorted out, and that the poor economy was to
blame for the show's collapse.

Garden Family Shows is the latest name for Richard Garden's business enterprises.
He promoted shows under the name Toby Tyler Circus, Kastle Entertainment, Piccadilly
Circus, Circus Matrix and Sterling and Reid Bros. Every one of them has been named in a
lawsuit.

Garden's troubles started in 1984 when Massachusetts, New York, Vermont, Michigan,
Maine and other states started pursuing his companies for deceptive practices.

Authorities said the companies sold tickets on behalf of disabled children with no serious
attempt to get the youngsters to the circus once the money was collected.

Garden pleaded guilty in 1987 to criminal counts in connection to one of three bleacher
collapses at his circuses. Authorities said he ordered bleachers erected on muddy ground
despite warnings from circus workers. About 70 people were injured. A tent collapsed
onto a crowd of 1,100 in Green Bay, Wis., in 1987, injuring 41.

While many of those claims were settled, several states accused Garden of not living up
to his end of the deal, resulting in a lawsuit in Wisconsin, judgments of more than
$100,000 and seizures of his act's equipment in Maine.

In 2001, Sarasota businessman David Rodgers filed a lawsuit claiming Garden and others
took $500,000 from him for a share of the Ice Capades business, but Garden never had
the share to sell. That lawsuit was dropped in 2003.

Another round of trouble in 2004 included an injured circus employee who claimed
Garden's company could not pay its debts or $45,000 in damages owed to him, and a
bullwhip performer who claims he was owed $6,588 in back pay from Garden.

That bullwhip artist, Robert Dante, said he finally worked through all the business entities
and hired a collection agency last month to try and collect.

"They tend to shift things back and forth to different company fronts," Dante said.

Courtesy of Chic Silber