Green Jacobson P.C.

Martin Green and Brad Schneider won unanimous verdicts for our client today from a St. Louis County jury, recovering her entire investment and additional costs she had incurred as a result of the defendants’ fraud, and defeating the defendants’ counterclaim that she had stolen from their business.

Our client, a native of Perryville, thought she was fulfilling her life-long dream of owning her own small business when she invested in “Play,” an upscale clothing boutique in Clayton. She invested $154,000 in exhange for a 50% ownership interest and a job running the store.

Within days of our client’s investment, however, the two partners from whom she bought her interest had spent almost all of our client’s investment.

They used her money to pay off more than $100,000 of existing but undisclosed company debt, all of which they had personally guaranteed, and to pay themselves “reimbursements.”

The defendants’ actions left Play with almost no operating capital. To protect the business and her investment, our client was compelled to pay nearly $20,000 in inventory and business expenses using her personal credit cards. Unsurprisingly, relations with her partners grew steadily worse, until the partners stopped paying her salary and reimbursing her expenses for the company. Two days after a heated confrontation with her partners, our client came to Green Jacobson for help.

Martin and Brad showed the jury over the course of the four-day trial that our client had been defrauded, drawn into this investment by her future partners’ misrepresentations about Play’s financial condition, the value of the company’s assets, and how her investment money would be used.

A highlight of the trial was Martin’s old-fashioned, fire-and-brimstone closing argument, in which he told the jury that, as they had looked into the eyes of the one defendant who testified, they could see her soul and it was rotten.

Martin explained after the trial that, “for this case, for this jury, it was the argument they needed.”

The jury needed less than an hour and a half to unanimously decide that our client had been defrauded and to award her approximately $172,000 in actual damages. The jury also unanimously rejected the defendants’ counterclaim, alleging that our client had stolen more than $23,000 from the company.

When Allen Press obtained an arbitration award reinstating Wentzville’s Century Motor’s Dodge, Chrysler, and Jeep dealerships, the decision made the local news and was reported in automobile industry publications. But when Allen filed a federal lawsuit June 14 on behalf of Century Motor to require Chrysler to comply with the federal law establishing the arbitration process, the case made the national news, including this report today by the Associated Press.

Since the first reports of the arbitration decision came out, Allen has been retained by other, former Chrysler dealers. He has settled one claim to the satisfaction of the client just prior to the start of the arbitration hearing and has one more scheduled for a hearing shortly.

Allen Press successfully defended a jury verdict when the Missouri Court of Appeals today affirmed the judgment in Detmer v. Old Republic Title Company. Allen filed the lawsuit against Old Republic for its breach of a construction escrow contract with our clients. Allen tried the case and obtained a jury verdict in favor of our clients in a four-day trial in 2009. Allen wrote the appeal brief and argued the case in the Court of Appeals. Scott Rose assisted on the appeal brief.

Joe Jacobson argued on behalf of the appellant today in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in the case of Green Edge Enterprises vs. Rubber Mulch, Etc., an appeal seeking to reinstate a patent that had been invalidated by the district court in St. Louis. Green Jacobson’s clients invented the first artificial landscaping mulch manufactured from recycled tire rubber to obtain general commercial acceptance in the United States. Joe was assisted on the brief by Brad Schneider.

Joe Jacobson moderated the opening Plenary Session of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis’s Bench and Bar Conference. The session, titled “Court Rooms of the Future: Justice and Technology,” featured panelists Missouri Supreme Court Judge Zel M. Fischer, United States District Judge Catherine D. Perry, and City of St. Louis Circuit Judge Patrick J. Connaghan. Topics covered in the session included video testifying and tele-trials, experiences with electronic filing in federal court and the anticipated adoption of electronic filing in Missouri state courts, and the use of technology to increase fairness and save money in the administration of justice.

The Bench and Bar is an annual event sponsored by BAMSL and will be running through June 5.