Good Olde Fashioned Whistleblowin' from the Crow's Nest Episode XVI · Filed July 7, 2026 · Document 318

The Log Is Closed

Fact discovery ends. The Jaegers reach for a ruling on liability. And Sea Tow stamps every word of its own sworn testimony "Confidential." Here be what Document 318 means for The Fleet.

The Short Version (For Busy Captains)

On the very deadline our last dispatch flagged, both sides filed a joint status report — Document 318 — telling the Court where discovery stands. Reading it as ever as an open question, not a conclusion, here be the five things a franchisee should note:

• Fact discovery is closed. The depositions of Mitchell Stein, Joseph Frohnhoefer III, and Kristen Frohnhoefer are done. Both sides agree the fact-finding phase is over.
• The Jaegers want to move for summary judgment on liability — on what they frame as statutory violations and contract breaches. If a judge ever agreed, that's a finding about the model, not just one family's dispute.
• Sea Tow marked the entire transcripts of its own witnesses "Confidential." The other side is challenging the blanket seal.
• Correction slips ("errata") arrived months late. One side calls them typo fixes; the other asks whether the changes are substantive.
• Your franchise valuation, per Sea Tow, runs off a spreadsheet produced over four years ago — the methodology, they say, hasn't moved since.

Act I · The Filing — The Deadline Arrives

Last time, we watched a consent motion (Document 317) push a joint status-report deadline to July 7, 2026. Right on schedule, Document 318 landed — a joint letter to Magistrate Judge Steven I. Locke, written at the Court's direction by counsel for both camps: Kaufmann Gildin & Robbins for the "STSI Parties" (Sea Tow, plus third-party defendants Mitchell Stein and Joseph Frohnhoefer III), and counsel for the Jaegers.

The headline both sides agree on: fact discovery is complete. Depositions of party and non-party witnesses wrapped by April 23, 2026. After roughly six years, the fact-gathering is, as far as the docket shows, finished. What's left is a short list of skirmishes — and one very large question.

"This 2020 case cries out to be completed once and for all."— From Document 318, the joint status report

Act II · The Big One — The Jaegers Go for a Liability Ruling

Buried at the bottom of the letter is the piece that should make every operator sit up. The Jaegers want to renew their request for permission to move for summary judgment on liability — asking a judge to rule, before any trial, that the STSI Parties are liable on several of their claims. Their framing, per the filing: straightforward statutory violations and contract breaches that would act as a complete defense to Sea Tow's own claims and leave only a damages inquest.

They tried this once before. In February 2025 (Dkt 283) the Jaegers sought leave to file such a motion. The Court denied it without prejudice — not on the merits, but on timing. As Judge Nina Morrison put it in a May 15, 2025 order: no party may move for summary judgment until the close of discovery. Fourteen months later, discovery is closed. So the door the Court left ajar is the one the Jaegers now want to walk through.

Why this matters to a franchisee

A summary-judgment ruling on liability isn't a verdict about one boat, one paint job, or one billing dispute. The Jaegers' claims, as they frame them, rest on statutory franchise-law grounds. If a court ever found liability on that basis, the open questions every operator would have to ask are simple: What does that say about the business model I signed into? How does that affect my business valuation? How does the network move forward?

We frame this, as always, as a question for a judge to answer — not a conclusion we're drawing. But it's a question worth watching.

Sea Tow's answer, per the filing, is three-part: the motion belongs in front of the trial judge, Judge Kuntz, not the magistrate; it's premature until expert reports are in; and damages are baked into every one of the Jaegers' claims. All fair arguments to make. Whether they persuade the Court is, of course, up to the Court.

Act III · Under Seal — Sea Tow Stamped Its Own Testimony "Confidential"

Here's a detail that reads oddly on its face. During the depositions of Stein and the two Frohnhoefers, the STSI Parties designated the entirety of their party transcripts as "confidential." Per the filing, the parties agreed to treat them as confidential temporarily so the depositions could proceed without interruption — with the Jaegers expressly reserving the right to challenge that blanket seal later.

Now the Jaegers are cashing that reservation. They're asking the Court to make Sea Tow identify the specific pages, lines, or portions that actually warrant confidentiality, and to give the basis for each. Sea Tow says it's prepared to do exactly that — and has asked for 60 days to do it.

The open questions

Confidentiality stamps are routine, and a designation isn't evidence of anything by itself. But a blanket seal over an entire transcript is a different animal — and it's the thing being challenged. The questions a franchisee might fairly ask about testimony that would need 60 days of line-by-line review to keep out of the sunlight:

▸ What did the people who run the Frochise™ testify to that they don't want you to hear? ▸ Did anything they said expose conduct beyond this one dispute? ▸ And does it square with the rest of the sworn record — the same record a federal magistrate has already called "untrue" in one instance?

Act IV · The Corrections — Testimony, Amended After the Fact

When a witness sits for a deposition, the transcript is meant to be the sworn record. A federal rule (30(e)) lets a witness fix errors within a 30-day window. Per Document 318, the STSI witnesses' transcripts were available April 15, 2026. Their correction sheets — the "errata" — were signed and served June 23, 2026. That is, on the Jaegers' math, well outside the 30-day window.

The two sides describe the same sheets very differently. Sea Tow calls the changes stenographic and transcription-level — housekeeping — and cites Second Circuit authority (Podell v. Citicorp Diners Club) for the idea that tossing them would elevate form over substance. The Jaegers say the changes may be substantive, that no request to review-and-correct appears in any transcript, and they've asked the Court to strike the sheets outright.

TWO WORDS FOR THE SAME PAPER: STSI ........ "stenographic and transcription corrections" Jaegers ..... "substantive" changes, served out of time Only the errata sheets themselves settle which it is.

And here's the juxtaposition that gives the errata fight its edge. In the very same filing, the Jaegers submit that the sworn testimony didn't help Sea Tow — it hurt it:

"The depositions have only strengthened the Jaegers' position on liability."— The Jaegers' framing, Document 318

Testimony that — by one side's account — strengthened the case against them, followed weeks later by a stack of correction sheets from that same side's own witnesses. No wonder Sea Tow wants to change its answers. Whether those changes are the routine typo fixes Sea Tow describes or something more is, as ever, a question only the errata sheets themselves can settle.

Regular readers know why this thread rings a bell. This is the same case in which a federal magistrate, in December 2025, described one of Sea Tow's representations to the Court as "untrue." So the question of what the sworn record actually says — and what gets changed after the fact — is not a small one here. As ever: we're posing it, not answering it.

Act V · What Won't Surface — The Documents Sea Tow Won't Hand Over

On June 22, 2026, the Jaegers served what they themselves called a "final" demand for discovery — five categories of documents they say were either already requested, already ordered produced, or first surfaced during the depositions. It's the last thing they want in hand before closing fact discovery for good.

Sea Tow's answer, per Document 318, sorts into three piles:

THE FIVE CATEGORIES — AND WHAT CAME BACK ▸ Tax returns ......... produced (over a timeliness objection) ▸ One category ........ flatly REFUSED (the filing doesn't say which) ▸ Three categories .... "no documents exist," per Sea Tow ▸ Valuation records ... only a four-year-old spreadsheet

The live fight is that last one. The Jaegers want the communications and documents showing how Sea Tow has valued comparable top-tier units in actual or potential sales since 2019 — the very records their newly retained damages expert says he needs to do his job. Sea Tow's position, per the filing: nothing beyond the old spreadsheet exists, and "Nothing more should be required."

The open question a franchisee should sit with

Set Sea Tow's answer here — one category refused, three categories "nothing exists," valuation frozen to a single old spreadsheet — beside a sworn affidavit already on the record in related proceedings, in which Mitchell Stein swore "all responsive documents have been produced" and that "nothing has been withheld on the basis of relevance."

We don't reconcile those two pictures for ye. We lay them side by side and let ye ask the question — before the same court that, back in December 2025, already had to call one Sea Tow representation about document discovery "untrue."

Worth remembering, all of it on the public docket: Sea Tow missed its August 28, 2023 document deadline after five extensions; its 2017 registered trademark in the color yellow was cancelled for discovery obstruction; and on December 29, 2025 a federal magistrate closed document discovery entirely. For an operator, though, the procedural history isn't the worry. The worry is simpler: if the records showing how your franchisor values and sells units genuinely don't exist, what number are you supposed to trust when it's your turn to sell?

Act VI · The Price of Your Boat — What's Your Frochise™ Worth? Ask a Four-Year-Old Spreadsheet

This one is pure franchisee territory. The Jaegers, building a damages case, asked for documents about how Sea Tow values comparable "top-tier" franchise units in actual or potential sales since 2019. It's the kind of number that decides what your business fetches when you go to sell it.

Sea Tow's response, per the filing: point to Document 2675 — a valuation spreadsheet produced over four years ago — and say the methodology and the "multiples" in it "remain the same to this day." In the filing's words: "Nothing more should be required."

Read that twice

If accurate, the model Sea Tow uses to value a top-tier unit today is the same model it used around 2021 — same multiples, same math. For an operator thinking about resale, the fair question is whether a valuation formula frozen for four years reflects what your business is actually worth now.

Act VII · A Familiar Refrain — "That One's for Judge Kuntz"

Read the STSI Parties' half of the letter and a pattern surfaces. The privilege dispute? A matter for Judge Kuntz. The errata sheets? Should be decided by Judge Kuntz. The confidentiality challenge? Yet another issue for Judge Kuntz. Summary judgment? Belongs to Judge Kuntz. Nearly every contested item gets routed away from the magistrate handling discovery and toward the trial judge.

Now — arguing that the trial judge should decide trial-level questions is a legitimate, ordinary position. We note the pattern, not a verdict on it. But longtime readers of this newsletter have watched a recurring theme in this litigation: a preference for moving disputes to a different forum. Whether this is sound lawyering or something a franchisee should file away for later is, again, a question we leave to ye.

Act VIII · One Quiet Line — The Morenos Have Settled

Tucked into the transcript discussion is a single clause worth flagging: a settlement with Cile Moreno has, per the filing, been "consummated." Readers of The Stein File will remember the Morenos — the Tampa Bay franchisee family at the center of that earlier chapter. Their deposition testimony will still be part of the record; their fight, it appears, is over. What terms, and what it signals about the road ahead, the public docket doesn't say. We simply note it.

Act IX · Dead Reckoning — What The Fleet Should Watch Next

THE ROAD FROM HERE (as stated in Document 318) ▸ Late Sept / early Oct 2026 .. Jaegers' damages expert report expected ▸ Soon after .................. STSI may seek a rebuttal expert / preclusion ▸ Pending ..................... Jaegers' renewed bid to move on LIABILITY ▸ On request .................. a status conference before the Court ▸ Still open .................. the SBA Directory recertification question

The expert phase now becomes the spine of the case. If the Jaegers get their liability motion in front of Judge Kuntz, that filing is the one to read closely — it would lay out, in detail, the statutory and contract theories the whole dispute has circled for six years. And the SBA question we raised in Dead Reckoning hasn't gone anywhere. As far as we know, that row in the Directory remains unverified — and every point above still cuts toward the same fork Sea Tow has been sailing toward all along.

The Standing Segment — Questions Franchisees Should Ask

⚖️ To Your Own Attorney

1. If a court in this case ruled that Sea Tow is liable on statutory franchise-law grounds, how would that affect the enforceability of my agreement? 2. What is Document 2675, and is the four-year-old valuation model in it the number that governs what I could sell my unit for? 3. Should I be requesting my own franchise's registration and disclosure history under New York's Franchise Sales Act? 4. If SBA financing eligibility is uncertain, how does that change my realistic resale market — today, not in 2021?

🏴 To Sea Tow Leadership

1. Why were the entire deposition transcripts of Stein and the Frohnhoefers designated confidential, and what specifically needs to stay sealed? 2. What did the errata sheets change — and were those corrections stenographic, or substantive? 3. Has the valuation methodology for top-tier units truly not changed since roughly 2021? 4. What is the current, verifiable SBA Franchise Directory status for Sea Tow?

🧭 To Yourself

1. If fact discovery is closed and one side is racing toward a liability ruling, which side of that ruling would my business rather be standing on? 2. Do I actually know what my franchise is worth — or only what a spreadsheet from four years ago says it's worth? 3. How long will ye keep sailin' under a tattered flag?

Where to read the record for yerself

Every filing referenced here — Document 318 included — lives on the public federal docket, accessible through PACER at pacer.uscourts.gov.

Case No. 2:20-cv-02877-WFK-SIL · U.S. District Court, Eastern District of New York. Don't take our word for it. Verify with yer own eyes, savvy?

Fair winds and following seas, Hornswaggled

We may or may not be a crew. We may or may not be near ye right now. We definitely be committed to transparency… even if we be mysteriously opaque about ourselves.