No Mexico Birthday Trip for Former Celadon Exec, Judge Says

A former Celadon Group Inc. executive lost his bid for permission to take a long-planned 40th birthday trip to Mexico while criminal securities charges are pending after an Indiana federal district judge denied his travel request.

William Eric Meek’s “requested international travel is not advisable,” the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana said Aug. 7. Traveling outside the U.S. “generally increases the risk of flight” for a defendant, and a birthday “is not the sort of extraordinary event that presents good cause to incur such a risk,” Chief Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson’s order said.

Meek, who served as Celadon’s chief operating officer and was accused of defrauding the trucking company’s shareholders, bought tickets for the vacation just four days before his December 2019 arrest, Magnus-Stinson said. He waited “until July 30"—five weeks before the September trip—"to raise this issue with the Court,” the order said.

Magnus-Stinson agreed with prosecutors that “Meek’s offer to use his children as collateral to ensure his return is inappropriate.” Although the court “does not doubt that Mr. Meek loves his children, it will not allow him to use them as negotiating pieces in an attempt to take a week-long vacation to an adults-only resort.”

The coronavirus pandemic and related international travel “uncertainties” also “compel a risk-averse approach,” Magnus-Stinson said. Federal travel restrictions and airline policies increase the risk that Meek could be “trapped outside the United States” if he makes his trip as planned, the order said.

Latham & Watkins LLP represents Meek.

The case is United States v. Meek, S.D. Ind., No. 19-cr-00378, travel motion denied 8/7/20.