Schneider, Carl v. Hybrid Car Store, Inc.

CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Wisconsin
DecidedFebruary 7, 2023
Docket3:19-cv-00980
StatusUnknown

This text of Schneider, Carl v. Hybrid Car Store, Inc. (Schneider, Carl v. Hybrid Car Store, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Wisconsin primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Schneider, Carl v. Hybrid Car Store, Inc., (W.D. Wis. 2023).

Opinion

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF WISCONSIN

CARL SCHNEIDER, individually, and as Trustee of THE CARL AND NARCELLE SCHNEIDER TRUST, and MARY SCHNEIDER, as Trustee of THE CARL AND NARCELLE SCHNEIDER TRUST,

Plaintiffs, OPINION and ORDER v. 19-cv-980-jdp CHRIS SCHNEIDER and HYBRID CAR STORE, INC., f/k/a INTERNATIONAL MOTOR WERKS, INC., and HONDA OF LA CROSSE, INC.,

Defendants.

This case arises from long-simmering tensions among the members a family that owns a company now called Hybrid Car Store, Inc. Plaintiffs Carl Schneider and his daughter Mary Schneider are trustees of the Carl and Narcelle Schneider Trust, the minority shareholder. The defendant is Chris Schneider, the majority shareholder. He is Carl’s son and Mary’s brother. The company’s historical purpose was to operate a Honda dealership, but the dealership was sold off several years ago. Plaintiffs allege that Chris has abused his position as majority shareholder in ways that violate Wisconsin law and breach his duties to the trust. Plaintiffs want the company to wind down its operations and distribute the proceeds of the sale. But Chris wants to keep the company going, which plaintiffs contend is merely a ploy to line his own pockets and keep the trust’s rightful share of the proceeds of the sale. The court decided on summary judgment that Chris had violated Wisconsin corporation law and breached his duties to the trust in several ways. Questions related to remedies were left for a trial to the court. The primary issues were: the amount of plaintiffs’ damages; whether Chris’s had committed civil theft in taking funds from the corporation; and whether the corporation should be dissolved. As explained in this opinion, the court finds for plaintiffs in most respects. Plaintiffs have shown that in five specific incidents Chris has taken improper dividends or

reimbursements from the corporation, and the court will order the corporation to pay corresponding dividends to the trust. The court finds that, in three of these cases, Chris acted with knowledge that the transaction was not authorized, and thus he committed civil theft. The court concludes that Chris has abused the rights of the trust as minority shareholder by wrongfully taking of funds from the company and by failing to distribute the proceeds of the sale of the dealership. The company’s operations are minimal, and yet the company has retained cash far in excess of its legitimate needs. Chris has demonstrated that he is incapable of managing the company with due respect to the rights of the minority shareholder. The court

will order dissolution of the company and appoint the receiver proposed by plaintiffs to oversee the winding down of its operation and the distribution of its assets.

FACTS The court stated the undisputed background facts in the summary judgment opinion. Dkt. 71. A brief overview of the facts as established at trial is sufficient for background. Additional facts found at trial will be set out in the analysis section where those facts are pertinent. The corporation now called Hybrid Car Store was formed by Carl Schneider in 1976,

then operating under the name “Motor Works.” The company owned and ran a successful Honda dealership in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Chris began working in his father’s car dealerships as a young man, and in the mid-1980s he moved to the La Crosse Honda dealership and became its general manager. In 1987, Carl granted Chris a 25 percent interest in the company. Carl and Narcelle each retained 37.5 percent interests. In 1997, Carl and Narcelle set up an estate plan that established The Carl and Narcelle

Schneider Trust, into which they put their ownership interests in the corporation and other assets, notably the land on which the car dealership was located. The estate plan included agreements restricting the transfer of stock and establishing buy-out values of the owner’s interests that would apply in the event of Carl’s or Chris’s death. In 2008, Narcelle removed her company stock from the trust and gave it to Chris, thereby making Chris the majority shareholder with a 62.5 percent interest. The transfer of stock to Chris exacerbated family resentments and lead, in 2014, to litigation in La Crosse County court. In April 2018, the La Crosse County court held that Chris had not breached his

fiduciary duties to the corporation or the minority shareholder, but that the stock transfer violated the stock-transfer restrictions in Carl and Narcelle’s estate plan. Dkt. 43-2. The court entered judgment for the trust and against Chris personally for $562,500 (representing the value of the ownership interest that Chris had improperly received from Narcelle), $56,250 (representing dividends that Chris had wrongfully withheld from the trust), and interest. The court reaffirmed the buy-out values of the ownership interests, following the outline of the estate plan: on Carl’s death, Chris was to buy out his interest for $562,500; on Chris’s death, the trust was to buy out his interest for $1,062,500. (For reasons that are not entirely clear,

Chris’s 25 percent interest was valued at $500,000; the 37.5 percent interests owned by Carl and Narcelle were valued at $562,500 each.) Chris was unable to pay or secure conventional financing for the judgment against him. So, Chris paid $562,500 to the trust with a cashier’s check from the company and $56,250 with a check from the company’s account. Then, over the trust’s objections, Chris had the company loan him $281,196.61 and issue a dividend to him in the amount of $281,303.39

(with a corresponding dividend to the trust of $168,782.03). The combined total of the loans and the dividend to Chris was $562,500. About two years later, in June 2020, Chris had the company indemnify him for all his legal fees in defending the La Crosse County litigation, in the amount of $395,574.81. The indemnification amount was applied to Chris’s outstanding loans; the rest, $87,488.76, was paid to Chris in cash. Chris did not pay back the $56,250 in any manner. In 2018, Chris sold the dealership and substantially all of the company’s assets to Dahl Automotive. For our purposes, the most pertinent terms of the sale were that Dahl would pay

$3 million for the dealership’s goodwill and engage Chris as a consultant for three years at a salary of $200,000 per year. The $3 million was secured by a promissory note from Dahl that provided for 59 monthly installments of $31,819.65, with a final balloon payment of $1,714,595.75, due in March 2024. At the closing in March 2019, Dahl paid additional cash of $549,277.63 for the net value of other assets. The dealership was located on land owned by the trust, which the company had leased for $13,750 per month since 1998. The lease expired at the end of September 2018, while Chris was negotiating the sale to Dahl. The company agreed to a one-year renewal at $40,000

per month. But Dahl was willing to pay only $25,000 per month. Chris believed that the deal would fall though if the trust persisted in demanding $40,000 per month rent from Dahl, so Chris entered a secret side-agreement to subsidize Dahl’s rent by $15,000 per month. Although the side-agreement was between Chris himself and Dahl, Chris had the company pay the rent subsidy after the sale to Dahl. Dahl purchased most of the dealership inventory, with the exception of about 33 specialized vehicles and some related equipment and tires that Dahl didn’t want. Chris

continued to maintain the vehicles and list them for sale online. By the time of trial—almost three and one-half years after the sale to Dahl—the company still had three of the vehicles and some related equipment. As of December 31, 2021, the company had $1,850,000 in cash. The company had not distributed the proceeds from the sale to the shareholders.

ANALYSIS A.

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Schneider, Carl v. Hybrid Car Store, Inc., Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/schneider-carl-v-hybrid-car-store-inc-wiwd-2023.