Green Jacobson P.C.

Our long-time client, the Housing Authority of St. Louis County (HASLC), has launched a new website. The new website is well laid out and useful, providing resources for all of HASLC’s stakeholders, including current assisted-housing clients and low-income people needing housing, existing and prospective Section 8 landlords, and those who wish to become vendors to HASLC.

Click here to see HASLC’s new website.

Joe Jacobson concluded a three-day jury trial today with a unanimous jury verdict for our client, Panera LLC.

Panera, which operates under the St. Louis Bread Company name in this area and as Panera in the rest of the country, was sued for an alleged breach of contract. The plaintiff was a company that had provided telephone maintenance services for Panera’s cafes for about 10 years. Plaintiff claimed damages of over a quarter-million dollars based on its final year of revenue from Panera.

Joe established at trial that the two company’s business relationship was just that — a relationship — and that no contract existed, although one had been proposed by Panera.

After 30 years, on and off, of practicing law with Martin Green and his law firms, including Green Jacobson and the former Green Hoffmann & Dankenbring, Greg Christoffel announced his retirement from the full-time practice of law effective as of the end of 2012. Greg will remain Of Counsel to the firm.

Greg has had a great career in law and business and government service, with a special focus on telecommunications.

Greg began his career as a First Assistant Public Counsel for the State of Missouri, where he advocated on behalf of consumers in public utility cases before the Missouri Public Service Commission, and then as an Assistant Attorney General in the Antitrust Division of the Missouri Attorney General’s Office.

Greg spent many years at Southwestern Bell, later known as SBC Communications, Inc. and now known as AT&T, where he was General Attorney for mergers and acquisitions and international business. His work at SBC spanned the entire business, including structuring industry-leading transactions in cable television, cellular telephone, foreign telephone privatization, directory advertising, and technology development.

Greg was also involved in start-up telecommunications and cable companies. Greg served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Brooks Telecommunications International, Inc., where he helped develop telecommunications systems and what is now known as the internet in China. He also served as Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Brooks Fiber Properties, Inc., a publicly-traded competitive local exchange carrier, and as President of Brooks Investments, a $26 million venture fund that invested in early-stage telecommunications businesses.

Greg has served the community in many ways. Greg is the outgoing Chair of the St. Louis County Industrial Development Authority. He is also on the board of the St. Louis County Economic Council, and represents the Council on the steering committee of the Regional Entrepreneurship Initiative. Greg was a founding board member and mentor of the Technology Entrepreneur Center, a St. Louis incubator of high-tech start-up companies, which now operates as the IT Entrepreneur Network of Innovate St. Louis. Greg also serves as a mentor to St. Louis entrepreneurs through the Innovate Venture Mentoring Service. He lectures on the legal aspects of starting a business for the monthly seminar of the St. Louis Chapter of the Service Corps of Retired Executives.

In addition, Greg serves as a board member of Boys & Girls Town of Missouri, and chaired that agency through its merger with Edgewood Children’s Center to form the Great Circle behavioral health agency.

Greg’s other interests have included playing bass for the Bluegrass Ensemble of the Folk School of St. Louis and with the Ambassadors of Swing Big Band. His current musical gig is with the Riverbound bluegrass band.

We at Green Jacobson have enjoyed our years of working with Greg. We intend to continue to rely upon his wisdom and counsel in the coming years.

Allen Press has been representing Century Motor Corp. in Wentzville for years. If you have been following the story on these pages, you know that Century was one of 789 dealers Chrysler terminated across the United States in Chrysler’s 2009 bankruptcy. After nearly two years of lawsuits and arbitration, Allen successfully obtained Century’s restoration as a Chrysler dealer in March 2011. Only nine other terminated Chrysler dealers out of the 789 were similarly successful in regaining their dealerships.

Century’’s re-birth has unfortunately been marked by continuing struggles with Chrysler. One of the biggest problems has been Chrysler’s refusal to allocate Century a reasonable number of vehicles.

Earlier this year, Century sued Chrysler for damages resulting from the inadequate vehicle allocations. Century soon found itself with no inventory of one of Chrysler’’s hottest models, the Four Door Jeep Wrangler. After Chrysler denied Century’s repeated requests for an allocation, Century asked the court to issue an injunction ordering Chrysler to fill 11 of Century’s outstanding orders for this model.

Following an all-day evidentiary hearing, St. Charles County Circuit Judge Ted House on October 4 ordered Chrysler to fill the 11 outstanding orders within 30 days. Chrysler sought to block the order in the Court of Appeals by filing a writ of prohibition. The Court of Appeals entered its preliminary writ blocking the lower court’s order October 19. Joe Jacobson worked with Allen, and prepared briefs and motions on Century’s behalf in opposition to the writ application. The Court of Appeals quashed its preliminary writ December 7 after the issues had been fully briefed.

A week later, in the face of a motion for contempt of court, Chrysler finally abandoned its fight and delivered the 11 Four Door Wranglers to Century. Here they are:

Joe Jacobson appeared on the front page of this week’s Missouri Lawyer’s Weekly highlighting a set of articles focusing on some ten lawyers and law firms who contribute substantial time and efforts to long-term pro bono projects. Joe was featured for his 15 years of work for the New Northside Missionary Baptist Church in north St. Louis County.