Wound I may be wrong but I believe once bankruptcy is declared it becomes very very difficult to recover any owed money even if you do take legal action. I know it is like that in the construction contracting business at least. Once a company declares bankruptcy even if they owe you thousands good luck ever getting the money. I believe declaring bankruptcy gives the person or company protection from being legally required to fulfill previous debts, at least from what I have seen in my work
Depends on what kind of bankruptcy. From what I understand, Shane has tapped virtually everything he has, filing for his company and himself personally. I suppose, hypothetically, if a court battle ensues and the plaintiffs win, an execution (not literally) could be ordered. In this case, basically anything the defendant has left can be used to pay: house, car etc etc. Despite blundering on an astronomical level, a intentional tort case is unlikely given that I don't think Shane ever intended for this situation to happen. A misappropriation of funds is obvious, but everything is obvious in hindsight.
The black letter law for a civil case like this, most likely negligence, would be
1. The defendant is owed a duty of care
2. The plaintiff breached that duty
3. It was the proximate cause of plaintiff's injury (doesn't have to be physical)
4. Plaintiff suffers an injury protected under law
He was supposed to pay, he didn't pay, and the people that flew or drove out to take their time to compete suffered an injustice for it. Surrounding circumstances and the defendants knowledge must be taken into consideration and given that the organization has virtually paid entirely to the point of bankruptcy for their blunder, this was unintentional and Shane paid the price. Getting the pay out in this situation seems very unlikely. Is that justice? Well he owes people money but I doubt anyone will see it. If the man is in as dire straits as it sounds like he's in, disregarding the sob story of "I just wanted the FGC to be a better place", you could try to take legal action but I think it would just be a waste of everyone's time.
TLDR: You can sue but I doubt anything will come of it except headaches for everyone.
On a more personal note, I think the "community will see this as a learning experience, and not let it fester and affect the community as a whole negatively." comments are a little out of line, given that you're the one who is at fault and needs to pay people money they are entitled to. I'm sorry, it's really shitty that people are making death threats against you but I'd definitely try to work personally with everyone who was negatively affected by your "trust" of Verizon so you can really apologize for this.
