MO Lawyers Blog

Three lawsuits filed in the last week add nearly $5 million to the tally lenders say is owed by former St. Louis banker Shaun Hayes, his wife, Kelly, and their partners in real estate ventures.

Montgomery Bank makes the largest of the claims in the lawsuits filed in St. Louis County Circuit Court: $2.7 million still owed on a loan of $3.5 million. St. Louis Bank seeks repayment of two loans totaling nearly $1.7 million, and the Robert J. Byrne Living Trust is after $400,000.

Hayes referred comment to his attorney, Vincent Vogler Sr. Vogler didn’t return a reporter’s phone call by late Friday afternoon.

The Montgomery Bank loan was for a Fort Myers, Fla., development of 152 coach homes, said J. Michael Coleman, an attorney with Naples, Fla., firm Coleman, Hazzard & Taylor who is representing the bank in a planned foreclosure on the development property. The St. Louis County lawsuit, handled by Teresa Pupillo of Carmody MacDonald, targets the commercial guaranties given by the Hayeses, Michael Litz of Bellington Realty and five Chicago investors and developers. Litz did not immediately return a phone call. The Chicago partners could not be reached.

The case brought by the trust has been settled, but nothing on the settlement has been filed with the court, said Kerry Klarfeld, of Klarfeld Real Estate Co. Klarfeld and other Klarfeld Real Estate members are listed as defendants in that lawsuit. The attorney for the trust, Dudley McCarter, couldn’t be reached Friday.

Missouri Lawyers Media earlier this month and last month reported on two other bank lawsuits alleging debts totaling $3.5 million that include Shaun Hayes as a defendant. A third lawsuit, brought by Bank of America, concluded with a judgment of more than $10 million, and the bank is trying to collect the majority of that amount. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in St. Louis also asked for and received copies of another lawsuit brought by Midwest Regional Bank. That bank seeks depositions to find out whether Hayes actually held 50,000 shares of Truman stock he put up as collateral for a $585,000 loan.