Yeager Shut Out In Foremost Case

Michael Yeager, the Deer Park farmer who dogged U.S. Bank of Washington for years to recover $4,600 in lost milk money, didn’t get a dime Friday when the Foremost Dairies bankruptcy case closed.

But U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Karen Overstreet in Seattle kept Yeager’s hopes alive by granting him all 122 boxes of Foremost bankruptcy records. She OK’d $11 million in disbursements from Foremost to the bank over the years.

“These are boxes and boxes of democracy,” Yeager said as 20 supporting farmers backed up their trucks in downtown Seattle to haul the records back to Yeager’s farm. “That they wanted to destroy the records leads me to believe they must be hiding something.”

Attorneys for Foremost creditors concluded earlier that the statute of limitations had expired on claims against U.S. Bank, which financed a $25 million leveraged buyout of Foremost in 1989.

The following year, the bank foreclosed on Foremost, freezing $2.7 million that was owed farmers for milk already delivered. Foremost operated what is now known as Broadview Dairy in Spokane.

, DataTimes