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FoodStar shamble
As of yet, no buyers have surfaced to take a chance on Mediterraneo and Toscana, the beleaguered restaurants of the bankrupt FoodStar Restaurant Group. The value of the restaurants is less than the debt load it’s dragging — at least that’s how trustee Rob Milbank put it in bankruptcy court last week. So Judge Steven Felsenthal hoisted FoodStar out of bankruptcy and allowed Lee Suckow of Chicago-based Clever Ideas, who purchased a controlling interest in the company last September, to foreclose on the restaurants. Former FoodStar President Michael Caolo, who blocked Suckow’s foreclosure attempts last October by putting FoodStar into bankruptcy, backed off his insistence that the company remain in bankruptcy. “What was pretty clear was that Suckow was probably going to be able to foreclose on the first lien,” says Caolo, explaining his bankruptcy court surrender. “No normal person can afford litigation. I choose to use my gunpowder in the civil court.” Caolo is referring to his pending fraud suit against Suckow for reneging on his agreement to rescue FoodStar after Caolo agreed to resign last September. “What I hope happens is that I’ll get a judgment against Suckow and will end up trading for the restaurants.” In the meantime, the restaurants continue to hobble and gasp.
All bottled up
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Fort Worth attorney and Star-Telegram wine writer Sterling Steves says he’s having a hard time getting U.S. District Judge Melinda Harmon to pay attention to him. Last spring, Steves joined a couple of Houston wine aficionados, including former state Rep. Roland R. Pennington, and filed suit against state alcohol regulators charging Texas’ ban on direct wine shipments to consumers from wineries and Internet vendors violates the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution. Harmon has yet to take any action on the issue. Yet Steves may have just been granted a potent prod to nudge her along. Last December, U.S. District Judge Allen Sharp ruled that a similar ban in Indiana is unconstitutional. Just as in Texas, a few fed-up wine geeks and a wine scribe sued the attorney general and Indiana alcohol regulators charging the state can’t keep them from having hard-to-get wines shipped to their door. Judge Sharp agreed, saying these statutes “on their face discriminate against out-of-state commerce. This clearly violates the commerce clause of the federal Constitution.” This was music to Steves’ ears. “We think it’s very, very positive for us because it’s precisely on the point,” he says. So Steves is using Sharp’s point to prod Harmon. Harmon’s office didn’t return calls for comment. — Mark Stuertz
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