EAST ST. LOUIS – Chief Twentieth Circuit Judge Andrew Gleeson properly corrected an inadvertent dating error that involved a statute of limitations, Chief U.S. District Judge Nancy Rosenstengel decided on Jan. 15.
She found that dent repairman Wesley Huff filed suit in a business dispute last March 30, not on April 7 as a stamp on the complaint showed.
Gleeson entered an order changing the date last June.
Rosenstengel wrote that if there is proper evidence of a clerical error, a judge may correct it at any time.
Nothing but the date remained on the complaint when she finished with it.
She dismissed all counts against Huff’s former partners Charles Binkley, Eric Stokes and Andy Clawson, and she gave Huff three weeks to amend the complaint.
Although Huff’s complaint failed, he won a jurisdictional dispute.
Rosenstengel denied a defense motion to dismiss the suit as an improper reversal of a judgment that St. Louis County Circuit Judge Ellen Ribaudo entered.
Ribaudo struck Huff’s pleadings as a sanction and entered default judgment for more than $700,000.
The partnership of Huff, Binkley, Stokes, Clawson and their paintless dent repair shops formed in 2010.
They agreed that a member who resigned would not compete against them, disclose information or solicit customers.
Huff withdrew his Mirror Finish shop from the group in 2015.
Binkley, Stokes and Clawson sued Huff in St. Louis County in 2017, claiming he violated the operating agreement.
They moved for sanctions and entry of default judgment in 2019.
Ribaudo entered judgment last April, and Huff appealed.
By then his lawyer in the Missouri action, Sean Cronin of Belleville, had sued Binkley, Stokes and Clawson in St. Clair County.
He claimed they misrepresented the value of his investments in related entities and cheated him out of revenue.
He alleged unjust enrichment, fraud, breach of fiduciary duty, interference with contract, fraudulent inducement, and civil conspiracy.
He alleged racketeering under federal law, prompting Binkley, Stokes and Clawson to remove the suit to district court.
Cronin dropped Huff’s racketeering claim and moved to remand the suit to St. Clair County, but Rosenstengel found remand would serve only to prolong the suit.
Binkley, Stokes, and Clawson moved to dismiss all counts as issues that Ribaudo previously adjudicated.
Rosenstengel denied the motion, finding differences between the suit in her court and the suit in Ribaudo’s court.
She wrote that the St. Louis County case arose out of Huff’s resignation and breach of contract.
“This case arises out of defendants’ fraud and misrepresentation outside and apart from the operating agreement,” Rosenstengel wrote.
She found little support for that case in Huff’s complaint.
“When claiming fraud or deception, a plaintiff is required to allege the who, what, when, where, and how of a case,” she wrote.
“More specifically, a plaintiff is required to plead the identity of the person who made the misrepresentation, the time, place and content of the misrepresentation, and the method by which the misrepresentation was communicated to the plaintiff.”
She found the complaint contained little about who, what, when, where and how.
Matthew Landwehr and Shaun Broeker, both of Thompson Coburn in St. Louis, represent Binkley, Stokes, and Clawson.