Anheuser descendants’ company hit with multimillion-dollar verdict

A St. Louis County jury awarded $55.4 million in damages to the plaintiffs in a shareholder derivative suit involving descendants of the Anheuser family.

Over 400 shareholders in InnerPoint Energy Corp. were represented in the suit, which goes back to 2019, claiming that company executives and board members breached fundamental fiduciary duties. The defendants included Dennis Moore, an InnerPoint Board member, and the Moore Family Trusts; Moore’s grandmother was Alice Anheuser Beims Moore, a great-granddaughter of Eberhard Anheuser, who co-founded Anheuser-Busch. InnerPoint CEO Glenn Foy was also a defendant.

The plaintiffs were represented by Simon Law attorneys Tony Simon and Jer Nixon, along with Lee Viorel, Colby Hall and Mathew Placzek of Lowther Johnson in Springfield.

The defendants were represented by Kevin Anthony Sullivan of Shands, Elbert, Gianoulakis & Gilju.

Jurors deliberated for five hours before returning their verdict Nov. 14 following a two-week trial tried before St. Louis County Judge Brian May. The verdict included $24.4 million in compensatory damages. After an additional hour of deliberation, the jury returned about $31 million in punitive damages.

InnerPoint was a Delaware corporation whose original purpose was to develop and produce renewable and clean energy locally. It was registered to do business in Missouri, and its former local address was in Kirkwood.

One of the members of the suit was the company’s original founder, Andrew Scholte, who had more than 30 patents associated with renewable and clean energy technology. Simon Law attorneys said the case involved a substantial volume of technical records and fiduciary-duty materials that had to be distilled into something a jury could understand.

“The case was a, primarily a breach of fiduciary duty case, shareholder derivative action under Delaware law. I think that sentence alone sort of doesn’t present well to the jury,” said Nixon. “To … take the elements of that and make it something that you can present into a jury in two weeks … we really had to just explain why the underlying transaction wasn’t fair … We focused on the documents that showed that in the bad conduct by the defendants.”

After the enactment of a new law in Michigan, a plant owned by the company became more valuable there. The defendants transferred their assets to themselves, without having the company appraised. InnerPoint and its predecessor had both been administratively dissolved by 2019, the plaintiffs’ petition stated, shortly after shareholders were told their investments were a total loss. The petition said board members transferred InnerPoint’s patents, intellectual property and corporate opportunities to entities they controlled without obtaining a shareholder vote or independent valuation.

According to Simon Law, investors were left with nothing. However, just a few months after being told the company was worthless, there was news coverage of the defendants at a groundbreaking ceremony for a project for that same company.

Simon said the timing and effect of that Michigan law were central.

“They bought the plant in September, and the Michigan law went into effect by December, so it was after they purchased the plant,” he said. “What it … said … Michigan power companies need to source a certain percentage of electricity from inside Michigan … all these old plants then became suddenly very valuable … and that’s what they’ve really tried to keep from the other shareholders.”

Because the defendants had ties to the Anheuser family, Simon Law said they were conscious of ensuring the case was not framed as a critique of wealth but of conduct.

“I think most jurors understand this. We weren’t complaining about them being wealthy, and that wasn’t the issue,” said Simon. “They weren’t happy making 2 percent … they wanted it all … when the jury saw the greed, because that’s really what it was. It was greed.”

The punitive damages verdict was split with $75,000 assessed against Glenn Foy, $2.5 million against Dennis Moore and $28.4 million against the Moore Family Trustees.

Nixon said the verdict carried a broader message for corporate officers.

“Sometimes you see the people that are in control within corporations and those that that own the most think that they can take whatever action they want … but there are laws that can hold them accountable,” he said. “Along with the control comes the responsibility … It’s certainly a message we wanted to be out there.”

The Simon Law team also emphasized the impact the case had on local investors, including the company’s founder.

“This was a guy from St. Louis who came up with some pretty interesting technology of turning trash into energy … even when they got their final letter that told them you lost all your investment, even that letter … didn’t really tell them the truth,” Simon said. “They never told them, ‘Well, we took the stuff’ … even that letter from a local St. Louis law firm didn’t tell him the truth, which is just terrible.”

In an emailed statement, Sullivan said the defendants continue to deny any wrongdoing with respect to InnerPoint.

“Over the course of a decade, the Moore family invested $10 million in InnerPoint and loaned the company over $8.3 million to keep InnerPoint operating in the hope that the company would succeed,” stated Sullivan. “Unfortunately, InnerPoint never generated any revenue during its existence and was insolvent when its assets were surrendered in lieu of foreclosure. After InnerPoint shut down, no revenues or profits were ever generated from InnerPoint’s assets. Defendants will be vigorously pursuing an appeal of the verdict.”

The case is John Swango Et Al v. Innovative Energy Inc Et Al, Case No. 20SL-CC05341.