WEST VIRGINIA RECORD

CHARLESTON -- A West Virginia corporation is being sued after failing to pay on its monthly machinery lease.

CATCO Inc., a West Virginia corporation, and TIMCOR Inc., an Ohio corporation, are being sued by Deere Credit, Inc., otherwise known as John Deere. The two companies entered a lease agreement on Feb. 27, 2006, with John Deere for several excavators, crawler dozers, and a backhoe, and they were to pay a monthly rent on the equipment.

According to the suit, filed on May 22, 2008, the monthly rent amounted to $46,761.24, and the lease also reads that CATCO and TIMCOR would default on the lease if they failed to "remit to any Lease Payment or other payment when due." CATCO and TIMCOR stopped making payments in October 2006, meaning they only made seven of their 36 required payments.

Filed by Steven Green and M. David Griffith Jr. of the Charleston firm of Robinson & McElwee, the suit says that in November 2006, John Deere notified the companies they were in breach of their lease, and on Dec. 21, 2006, they returned the leased equipment.
Because they defaulted on the lease, there are 29 payments remaining, totaling $1,270,745.97.

The suit states that because of the varying home states of each corporation and the amount in question, it is being filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia. John Deere is seeking a finding in its favor that CATCO and TIMCOR did, in fact, default on the lease as well as the remainder of the lease, compensatory damages, punitive damages, collection costs, attorneys' fees, and pre- and post-judgement.