In court documents filed this month, the former business partners of slain American Sniper Chris Kyle claim his widow engaged in “character assassination” when she sued them just before Christmas.
On December 23, Taya Kyle claimed in documents filed in Dallas County that Steven Young and Bo French are conspiring to “steal” Craft International, the tactical training company her husband helped start with a $1.9 million loan. Kyle and her attorney, Larry Friedman, allege that since Kyle was shot to death in February 2013, the pair has been “manipulating Craft’s stock, mishandling funds, diverting assets and mismanaging and usurping Craft’s contracts.”
Kyle and French now say that’s not what happened, and that as recently as May 2013, Craft International “was running a deficit.” Despite that, they say, Craft’s investors and officers raised $300,000 to help the Kyle family after Chris and Chad Littlefield were shot to death at a Glen Rose gun range. (Their accused killer, Eddie Routh, is set to go to trial in May.)
Young and French say that despite all that, in September Taya demanded, among other things, that Craft “immediately cease using any images or references to Chris Kyle” and “publish a public written statement to the effect that there is no longer any business or personal relationship between Craft” and the Kyles, including Chris. “In short,” Young and French alleges, Taya Kyle “wanted to rewrite history.”
Taya claims she owns 85 percent of Craft, because French and Young refused to buy out her ownership “units” when given the opportunity. But their response to the lawsuit reiterates something French told The Dallas Morning Newson December 26: Taya Kyle was never a “member” of Craft, but upon Chris’ death she did have the right to cash out of her husband’s interest in the company. French and Young say she never asked them to make her an offer.
They claim they made her an offer last month, which she refused, and after that she fought efforts to send the claim to a third-party appraiser. French and Young say an appraisal was finished three weeks ago, and that they’re prepared to buy her out at 85 percent of fair market value “as determined by that valuation.” (A figure is not given in the court filing.)
Young and French now say that Taya’s lawsuit “is a character assassination of Craft and its members in an effort to eliminate them as a threat to her goal of controlling all things related to Chris Kyle and to rewrite history.” And, they claim, her lawsuit is rife with irony: Taya, they say, “has sued and maligned Young and French to further her goals when they helped Chris on a daily basis as he wrestled with post-traumatic stress disorder, worked to help him write and promote his books and make other appearances, spent countless hours trying to make Craft a success and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support [Taya] and her children when Chris died.”
Of course, this isn’t the only lawsuit involving Taya Kyle.
Jesse Ventura sued Chris over a passage in American Sniper involving a bar fight that the former wrestler insists never happened. Taya has been replaced as the defendant, and after efforts to get the case thrown out or moved to Dallas, a trial date has been set for May 1 — days before Eddie Routh’s trial in Texas. Kyle and Ventura’s attorneys are supposed to be engaged in settlement discussions, but are arguing over meeting dates.
