Malcolm1,
There is still a Mr. Pruitt at Eastern Lift Truck. His first name is Dan and has been around prior to ELT taking on NACCO. Never met Dan but I feel confident the founder of ELT passed on his knowledge & put him thru his "special" training program as he did with Mike.

Before you jump to any conclusion you need to wait and see what real shakes out - lots of legal stuff to be sorted out over time. Now is the time for family consoling & healing not business.
A good thing to remember is "Rumor is just rumor and facts are facts. Never play the rumor card especially if you don't have 100% solid facts." And every forecaster of the future is always 100% correct when they look backwards at mega predictions they threw out.
BTW: No one ever predicted Bill Buckner's "Through The Legs" miscue in 1986.