Gay v. State of Maryland Deposit Insurance Fund Corp.

521 A.2d 1205, 308 Md. 707, 1987 Md. LEXIS 196
CourtCourt of Appeals of Maryland
DecidedMarch 6, 1987
DocketNo. 77
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 521 A.2d 1205 (Gay v. State of Maryland Deposit Insurance Fund Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Gay v. State of Maryland Deposit Insurance Fund Corp., 521 A.2d 1205, 308 Md. 707, 1987 Md. LEXIS 196 (Md. 1987).

Opinion

RODOWSKY, Judge.

By summary judgment the trial court ordered the appellant, James L. Gay, Jr. (Gay), to transfer his interest in certain corporate stock to the insolvent service company of an insolvent savings and loan association. The appeal potentially raises intriguing issues involving contracts, specific restitution, fiduciary duties, conflict of interests, and [710]*710constructive trusts, but we shall reverse primarily based on the rules of summary judgment procedure.

Appellee, the plaintiff below, is State of Maryland Deposit Insurance Fund Corporation (MDIF) in its capacity as receiver for Old Court Savings & Loan, Inc. (Old Court).1 The Circuit Court for Baltimore City had placed Old Court in conservatorship on May 13, 1985, and in receivership on November 8, 1985. That same date the receiver, MDIF, filed a 142 page amended complaint against the former president of Old Court, Jeffrey A. Levitt (Levitt), and thirty-eight other defendants. This appeal involves one aspect of one transaction embraced in that amended complaint.

The subject transaction concerns a partially developed residential community in South Carolina known as Tega Cay. The stock which MDIF seeks from Gay represents two and one-half percent of the outstanding shares in both the private corporation furnishing utility services, and in the corporation owning recreational facilities, at Tega Cay. To the extent that the receiver has been able to reconstruct the transaction, it generally proceeded in the following manner.

Sometime prior to August 9, 1984, Old Court became interested in developing Tega Cay in conjunction with Edward R. Oppel (Oppel), a builder who had apparently been active in that community. The properties comprising Tega Cay, insofar as this case is concerned, were owned by four South Carolina corporations, TC 126, Inc., TC 22, Inc., TCU, Inc. (TCU), and Tega Cay Recreation Company, Inc. (TCRC). TC 126, Inc. owned 471 finished building lots and a large tract of undeveloped land. TC 22, Inc. had been established in a prior bankruptcy proceeding involving the development. TCU is the private utility company and TCRC owned two golf courses, two swimming pools, and a clubhouse. All of [711]*711the stock of each of these four corporations was in turn owned by a Netherlands corporation, Stanwick B.V. On August 9, 1984, Stanwick B.V. entered into a written contract with Tega Cay Development Co., Inc. (TCDC) to sell to the latter all of the stock of the four corporations for $5 million, of which $500,000 was paid as a downpayment.

TCDC is a South Carolina corporation which was formed on the day its contract with Stanwick B.V. was signed. The receiver now agrees that Oppel owned and owns forty percent of the stock of TCDC. The remaining sixty percent was and is owned by Old Court’s wholly owned subsidiary, Old Court Investment Company, Inc. (OCIC). The Stanwick B.V. contract was signed for TCDC by Gay, as its vice-president. Gay, according to the allegations of the amended complaint, was vice-president of Bankers Realty, Inc. (Bankers), a wholly owned subsidiary of Meridian Mortgage Investment Corp. (MMIC), which in turn was a wholly owned subsidiary of OCIC.

Closing of the contract with Stanwick B.V. took place on October 2, 1984, in New York City. The settlement sheet reflects that Old Court loaned TCDC $7 million, including the $500,000 deposit. The difference between the $7 million loan and the $5 million purchase price is of general interest to the receiver. Part of that difference consists of two $50,000 disbursements, recorded on the settlement sheet as paid respectively to TCRC and to TCU.

Gerald Katz, Esquire (Katz) was the attorney representing the Old Court interests in the Tega Cay transaction. Katz testified on deposition that the transaction was modified on the buyer’s side from that evidenced by the contract with Stanwick B.V. He said that the decision was made “internally” that Old Court did not want the stock of TCU and TCRC. It was to be assigned to someone else. When the closing was completed on October 2, 1984, nobody knew how the stock in the four entities was ultimately to be held. Both TCU and TCRC were producing very substantial losses. TCU had not obtained its final rate approval and it [712]*712would be many years before it stood on its own. Substantial capital was required for both companies to continue in existence. Further, it might not have been proper for OCIC to own TCU and TCRC. At some point a decision was made, as Katz described it, that TCU and TCRC would be owned by a “group of individuals and they would agree to make a substantial capital contribution to those entities.”

Oppel, who signed the settlement sheet for the $7 million Old Court loan as “General Partner” of TCDC, was also deposed. He had been primarily interested in building homes at Tega Cay and had no desire to be an owner of either the recreation or the utility company. He knew that TCDC would not own TCU and TCRC. He assumed that the significant losses of those two companies were of some benefit to Old Court.

In an affidavit Gay states that during August 1984 Levitt had asked him to devote substantial time to overseeing the Tega Cay project on a fee per lot sold, plus bonus, basis of compensation. He attended the October 2, 1984, closing in New York. Gay further makes oath that

[i]n late October, 1984, Jeffrey Levitt stated that the work to be done in Tega Cay was greater than had been anticipated and that in addition to other duties, he wanted me to oversee work for TCRC and TCU. In exchange for my increased work on the overall project and my additional duties for TCRC and TCU, Levitt stated that I would have a ten percent (10%) interest in TCRC and TCU.

Gay affirms that he supervised a $100,000 renovation of the TCRC clubhouse, the redesign of several holes on the golf course, hired a landscape architect, and purchased new golf carts. He states he had “responsibility for upgrading and increasing the capacity of the [TCU] sewage treatment plant; the design and installation of additional sewer and water mains and service lines and securing permission from local government authorities for these and other related activities.” It was his “understanding that the consideration [he] gave for the issuance of shares in TCRC and TCU [713]*713was to have been the services [he] performed for each corporation.”

Under cover of a letter dated January 23, 1985, Katz caused to be transmitted to Gay at Bankers’ offices in Baltimore the corporate paperwork on the Tega Cay transaction. Included were the organizational minutes of TCDC. These minutes are in the form of informal action by the directors named in the articles of incorporation. They were prepared for signature by Levitt, Dennis E. Guidice (Guidice), and Gay.2 Gay has signed the minutes but Levitt and Guidice have not. The minutes recite that the directors elect Oppel as president and Gay as vice-president of TCDC and an Anne Marie Buscemi as secretary-treasurer. The minutes also contain the following resolution:

That the Corporation hereby assigns its rights to purchase the stock of TCU, Inc. and Tega Cay Recreation Company, Inc. to Jeffrey A. Levitt (for himself and for the benefit of James L. Gay, Jr.), Jerome S. Cardin, Allan H. Pearlstein and Edward R. Oppel (and Jeffrey A. Levitt) in return for the favorable commitment it has received from them to invest at least $100,000 in new capital for each corporation^]

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Bluebook (online)
521 A.2d 1205, 308 Md. 707, 1987 Md. LEXIS 196, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/gay-v-state-of-maryland-deposit-insurance-fund-corp-md-1987.