A Des Moines heavy equipment company has been awarded a $573,000 judgment against the owners of the now-defunct Environmental Reclamation and Recycling plant, court records show.
Judge Arthur Gamble granted summary judgment to Mid-Land Equipment Co., which had leased two front-end loaders to the plant for recycling construction debris in 2006.
Court records show that the two loaders have been repossessed, but that the recycling company - owned in a partnership involving Regency executives James Myers, Richard Moffitt and John Gamble - had failed to make lease payments on the equipment.
In addition, Gamble also approved judgments against Myers for $300,000, Moffitt for $100,000, Gamble for $50,000 and another Des Moines partner, Kurt Pagliai, for $50,000. The four men had provided personal guarantees for the leases in that amount, records show.
Gamble's order is the most recent development in a tangle of lawsuits and other actions involving Environmental Reclamation and Recycling in southeast Des Moines. In addition, two lawsuits accuse the owners of defaulting on several million dollars worth of loans.
The lawsuits are among 20 filed in Polk County District Court in the aftermath of the financial collapse of Regency Homes in April 2008 and, later, of Regency Commercial. In recent months, judges in Iowa and Minnesota have ordered default judgments against the Myers and their partners totaling more than $40 million.
Environmental Reclamation and Recycling is now closed. Iowa Department of Natural Resources officials are now imposing a $1,000-per-month fine on plant officials for failure to clean up a dumping site in Bondurant and have begun the process to claim a $100,000 letter of credit held by the plant to help pay for the cleanup. Des Moines (Iowa) Register