CHARLESTON – A legal battle over some Charleston-area car dealerships has begun between two well-known business personalities.
Todd Judy filed a complaint September 5 in Kanawha Circuit Court against Joe R. Pyle, Charlotte Pyle and Kolten Saunders. In the complaint, Judy accuses the defendants of fraud, unjust enrichment and defamation.
Judy is known to many for Todd Judy Ford, which once had three locations in the Kanawha Valley. Pyle, who lives in Pennsylvania, is known locally for his auction business. Both have been regular presences on television commercials for years.
Pyle
| File photo
According to the complaint, the Pyles began recruiting Judy in 2016 to join them in a car dealership partnership. Judy worked for Wells Fargo at the time, but he says the Pyles told him they needed him to manage dealerships they had purchased. He says the Pyles told him they considered the dealerships “a passive investment.”
“The Pyles told Todd Judy that the Pyles had ‘extra money laying around’ that the Pyles wanted to invest and needed Todd Judy to secure an approval with an automobile manufacturer because their experience was limited to wholesale and auction services,” the complaint states. “The Pyles advised Todd Judy that they had the money to invest in expanding their dealership operation but needed someone with expertise to operate one on a daily basis and get the deal approved by the manufacturers, which they could not do on their own.”
The Pyles told Judy they would loan him the money for his portion of the business, also promising he would be the dealer principal of the dealerships with complete operational control.
Once he paid the Pyles back for the initial loan, Judy said he was told he could buy additional shares of the business to eventually become the sole owner. The Pyles would retain ownership of the property where the dealerships operated and would collect rent from the businesses.
“The Pyles offered to provide advice as experienced business people but insisted they had no interest in the operation of the retail side of the business,” the complaint states. “The Pyles repeatedly told Todd Judy how they liked to help people, gave money to the church, taught Sunday School, and assured Todd Judy that the Pyles were interested in helping him become a business owner.”
“I get more enjoyment out of helping people than I do out of any investment,” the complaint quotes Pyle as telling Judy.
Judy says the Pyles promised him a salary of $120,000 and his wife a $32,000 salary to handle marketing. Both also were promised company cars with free gas, according to the complaint.
The Pyles found two sellers of dealerships and told Judy he would be installed as the dealer principal at three Ford stores and one Audi store in the Charleston/Huntington area. Judy says he then worked with attorneys, manufacturers and others to finalize the dealership purchases and all associated paperwork.
Judy says he developed a “solid working relationship” with the Pyles in which they jointly completed requests for dozens of required documents.
“The Pyles presented Todd Judy with many blank documents and signature pages that would later reveal that the terms of the documents were other than what the Pyles had promised,” the complaint states. “Working through their team of accountants and lawyers, the Pyles created scenarios in which documents were signed without any explanation or disclosure, often without even complete documents.”
Judy also says the Pyles put pressure on him and others to complete the transactions by cutting corners and foregoing normal procedures. He also says the Pyles inflated the actual numbers from the purchases of the dealerships and real estate to their benefit.
“The actual amount paid for the value of the dealerships was inflated by almost two-and-a-half times the actual purchase price, only for the portion Todd Judy was required to pay back to the Pyles as a ‘loan’ that they gave him,” the complaint states, also saying the Pyles’ separate real estate documents charged the companies rent that was about three times the industry standard.
“This benefitted the Pyles greatly, at the cost of fraudulently impacting Todd Judy,” the complaint states. “The amount of rent paid was inflated by approximately five million over industry averages and standards over the ensuing years.
“The Pyles pressured Todd Judy to sign undisclosed documents by creating false deadlines and high-pressure situations, threatening that if he did not get this done quickly that ‘the deal would fall apart.’ Joe Pyle constantly called Todd Judy to push him to complete documentation that he did not understand at the threat of removing his inclusion from these stores. Joe Pyle used this leverage to push detrimental terms on Todd Judy without him even seeing the terms of the agreements.”
Judy says the Pyles intentionally concealed key parts of the deal that were in direct contradiction to the promised terms.
“The blank signature pages were later married to terms and conditions that were unconscionably beneficial to the Pyles,” the complaint states. “These terms were ones that no one would agree to if disclosed properly. The finalized documents were concealed from Todd Judy and not presented until he had already quit his job, sold his house and was trapped by the Pyles.”
Judy says he moved his family from the Fairmont area to Putnam County only to later discover the Pyles had changed the terms of the agreement.
“Todd Judy was thrown into non-functioning businesses where he was forced to devote approximately 100 hours per week to keep the business functioning and had no time to realize he had not received finalized versions of the contracts,” the complaint states. “Contrary to promises made by the Pyles to Todd Judy, Charlotte Pyle was installed as the dealer principal, not Todd Judy.”
Judy says Charlotte Pyle spent less than 30 minutes per year in the dealerships and was involved in none of the decisions, once telling Judy she “would like to learn the retail side of this business.”
He says Pyle also installed employees who undermined Judy’s authority. One of those is Saunders, who was chief operating officer.
“Todd Judy was told by Joe Pyle that Kolten Saunders was the IT manager of Mountain State Auto Auction and Capital City Auto Auction,” the complaint states. “Later, Joe Pyle introduced Kolten Saunders as the COO of his company, despite the fact that Kolden Saunders was in his mid-twenties with absolutely no experience in the retail automotive business.”
Judy says Pyle also removed the language regarding Judy eventually buying the Pyles out of the business. He says that concept was the primary recruiting tactic the Pyles used to get him involved.
“You can buy up to 49 percent of the stores, but we’ll never be minority owners,” the complaint quotes the Pyles as telling Judy. “After five years, you’ll be able to take the financial performance of the stores and get a loan to buy us out of the remaining 51 percent.”
Judy also says the Pyles often made representations and promises to benefit them.
“Don’t worry about those documents,” the complaint quotes Pyle as telling Judy. “We don’t take those too seriously. They are just there to protect us. Any document is only as good as the man on the other side of it. The documents all have holes in them. We would never do anything to harm you or anyone else.”
Judy says the promises to update agreements never happened. He also says the Audi franchise was removed from the original deal at the direction of the Pyles so they could receive a benefit of $1.5 million “they did not pass along to Todd Judy in any way.”
Judy says the Pyles solicited $703,800 from him over the course of his employment for the “purchase” of shares despite knowing the amounts were inflated and incorrect. He says every amount of dividend he received was design to go toward paying taxes or to pay back the Pyles for the inflated initial investment.
Judy also says Pyle used his position as secretary of the companies to manipulate the profit and numbers to benefit him and his family’s other businesses.
“Every decision made for the operation of the dealership was made to the detriment of Todd Judy and was done to benefit one of the Pyles’ many other businesses without Judy being included on any of those decisions,” the complaint states. “Joe Pyle failed to use basic accounting practices properly resulting in indecipherable book-keeping that deceived Todd Judy.
“Accounting entries were intentionally made in an inconsistent manner to obscure the true nature of the movement of money, millions of which went to other entities owned by the Pyles.”
Judy says he made hundreds of inquiries about the financial irregularities but was ignored or given false and vague responses, and four different chief financial officers were installed in three years “to keep the books indecipherable to anyone else looking at the movement of money.”
“Everyone, including Todd Judy, was kept in the dark while the Pyles thrived on the chaos of the situation to divert money into other entities they owned,” the complaint states. “Todd Judy could not see the details of the (accounting) entries made despite being an owner of the companies. Inquiries had to go through Pyles’ operatives who provided false or misleading information or completely ignored requests.”
He says Saunders told Judy he was not allowed to implement any accounting practices without going through corporate channels.
“I know this is unusual and not standard for someone operating a dealership, but this is how we’re going to do it,” the complaint quotes Saunders as telling Judy. “You’ll have to communicate directly with me or the CFO for any questions.”
Judy says money flowed out of the companies he partially owned but never flowed in, and he says the Pyles installed employees who provided little to no benefit to the dealerships but were paid “in random ways and with little explanation. Many of them had never even been to the dealerships.”
Once the dealerships were profitable, Judy says the Pyles created companies to charge management fees to them. The dealerships were told to move profit from the dealerships.
Judy also says Pyle regularly hired and promoted “young and influential” people into high positions for which they were unqualified. He also says Pyle regularly took these people to expensive dinners, on vacations and high-level events with no business reason as another way to defraud Judy.
In addition, he says his salary checks often were “forgotten.” He also says unpaid salary checks would not clear the bank and that direct deposit money owed to Judy was shifted to deposit into the Pyles’ account “accidentally.”
He says Pyle repeatedly told other managers Judy was a “bullshit” manager and “crook.”
Also, he says other local dealerships were provided auction services at no fees. But the Pyles charged millions of dollars of fees to the entities Judy operated, and he says the Pyles forced him to sell vehicles at auction so profit could be shifted to the auctions instead of the dealerships.
Judy says the Pyles engaged in a scheme to sell wrecked vehicles with material facts about the state of the vehicles and their repairs intentionally hidden or misrepresented. He says he discovered hundreds of them had been placed at the dealerships over the years.
“Vehicle history reports showed a regular scheme of these vehicles passing through multiple Pyle organizations to conceal the titles across multiple states,” the complaint states.
Judy says he was removed from his position days after he began to dig through records to determine the extent of the wrecked vehicles sold. He says he pulled hundreds of vehicle history reports showing the “same trend.”
"Todd Judy was mysteriously removed under questionable circumstances while on vacation with his family in Myrtle Beach,” the complaint states.
Judy says Pyle first mentioned a business separation in August 2023. The following month, they agreed to terms to start the proceedings. But he says the Pyles, with Saunders’ help, failed to complete the final portion of the negotiations and engaged in other fraudulent acts that included Saunders going through Judy’s desk and reviewing documents, stealing security cameras from the office, accessing Judy’s personal computers, refusing Judy entry into the dealership for personal items, spreading false information to make it appear Judy was to blame and working behind Judy’s back to cause him financial injury and reputational damage.
“On June 14, 2024, Todd Judy was fired from the dealerships that had his name on the front door,” the complaint states.
After the firing, he says Pyle and Saunders made many statements and took many actions to defame Judy, including Pyle calling him a “bullshit manager” saying he should have “fired that asshole three years ago” and claiming he “threw his ass out.” He says Pyle also told an employee he might be questioned by federal agents about Judy’s actions, creating the appearance Judy had done something wrong.
Judy seeks compensatory damages, punitive damages, court costs, expert witness fees and costs, attorney fees and other relief.
He is being represented by Michael O. Callaghan of Neely & Callaghan in Charleston. Callaghan declined to comment on the case, which has been assigned to Circuit Judge Maryclaire Akers.
Kanawha Circuit Court case number 24-C-952