An owner of a grain business ordered to pay more than $1 million in a judgement in a nine-year-old civil lawsuit is taking his case to the Indiana Court of Appeals.
Gregory W. Daily and his business, Daily Feed & Grain in Petersville, filed the appeal on July 15 regarding the decision made in Bartholomew Superior Court 2. Two days later, Special Judge AmyMarie Travis agreed to delay her judgment until the appeal process is completed.
But Travis, a Jackson County Superior Court judge, also ordered Daily to deposit $1,080,579 with the court to secure the appeal. The amount includes a $1,034,324 judgement to the original plaintiff, Chad Sims, as well as $42,000 to cover court costs and future potential interest during the appeal process.
Daily and Sims became engaged in farming together in 2009 after Daily helped Sims acquire farmland that was part of the Henry M. Marr estate northeast of Columbus. According to the lawsuit, 404 acres were allocated to Daily, while Sims was provided 125 acres.
Sims had worked as a farmhand for several years prior to Marr’s death in December, 2008. Marr, a widower whose children all lived out of state, stipulated that Sims was to have the ability to purchase the land before it went to auction.
“A driving reason that Sims chose Daily over other people who could help him purchase the remainder of the Marr Farm was his understanding that Daily would allow for future land transfers after Sims raised the money with which to purchase the additional land,” according to the judge’s ruling.
But the judge also wrote in her findings of facts and conclusions that Daily made clear he would never sell Sims any of the Marr Farm he had acquired in the original deal. That was a breach of the right of first refusal contained in a Agreement of Acquisition that both parties signed on Sept. 4, 2009, Travis stated.
Sims also contends that Daily breached the contract’s anti-encumbrance clause by leasing some portion of the land they jointly obtained to build solar energy systems and a cell tower. Daily has maintained that none of his actions constituted a breach of the agreement.
During their business relationship that ended in 2014, multiple disagreements arose between Daily and Sims regarding the agricultural land they had jointly obtained.
When considering conflicting testimony, Travis stated she believes Sims’ recollection of relevant events is more credible than Daily’s remembrances because Daily received a significant head injury on October 16, 2020.
As a result, Daily has suffered with problems regarding vision and “has great difficulty remembering past events,” Travis wrote.
Financially, the most significant allegation in the lawsuit was Sims’ claim that Daily’s grain elevator business, Daily Feed & Grain, Inc., had impounded Sims’ corn and grain without payment or acquiring proper title to the crops. That was the bulk of the $1,034,324 judgment against Daily.
According to Sims, there was a February 2015 meeting where Daily allegedly said he was changing the 2010 arrangement, and would only divide monies from the sale of grain based upon how much acreage is registered at the Farm Service Agency offices. Daily also said he would apply that new division retroactively back to 2011, the lawsuit stated.
Although Daily agreed there was a meeting, he denied most of the claims made by Sims regarding what he said at that time. In his countersuit, Daily claimed that Sims was the one who breached their agreement.
“This court concludes that Daily has not proven by a preponderance of the evidence that Sims materially breached the land purchase agreement in a way that would excuse Daily from performance,” the judge wrote.
But at the same time, Travis also ruled that Sims’ failure to exercise due diligence for several years, coupled with a lack of evidence, necessitated the dismissal of Sims’ claim of fraud against Daily.
Sims also claimed that in early 2015, Daily sent letters to Sims’ customers containing falsehoods in an effort to dissuade them from working with Sims in the future, according to court records. But the judge ruled that Sims failed to provide evidence that Daily interfered with Sims’ contractual or business relationships. As a result, the judge dismissed Sims’ claim of defamation.
Although Sims and Daily both claim that the other violated an agreement to farm land they obtained under a shares agreement, the trial court found for neither party on these claims.
Daily claimed that Sims violated numerous duties owed to him, but those claims were either dismissed by a summary judgment or as a sanction for failing to disclose evidence.
Daily has hired two Indianapolis attorneys, Brad A.Catlin and Joseph N. Williams, to represent him at the Indiana Court of Appeals. which is awaiting a transcript of the trial from Bartholomew Superior Court 2 before scheduling a hearing.
Claims made in filing a lawsuit represent only one side of the case and may be contested in later court action or upon appeal.
