Legal Briefs

Amos Weinberg and Creditors Relief Are Battling it Out

A lawsuit filed by a small business against Creditors Relief in April has gone off the rails, according to court documents. Creditors Relief has sought to dismiss the case that attorney Amos Weinberg brought on behalf of a Deli in New York that alleged among other things, that Creditors Relief practiced law without a license and reneged on a contract to settle its debts.

While both sides were disputing the facts, Weinberg suddenly withdrew the complaint on September 1st, a move which did not actually bring the matter to a resolution. Instead, Creditors Relief has still asked the court to dismiss the case with prejudice and to sanction Amos Weinberg for the frivolous pleading in the first place. In its papers, Creditors Relief argues that the lawsuit was brought primarily to harass Creditors Relief and its owner Michael Lupolover and that the complaint asserted material factual statements that were false.

Across the docket, Weinberg attached documents that exposed Lupolover’s previous snafu with a federal regulator while Creditors Relief later filed an exhibit showing that Weinberg had been sanctioned in another lawsuit.

The case is still active with the motion to dismiss and sanction still pending in the New York Supreme Court under index number: 56406/2017 Natures Market Corp v. Creditors Relief LLC

Recent Court Decisions Impacting Merchant Cash Advances – Still Not a Loan

In the United States District Court, Southern District of New York, a judge expounded on his decision as to why the Purchase and Sale of Future Receivables contract between TVT Capital and Epazz, Inc. was not a loan.

In this case, the “receipts purchased amounts” are not payable absolutely. Payment depends upon a crucial contingency: the continued collection of receipts by Epazz from its customers. TVT [TVT Capital] is only entitled to recover 15% of Epazz’s daily receipts, and if Epazz’s sales decline or cease the receipts purchased amounts might never be paid in full. See counter- claims, Exhs. A-C at 1. The agreements specifi cally provide that “Payments made to FUNDER in respect to the full amount of the Receipts shall be conditioned upon Merchant’s sale of products and services and the payment therefore by Merchant’s customers in the manner provided in Section 1.1.” Id. at 3 § 1.9.

Defendants’ argument that the actual daily payments ensure that TVT will be paid the full receipts purchased amounts within approximately 61 to 180 business days, id. ¶¶ 33-47, is contradicted by the reconciliation provisions which provide if the daily payments are greater than 15% of Epazz’s daily receipts, TVT must credit the difference to Epazz, thus limiting Epazz’s obligation to 15% of daily receipts. No allegation is made that TVT ever denied Epazz’s request to reconcile the daily payments. TVT’s right to collect the receipts purchased amounts from Epazz is in fact contingent on Epazz’s continued collection of receipts. See Kardovich v. Pfizer, Inc., 97 F. Supp. 3d 131, 140 (E.D.N.Y. 2015), quoting Amidax Trading Grp. v. S.W.I.F.T. SCRL, 671 F.3d 140, 147 (2d Cir. 2011) (“Where a conclusory allegation in the complaint is contradicted by a document attached to the complaint, the document controls and the allegation is
not accepted as true”).

None of the defendants’ arguments, Counterclaims ¶¶ 51-109, change the fact that whether the receipts purchased amounts will be paid in full, or when they will be paid, cannot be known because payment is contingent on Epazz generating suffi cient receipts from its customers; and Epazz, rather than TVT, controls whether daily payments will be reconciled.

The judge relied heavily on the reconciliation clause common to merchant cash advance agreements, whereby merchants can adjust their daily ACH amount to correlate with their actual sales activity. The case # is: 1:16-cv-05948-LLS. The full decision can be downloaded through a link contained at: http://dbnk.news/7

MISREPRESENTATIONS? WHAT MISREPRESENTATIONS?

In the New York Supreme Court, a judge addressed a business owner’s allegations that they had been misled into entering into purchase agreements when they actually wanted loans. In the decision excerpt below, Passley is Shaun Passley, one of the plaintiffs in the case.

[The plaintiffs] state that they would not have knowingly entered into merchant agreements, because what they really wanted were loans. Indeed, plaintiffs allege that “the word ‘purchase’ or ‘sale’ would have caused Passley to decline a transaction with [defendants] because a loan – the product Passley wanted to obtain – is not a purchase or sale.”

A review of the contracts in this action shows that not only do they all clearly state that they involve purchases or sales, but they all expressly state they are not loans. Even if someone were confused by the contracts, or did not understand the obligation or the process, by reading the documents, one would grasp immediately that they certainly were not straightforward loans. The very fi rst heading on the page was “Merchant Agreement,” and the second heading says “Purchase and Sale of Future Receivables.”

[…] For plaintiffs to state that they would not have entered into a purchase or sale if they had known that that is what they were doing is utterly undermined by the documents themselves. As the Second Department has held, in Karsanow v. Kuehlewein, 232 A.D.2d 458, 459, 648 NY.S.2d 465, 466 (2d Dept. 1996), “the subject provision was clearly set out in the … agreements, and where a party has the means available to him of knowing by the exercise of ordinary intelligence the truth or real quality of the subject of the representation, he must make use of those means or he will not be heard to complain that he was induced to enter into the transaction by misrepresentations.” So too here, plaintiffs had the means to understand that the agreements set forth that they were not loans. As it has long been settled that a party is bound by that which it signs, the Court finds that the ninth cause of action, for recission based on misrepresentation or mistake, and the tenth cause of action, for fraudulent inducement based on misrepresentation, must be dismissed as a matter of law. Pimpinello v. Swift & Co., 253 N.Y. 159, 162-63 (1930) (“the signer of a deed or other instrument, expressive of a jural act, is conclusively bound thereby. That his mind never gave asset to the terms expressed is not material. If the signer could read the instrument, not to have read it was gross negligence; if he could not have read it, not to procure it to be read was equally negligent; in either case the writing binds him.”).

The case # is 54755/2016 in the County of Westchester in the New York Supreme Court. The full decision can be downloaded through a link contained at: http://dbnk.news/8