Cox v. Smith (In re Central Illinois Energy Cooperative)

561 B.R. 699
CourtUnited States Bankruptcy Court, C.D. Illinois
DecidedDecember 6, 2016
DocketCase No. 09-81409; Adv. No. 11-8027
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 561 B.R. 699 (Cox v. Smith (In re Central Illinois Energy Cooperative)) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering United States Bankruptcy Court, C.D. Illinois primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Cox v. Smith (In re Central Illinois Energy Cooperative), 561 B.R. 699 (Ill. 2016).

Opinion

OPINION

Thomas L. Perkins, United States Bankruptcy Judge

This matter is before the Court on the motion of the defendant, Michael W. Smith, to dismiss the First Amended Complaint filed by the plaintiff, A. Clay Cox, as Chapter 7 Trustee for the estate of Central Illinois Energy Cooperative (Co.-op).

A. Factual and Procedural Background

As alleged in the First Amended Complaint, the Co-op was created by a group of farmers in 2001 as an association formed under the Illinois Agricultural Cooperative Act (ACA), 805 ILCS 815/1 et seq., with a stated corporate purpose to construct and operate an ethanol facility to process its members’ corn into ethanol and other byproducts and to purchase and otherwise deal in the corn produced by its members. By definition, an agricultural cooperative association is a form of nonprofit corporation. 805 ILCS 315/2. Smith was one of the Co-op’s incorporators, was a director from its inception until December, 2007, and served as its president and general manager.

In 2004, the Co-op’s principals formed two additional entities, Central Illinois Energy, LLC (Opeo) and Central Illinois Holding Company, LLC (Holdco), as Delaware limited liability companies. Thereafter, Opeo undertook responsibility for constructing the ethanol plant, while the Coop undertook responsibility for constructing a grain handling facility adjacent to the ethanol plant property, which grain handling facility was necessary to supply corn to the plant to be processed into ethanol and related byproducts. Opeo entered into an agreement with Lurgi, Inc, to design and construct the ethanol plant. The Co-op entered into an agreement with Nostaw, Inc. to construct the grain handling facility. Smith was named general manager of both Opeo and Holdco. The Co-op owned the majority interest in Holdco, which was the sole member of Opeo. Both the ethanol plant side of the project and the grain handling facility side, which had separate sources of financing, experienced financial difficulties that led to the collapse of the entire project before it became operational. Opeo filed a voluntary bankruptcy petition on December 18, 2007. An involuntary bankruptcy petition was filed against the Co-op on May 1, 2009.

The First Amended Complaint includes seven counts. Each count focuses on a separate transaction or series of transactions engaged in by Smith resulting in a quantified loss allegedly suffered by the Co-op and/or its creditors. The total damages alleged in the seven counts is $4,567,914.

' The same general theory of liability against Smith is alleged in each count, that the transactions engaged in by Smith were in violation of his fiduciary duties of loyalty, good faith and due care that flowed from his status as the Co-op’s general .manager and a member of its board of [705]*705directors. It is alleged in the First Amended Complaint that Smith owed those duties to both the Co-op and its creditors. This is a significant departure from the initial complaint which alleged only that the duties were owed to the creditors of the Co-op once the Co-op became insolvent or entered the zone of insolvency. The First Amended Complaint further alleges that Smith owed the same fiduciary duties to Opeo and Holdco and was thus burdened with a conflict of interest such that Smith and the other shared directors “operated the Co-op in a manner that was contrary to its best interests or those of its creditors and conferred benefits on Opeo and Holdco that they would not have received had Smith and the shared directors been fully independent.”

The initial Complaint, filed on April 19, 2011, alleged a single-count cause of action ¿gainst Smith for breach of fiduciary duties owed to creditors, focusing on certain payments made by the Co-op for the benefit of Opeo and Holdco, and on the sale of the Co-op’s assets in June, 2007, to Green Lion Bio-fuels, LLC (Green Lion). The initial complaint was eight pages long. The First Amended Complaint, thirty-seven pages long, was filed on May 18, 2016, following the substantial completion of discovery. While the filing of an amended complaint relatively late in this proceeding has given Smith the opportunity to raise issues of Illinois law relating to the fiduciary duties owed by directors and officers of an agricultural cooperative association as grounds for dismissal, these issues would have been necessary to address before trial in any event and will continue to be developed and refined as this litigation proceeds.

B. Analysis

1. General Principles of Law

The purpose of a Fed. R. Civ. P. 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss is to test the sufficiency of the complaint, not to decide the merits. Gibson v. City of Chicago, 910 F.2d 1510, 1520 (7th Cir. 1990). When ruling on a motion to dismiss, the court must accept all well-pleaded factual allegations in the complaint as true and draw all reasonable inferences in the plaintiffs favor. Park v. Indiana University School of Dentistry, 692 F.3d 828, 830 (7th Cir. 2012). Dismissal is proper only when the complaint lacks either a cognizable legal theory or fails to allege sufficient facts under a cognizable theory. Bielskis v. Louisville Ladders, Inc., 2007 WL 2088583 (N.D. Ill.)(citing Graehling v. Village of Lombard, 58 F.3d 295, 297 (7th Cir. 1995)).

Fed. R. Civ. P. 8, providing that the statement of a claim for relief shall be “short and plain,” does not require detailed factual allegations, “but it demands more than an unadorned, the-defendant-unlawfully-harmed-me accusation.” Ashcroft v. Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678, 129 S.Ct. 1937, 173 L.Ed.2d 868 (2009). The complaint must contain enough facts to state a claim for relief that is plausible on its face. Bell Atlantic Corp. v. Twombly, 550 U.S. 544, 127 S.Ct. 1955, 1964-65, 167 L.Ed.2d 929 (2007). The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals has interpreted the Supreme Court to be saying only that at some point the factual detail in a complaint may be so sketchy that the complaint does not provide the type of notice of the claim to which the defendant is entitled under Rule 8. Airborne Beepers & Video, Inc. v. AT & T Mobility, LLC, 499 F.3d 663, 667 (7th Cir. 2007).

In his motion to dismiss, Smith asserts both alternative grounds for dismissal, that the complaint fails to allege a cognizable legal theory and that it is factually deficient. The general theory of liability asserted in all seven counts is well-[706]*706established in Illinois, that directors and officers of a corporation occupy a fiduciary relation toward it. Shlensky v. South Parkway Building Corp., 19 Ill.2d 268, 278,166 N.E.2d 793

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Reid v. Wolf (In re Wolf)
595 B.R. 735 (N.D. Illinois, 2018)
Kelly v. Richard Wright Pub. Charter Sch.
317 F. Supp. 3d 564 (D.C. Circuit, 2018)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
561 B.R. 699, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/cox-v-smith-in-re-central-illinois-energy-cooperative-ilcb-2016.