The Rise and Fall of the Hallmark Kid

By age ten Ryan Lipner was managing his father�s Hallmark store. So how did this would-be greeting card tycoon end up in jail before his 18th birthday?

Comments (0) By Wyatt Olson Thursday, Oct 11 2001

Judge Weinstein released Lipner from jail August 2, ordering him to attend high school and receive psychological counseling. Just as he turned 18 years old September 3, he enrolled as a freshman at Piper High School in Sunrise but was expelled shortly thereafter.

Lipner has been aquiver with the possibilities of litigation now that he's an adult. "I know how to play the legal system, bigtime," he crows. "No longer do I need to call my guardian ad litem." That's led him to file a spate of new lawsuits, but none so important to him as an $18 billion suit he filed against Hallmark on September 20, claiming business interference.

"You open and lock up, ship and receive. You hire and fire, sweep and clean. You're running a Hallmark all before you're a teen."

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The taste of litigation had him salivating. "I want a hundred lawyers on Hallmark's side against little me. Ha!" he shrieked soon after he filed suit. "That's all I care about. Just to know that Hallmark has to think about me and talk about me -- that's great to me. I just wanna be in the action, you know?"

Well, the Hallmark Kid won't be seeing action any time soon. On September 26 Weinstein, alarmed over Lipner's new litigiousness, sent him to Broward County Jail until he could be transferred to a psychiatric hospital for treatment. "Basically the judge said enough is enough," concludes Solomon, the teen's attorney. "They're going to stabilize him to get him competent. I see him as a very sick young man. He deserves to be pitied, not admired. He's not Robin Hood."