JUST IN: New details emerge in mother-son restaurant lawsuit

The owner of the Coldwater Cafe in Tipp City says in a new legal filing that his mother’s argument is so flimsy that a judge should immediately dismiss her lawsuit against him and the restaurant.

Two days after filing his formal answer to his mother’s lawsuit in Miami County Common Pleas Court, Nicholas Hoover, chef-owner of Coldwater Cafe, sought an immediate dismissal of the lawsuit filed last month by Betty Peachey, who founded Coldwater Cafe in 1994.

Peachey’s lawsuit claims that her son reneged on a 2011 oral agreement to pay her $40,000 per year for the rest of her life in exchange for full ownership of the restaurant. But in a “motion for judgment on the pleadings” filed Thursday on Hoover’s behalf, Troy attorneys Glen McMurry and Michael Rice contend that the transfer of ownership of the restaurant actually was completed two years earlier, in 2009. And they say there is no evidence of any oral agreement.

“Mr. Hoover never promised to pay (his mother) a lifelong, annual retirement of $40,000 a year if (she) transferred all remaining voting and non-voting shares to him,” Hoover’s attorneys wrote. Besides, such an oral agreement “cannot be enforced in preference to a signed writing which pertains to exactly the same subject matter, yet has different terms,” they said.

Hoover contends that his mother had been working as “an at-will employee” of the restaurant, and her paycheck was not related to the transfer of stock and ownership of the restaurant to her son. And he says his mother essentially walked out on her job in March 2014 “and never returned to work.”

After a “lengthy absence,” the lawsuit response says, Hoover determined that his mother “had abandoned her employment, and as a result, (he) terminated her employment and bi-weekly payroll payments.”

Hoover’s two legal filings this week represent the first time his side of the mother-versus-son dispute has been heard. Hoover declined comment last month when his mother’s initial lawsuit against him was filed.

Peachey’s attorney, Craig Matthews of Centerville, told this news outlet earlier this week that, “The evidence will show Betty loved working at the cafe — it was her baby. She left only because he told her to. And he paid her retirement as he had promised until other financial commitments become more important than a son’s promise to his mother. Who pays ‘salary’ to an employee who ‘abandoned’ their job?”

Coldwater Cafe has been a popular full-service dining destination for several years. Earlier this year, the Tipp City restaurant was included in the online-reservations website OpenTable.com’s 2017 list of the “100 Most Romantic Restaurants in America.”

RELATED: Local restaurant named one of ‘100 Most Romantic’ in U.S.

Peachey founded Coldwater Cafe in 1994, and said in her lawsuit that she originally hired her son to work in Coldwater Cafe’s kitchen, then sent him to culinary school in California to groom him to take over as executive chef at the restaurant.

By 2002, according to Peachey’s lawsuit, mother and son had entered into two written agreements — a buy-sell agreement followed by an option-to-purchase agreement — and over the next seven years, Hoover purchased half of Peachey’s shares in Coldwater Cafe, although Peachey “did not sell any of her voting shares and maintained full and complete control” of the restaurant, the lawsuit says.

As part of Hoover’s response to the lawsuit, his attorneys attached as exhibits multiple ledgers showing the transfer of stock and shares from mother to son spanning nearly a decade. The basis of Peachey’s lawsuit against her son is flawed, the attorneys contend, because Hoover “acquired all 50 shares of voting common stock from (his mother) on Dec. 15, 2009, not 2011” — when Peachey claims in her lawsuit that she agreed to transfer full ownership to Hoover in exchange for $40,000 per year for the rest of her life.

Peachey says she maintained a presence in the restaurant from 2011 to early 2014. But in March 2014, her son, “to the shock and dismay of Peachey, told his mother he no longer wanted her to be at the restaurant,” her lawsuit says. But she continued receiving payments until August 2015, when Hoover informed his mother that he was stopping the payments.

“Peachey would not have allowed Hoover to acquire ownership and control of Coldwater (Cafe) had she known he would break his promise to her,” the lawsuit says.

Peachey is seeking compensatory and punitive damages as well as court costs and attorneys’ fees. The case is pending before Miami County Common Pleas Judge Jeannine Pratt.

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