Blueberry processor files lawsuit

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BANGOR – A Washington County blueberry processor forced out of the business last year by the foreclosure of his biggest company has hit back with a civil lawsuit targeting several parties, including Washington County and its Sheriff’s Department.

The lawsuit by William Guptill of Marshfield is in response to the dismantling and demise of Guptill Farms, the processing plant and storage freezer in Wesley owned by his family since 1960. The foreclosed property is in the hands of a court-appointed receiver and leased to a rival processor.

In the lawsuit, filed last month in U.S. District Court in Bangor, Guptill has asked for a jury trial on behalf of Downeast Ventures, a family-run company for which he is a 25 percent owner.

Downeast Ventures alleges that, after a Washington County Superior Court justice ordered foreclosure in June 2004 by KeyBank of Portland on its $2.5 million loan to Guptill Farms, the court-appointed receiver was overzealous in rounding up property – mostly vehicles and construction equipment – he believed to be Guptill’s personal assets.

The complaint alleges that a receiver coordinated with the sheriff, deputies and a private investigator to wrongly seize pickup trucks and pieces of machinery from fields, wood lots, trailers and even other people’s yards throughout the county, from Wesley to Cutler.

The assets belong to Downeast Ventures, a Wesley-based construction company formed in May 2000. The assets were never pledged to KeyBank in connection with the bank’s $2.5 million loan to Guptill Farms in June 2000.But starting last summer and continuing as recently as May, the assets were methodically taken, some from private property and without a warrant. They include excavators and attachments, dump trucks, tractors, bush-hog mowers, fertilizer spreaders, and tillers.

Guptill’s attorney argues that by depriving Downeast Ventures of its assets and causing the company’s demise, the defendants pressured Guptill to give up his business ventures in Washington County for good.

Thomas Hallett, a Portland attorney, filed the complaint on behalf of Downeast Ventures.

It names two banks, another blueberry processing company, the court-appointed receiver, Sheriff Joseph Tibbetts and one of his deputies, and a private investigator.

“They really feel like they can completely run roughshod over Guptill Farms, and they have,” Hallett said earlier this week. “But what they can’t do is step over the law. I do not know what the power [structure] is. … I don’t understand the dynamics and politics in that area. It seems like there are some power players, and then people who don’t have much power.

“We are on the side of people who don’t have much power.”

KeyBank’s loan to Guptill Farms in 2000 was backed by Jasper Wyman & Son, a Milbridge blueberry processor, at a time when Guptill Farms and Wyman’s agreed on a working relationship that benefited both sides.

Wyman’s, the state’s second-largest processor, needed extra storage space. Guptill Farms could provide that with its 6 million pound-capacity freezer.

But two years ago the relationship soured. Wyman’s asked the Washington County Sheriff’s Department to investigate the “disappearance” from Guptill’s freezer of eight tractor-trailer loads of berries – worth $300,000 – that Wyman’s was storing at the Wesley facility.

No criminal charges have been filed, Sheriff Joseph Tibbetts said Thursday.

“The investigation is ongoing in that we have turned it over to the District Attorney’s Office,” Tibbetts said. On Friday, the prosecutor’s office declined to talk about the case other than to say that it is “progressing.”

Soon after the discovery and dispute over the missing berries – which Guptill attributes to paperwork mistakes – KeyBank called in its loan through Washington County Superior Court. That led to the court’s appointment of a receiver last summer to oversee the foreclosure through to a public auction.

Guptill filed a counterclaim in the same court. That case has not yet been heard.

In addition to Washington County and its Sheriff’s Department, the suit names as defendants Wyman’s, KeyBank, and SN Commercial of Dallas, the bank that last September bought Guptill’s foreclosed loan.

Additional defendants are McShane Group of Baltimore, the company that is handling the receivership; and James Ebbert of Rockland, McShane’s local representative.

Named, too, are Sheriff Tibbetts, in both professional and personal capacities; Lester Seeley of Dennysville, a sheriff’s deputy; and Harry Bailey of Grand Lake Stream, a former state trooper who worked alongside Seeley to repossess property as directed by the receiver and the sheriff.

None of the attorneys representing the defendants reached this week gave credence to Downeast Ventures’ complaint. Their formal responses are due in the federal court on Aug. 1.

The attorney for Wyman’s, for one, will ask for the case’s dismissal.

“This case has escalated beyond rationality,” said attorney Neal Pratt of Portland. “It just seems that what they did is throw a fishnet out there, trying to get as much in the net as they could.

“It’s my feeling that this lawsuit, while brought in the name of a different party [Downeast Ventures], contains the exact same allegations they’ve already made in a [similar] suit still pending in Washington County Superior Court.”

The attorney for KeyBank, David Hirshon of Portland, also intends to seek the case’s dismissal.

“When our answer is filed, the bank will deny each and every material allegation,” Hirshon said.

As for Bailey, his attorney, Robert Hatch of Portland, responded on Friday: “Harry’s role in this is straightforward,” Hatch said. “He was retained by the receiver to locate assets. We contest most of the facts stated in the complaint, and we simply don’t think they are correct [on the ownership issues].”

Two attorneys representing other defendants were on vacation this week and not available for comment. Those are Peter Marchesi of Waterville, representing Washington County, the Sheriff’s Department, Tibbetts and Seeley; and Lee Bals of Portland, the attorney for both McShane and Ebbert.

Downeast Ventures’ complaint argues that a web of relationships that includes some of the defendants shared the goal of running Guptill out of the county.

Wyman & Son’s leadership holds “a close friendship” with the sheriff, himself a blueberry grower, according to the lawsuit. The company officers communicate with him on a first-name basis, the suit contends.

Wyman’s officials in 2003 “consulted informally with Sheriff Tibbetts about pursuing Guptill,” the complaint reads.

“At that time, Wyman’s executive Carmen Look contacted Sheriff Tibbetts and learned which deputy sheriff he might assign to investigate Mr. Guptill and discussed the topic of which jurisdiction (state, county or federal) would best serve the interests of Wyman & Son in regard to pursuing Guptill,” the lawsuit says.

“After speaking with Sheriff Tibbetts, Wyman considered that it would be best to pursue Guptill through the Washington County Sheriff’s Office because they (according to a Wyman e-mail) would ‘keep us in the loop, so to speak.'”

The Sheriff’s Department, the suit contends, continued to work to “cause the collapse of the business activities of Downeast Ventures” in 2004 and 2005, working alongside Ebbert, the court-appointed receiver.

Ebbert had been retained as a consultant by Wyman’s a few months before, as the berry processor faced its own possible bankruptcy after a court decision out of Knox County in November 2003. In that, Wyman’s and two other large processors were found to have fixed prices they paid to growers in the late 1990s. The processors are combining to pay off a $5 million settlement over four years.

Ebbert and the Maryland company he works for, McShane, were appointed as receivers in KeyBank’s foreclosure case on June 17, 2004. They were given in that role the lawful authority to take control over the property that constituted the collateral for KeyBank’s loan to Guptill Farms.

But Ebbert and McShane had no authority to interfere with the assets or activities of the Guptills’ separate corporation, Downeast Ventures, according to the lawsuit.

At no time, the suit points out, did Ebbert make contact with Guptill or his wife to assure that the vehicles he and others were taking belonged to Guptill Farms or the Guptills individually, and whether they were part of the receivership estate.

His contact with KeyBank and Wyman’s was considerable, however, according to the suit.Several times the receiver, the banks and the Sheriff’s Department were advised by letter that none of the assets of Downeast Ventures constituted collateral for the KeyBank loan or for obligations owing to Wyman’s, the lawsuit says.

Yet “none of those defendants ever asked for any further authority or instructions from any court to allow the interference with Downeast Ventures’ business or assets,” the complaint charges.

Unable to gain new contracts for work, Downeast Ventures terminated its business operations in March.

Both Guptill and KeyBank are awaiting the decision of a judge in a third court, Hancock County Superior Court. Testimony started last fall and was completed in the spring over a similar issue of ownership.

KeyBank was trying to prevent Moto Car in Ellsworth from selling six classic vehicles that Guptill had put on the lot for consignment sales. But Ellsworth attorney William Blaisdell, who represents Moto Car owner Terry Pinkham, argued that the cars belonged to the Guptills’ adult children.

The evidence in that case has been closed for more than four months.

Back in Bangor through the new federal case, Hallett, Guptill’s attorney, cites KeyBank as a prime decision-maker in the pursuit of Downeast Ventures’ property through the spring – even though the bank had sold its interest in the Guptill Farms loan last fall.

“This is not business as usual by a bank,” Hallett said. “It seems it has become personal, to me.”

Hirshon, KeyBank’s attorney, feels otherwise.

“When you cut through the complaint, the receiver was appointed by the court, not by KeyBank or Wyman’s,” Hirshon said. “I gather that Downeast Ventures feels the receiver has obtained or repossessed property that belonged to Downeast Ventures rather than Guptill Farms or the Guptills individually.”

The federal lawsuit charges the violations of the principals of Downeast Ventures’ protection against unreasonable seizures, as well as the violation of their civil rights.

It further makes charges of wrongful repossession, interference with existing business relationships, interference with prospective economic advantage, and abuse of process.

The hearing of the federal case has not yet been scheduled.

“I am hopeful in the final analysis that [the defendants’ actions] will all come to light,” Hallett said.

“I hope it will point out the depth that people will go to sink or destroy another person.”