Lucas v. Dadson Manufacturing Corporation

• Court: Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit
• Decided: December 16, 2025
• Docket: 25-3074
• Status: Unpublished

Opinion

Appellate Case: 25-3074 Document: 22-1 Date Filed: 12/16/2025 Page: 1 FILED United States Court of Appeals UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS Tenth Circuit

FOR THE TENTH CIRCUIT December 16, 2025 _________________________________ Christopher M. Wolpert Clerk of Court JAMES R. LUCAS,

Plaintiff - Appellant,

v. No. 25-3074 (D.C. No. 2:22-CV-02107-KHV-ADM) DADSON MANUFACTURING (D. Kan.) CORPORATION; PETER B. LUCAS,

Defendants - Appellees. _________________________________

ORDER AND JUDGMENT * _________________________________

Before HARTZ, EID, and CARSON, Circuit Judges. _________________________________

Plaintiff James R. Lucas appeals from an order sanctioning him for civil

contempt and declining to sanction his opponents. We hold that Plaintiff has failed to

present an argument on appeal on how the district court abused its discretion in

declining to sanction the defendants. We also hold that the district court did not abuse

its discretion in sanctioning Plaintiff for civil contempt and that Plaintiff lacks

After examining the briefs and appellate record, this panel has determined *

unanimously to honor the parties’ request for a decision on the briefs without oral argument. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 34.1(G). The case is therefore submitted without oral argument. This order and judgment is not binding precedent, except under the doctrines of law of the case, res judicata, and collateral estoppel. It may be cited, however, for its persuasive value consistent with Fed. R. App. P. 32.1 and 10th Cir. R. 32.1. Appellate Case: 25-3074 Document: 22-1 Date Filed: 12/16/2025 Page: 2

standing to appeal criminal sanctions that the district court did not actually impose on

him. Finally, we hold that the district court did not demonstrate bias against Plaintiff.

I. BACKGROUND

From 2006 to 2017 Plaintiff served as chief executive officer and chairman of

the board of Dadson Manufacturing Corporation. While he served in these roles, he at

times took deferred salary and he made personal loans to Dadson. In 2017 Dadson

terminated Plaintiff. Plaintiff sued in the District Court of Johnson County, Kansas,

to recover his deferred salary and loans, naming as defendants Dadson, the Nancy F.

Peterson Trust (the owner of Dadson), Nancy F. Peterson (Plaintiff’s former mother-

in-law and a trustee of the Nancy F. Peterson Trust), and Pamela Lucas (Plaintiff’s

ex-wife and a trustee of the Nancy F. Peterson Trust).

The defendants counterclaimed that Dadson had in fact overpaid Plaintiff for

his personal loans and that Plaintiff had diverted Dadson assets to himself and his

other companies and otherwise breached his fiduciary duties to Dadson. The jury

awarded Plaintiff $278,066.05 against Dadson in deferred salary but also awarded

Dadson $117,328.64 for conversion of overpaid loans and $400,000 for breach of

fiduciary duty—leaving a net judgment of $239,262.59 against Plaintiff—and

determined that Dadson was entitled to punitive damages.

On March 12, 2019, the parties reached a settlement. Dadson agreed not to

seek punitive damages or initiate further actions against Plaintiff in exchange for

Plaintiff’s dismissal of his appeal and waiver of claims against Dadson, the Nancy F.

Peterson Trust, Nancy Peterson, Pamela Lucas, and Peter Lucas (Plaintiff’s son and

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the President of Dadson at the time). Despite assenting to the settlement agreement,

Plaintiff has brought numerous unsuccessful claims, motions, and appeals against the

defendants, counsel, and others involved in the first suit relating to his deferred

salary and personal loans.

The present appeal is from one such suit, this one filed in the United States

District Court for the District of Kansas on March 18, 2022, against Dadson and

Peter Lucas (Defendants). Given the releases in the settlement agreement, the district

court granted Defendants’ motion for summary judgment and entered judgment for

Defendants on February 15, 2023. A month later Defendants moved for sanctions. At

an evidentiary hearing on June 5, 2023, the parties agreed that Defendants would

withdraw that motion in exchange for Plaintiff’s agreeing not to file any new lawsuits

against Dadson, Nancy Peterson, the Nancy Peterson Trust, Peter Lucas, Pamela

Lucas, or Mark Bodine (counsel to Dadson and Peter Lucas) that related to the first

suit. The court memorialized this agreement in a written order on June 9. The

agreement and order mooted an earlier sanctions motion by Defendants, so the court

denied the motion while retaining jurisdiction over the case. The court warned

Plaintiff that it would consider the motion for sanctions if Plaintiff were to violate the

order. Plaintiff appealed the order, and this court affirmed. See Lucas v. Dadson Mfg.

Corp., No. 23-3124, 2024 WL 1617302 (10th Cir. Apr. 15, 2024) (unpublished).

On November 5, 2024, Plaintiff filed a new lawsuit against Dadson, Peter

Lucas, and Thomas Reppell (a former attorney for and director of Dadson) in the

Circuit Court of Jackson County, Missouri, requesting that the defendants pay him

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(1) $33,978.45 for previously having refused to accept a settlement offer for that

amount, (2) $167,506.61 for his personal loans to Dadson, and (3) sanctions of

$100,000 or more. His stated rationale for filing the new suit was his discovery that

Dadson had been administratively dissolved in June 2022. The dissolution occurred

shortly after Plaintiff filed the present case on March 18, 2022, but Plaintiff did not

discover it until late 2024. According to Plaintiff, Defendants’ refusal to accept his

settlement offer in this case violated the requirement under Missouri law that a

dissolved corporation must wind up and liquidate its business.

On January 24, 2025, Defendants filed a motion back in the federal district

court for an order to show cause why the court should not hold Plaintiff in civil

contempt and sanction him for violating the June 9, 2023 order. The requested

sanctions included an award of attorney fees from this action and the Jackson County

suit, injunctive relief barring Plaintiff from filing further actions without leave of

court, and denying Plaintiff the right to proceed in forma pauperis on appeal.

Plaintiff responded the next day with a motion for an order to show cause why the

court should not hold Defendants in contempt for misleading the court about

Dadson’s status as a Missouri corporation.

The district court issued the requested orders to show cause and held a hearing

on February 28. As to Plaintiff’s conduct, the court observed that there was no

dispute that a valid court order existed and that Plaintiff violated that order, leaving

only the issue of appropriate sanctions. Defendants orally requested that the court

incarcerate Plaintiff for 24 hours, but the court responded that the request had not

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been made in their motion and that Defendants would need to file a new motion

requesting Plaintiff’s confinement. The court did award Defendants their legal fees

and expenses to date in this case and the Jackson County case (together, $38,494.41),

plus costs associated with the hearing itself in an amount that was later determined to

be $5,280. Regarding Defendants’ conduct, the court ruled that they had not engaged

in sanctionable conduct.

II. DISCUSSION

A. Plaintiff’s Request for Sanctions Against Defendants

Plaintiff first complains that the district court erred by refusing to sanction

Defendants. Sanctions were warranted, he has argued, because Dadson had an

“obligation, according to Missouri 351.478, to notify its known claimants in writing

by the U.S. Postal Service of the dissolution at any time,” Aplt. App., Vol. 6 at 21,

yet Defendants continued to litigate against Plaintiff after Dadson’s dissolution

without notifying him or the district court. Had they done so, Plaintiff contends, he

would have “pressed [Defendants] to follow Missouri law” by “negotiat[ing] an

immediate settlement of [his] claims” under the “legal requirement” in § 351.476 of

Missouri Revised Statutes that Dadson wind up and liquidate its business and affairs

upon dissolution. Aplt. Br. at 22.

At the February 28, 2025 hearing the district court rejected Plaintiff’s

argument. It stated that “an administratively dissolved corporation can still be sued,

and it can still sue. So the fact of dissolution does not abate or suspend any

proceedings which were started before the effective date of dissolution.” Aplt. App.,

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Vol. 6 at 14–15. For that reason the dissolution was not material to the proceedings in

the federal district court, which had commenced two months before Dadson

dissolved. Also, “given [Plaintiff’s] litigious history” with Defendants, the court

thought it fanciful that notice of Dadson’s dissolution would have led to a settlement

on Plaintiff’s terms in 2023. Aplt. App., Vol. 6 at 23. The court further noted that

Plaintiff had not “identified any court order that [Defendants] have allegedly

violated,” but even if the court were to “construe [Plaintiff’s] request for sanctions

under Rule 11 or some other theory of inherent authority to sanction,” Defendants

“ha[d] not engaged in sanctionable conduct” and “ha[d] no obligation to disclose to

the Court the fact that Dadson had dissolved in the course of the litigation.” Aplt.

App., Vol. 6 at 23–24.

In his appellate brief, Plaintiff asserts that the district court “completely

misstated Missouri corporate law” by concluding that Defendants “could carry on

litigation—essentially forever—despite the fact that the law itself only allows

dissolved corporations 5 types of actions, which does not include forever litigation.”

Aplt. Br. at 23.

The relevant Missouri statute, however, does not support Plaintiff’s assertion.

Dissolution of a Missouri corporation does not “[a]bate or suspend a proceeding

pending by or against the corporation” or even “[p]revent commencement of a

proceeding by or against the corporation in its corporate name.” Mo. Rev. Stat.

§ 351.476. Plaintiff’s argument that a dissolved corporation must wind up quickly,

even to the point of accepting a settlement offer simply because it is pending, is not

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supported by the statute or by any authority supplied by Plaintiff or found by this

court. His argument is inadequate to require us to conduct any further analysis of the

matter. See Garrett v. Selby Connor Maddux & Janer, 425 F.3d 836, 840 (10th Cir.

2005). “Although a pro se litigant’s pleadings are to be construed liberally” and “we

make some allowances for the pro se plaintiff’s failure to cite proper legal authority,

his confusion of various legal theories, his poor syntax and sentence construction, or

his unfamiliarity with pleading requirements, the court cannot take on the

responsibility of serving as the litigant’s attorney in constructing arguments and

searching the record.” Id. (brackets, citation, and internal quotation marks omitted).

B. Sanctions Against Plaintiff

Plaintiff next complains that the district court erred by sanctioning him for

Defendants’ attorney fees and expenses in defending this action and answering the

Jackson County suit. He claims that the district court ignored his argument that the

2025 phase of this case was triggered by his discovery of Dadson’s dissolution and

continuing litigation in violation of Missouri law. We review for abuse of discretion.

See Acosta v. Paragon Contractors Corp., 884 F.3d 1225, 1238 (10th Cir. 2018).

As the district court pointed out, Plaintiff did not dispute the existence of the

June 9, 2023 order, his knowledge of the order, or his violation of the order by filing

his lawsuit in Jackson County. See United States v. Ford, 514 F.3d 1047, 1051 (10th

Cir. 2008) (party moving for civil contempt has “burden of proving, by clear and

convincing evidence, that a valid court order existed, that the defendant had

knowledge of the order, and that the defendant disobeyed the order” (internal

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quotation marks omitted)). Plaintiff protests that Defendants’ failure to inform him

and the court of Dadson’s dissolution justified him in filing the Jackson County suit.

But we have already resolved that Defendants had no duty to immediately accept

Plaintiff’s settlement offer upon Dadson’s dissolution. And even if Plaintiff actually

believed the law to be to the contrary, an unreasonable motive for disobeying a court

order is no excuse. See Taggart v. Lorenzen, 587 U.S. 554, 561 (2019) (stating that

“a party’s subjective belief that she was complying with an order ordinarily will not

insulate her from civil contempt if that belief was objectively unreasonable”).

Plaintiff also challenges the calculation of Defendants’ attorney fees and

expenses. But we see no error. In particular, he claims that no fees should be awarded

for attorney work before the June 9, 2023 order. But the district court had made clear

that if he violated that order, the court would consider Defendants’ request for

sanctions for misconduct predating the order.

Plaintiff also appears to argue that the district court’s award of the costs of

defending the Jackson County action should be offset by the costs that Defendants

would have incurred defending the action if he had brought the suit in federal court.

We find this argument nonsensical. If Plaintiff had filed suit in federal court rather

than state court, he would still have been in breach of the order, and he would have

been sanctioned for Defendants’ federal-court costs.

C. Defendants’ Request for Criminal Sanctions

Plaintiff next complains that Defendants orally requested a criminal sanction at

the February 28, 2025 hearing and the court gave it some consideration. But no such

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sanction was imposed; the court did not even begin the process for imposing a

criminal sanction. Thus, Plaintiff has no injury of which to complain. See Teaford v.

Ford Motor Co., 338 F.3d 1179, 1181 (10th Cir. 2003) (where a purported injury

does “not rise to the level of a sanction order, then [the plaintiff] has nothing from

which to appeal, and we lack jurisdiction” (internal quotation marks omitted)).

D. Allegations of Bias

Plaintiff last complains that the district court erred by “allowing [the judge’s]

anger against, and disrespect of, [Plaintiff] . . . to infuse and color the entire hearing

and decision-making process with bias.” Aplt. Br. at 51 (capitalization omitted). But

the record is clear that the court’s displeasure with Plaintiff was based solely on his

conduct in this litigation. Given this context, Plaintiff has failed to show the deep-

seated favoritism or antagonism toward him that would make fair judgment

impossible. See Liteky v. United States, 510 U.S. 540, 544–45, 545 n.1, 555 (1994).

We reject the claim of bias.

III. CONCLUSION

We AFFIRM the judgment of the district court.

Entered for the Court

Harris L Hartz Circuit Judge