The legal battle between Republican political consultants Jared Suhn and his former business partner Kris Van Meteren is getting hotter.
Suhn is trying to force Van Meteren to pay $388,000 that he says he’s owed for the sale of his 50% stake in The Singularis Group in 2019, court records show.
Suhn went to court earlier this year to force Van Meteren to pay the balance of the $760,000 purchase price that was agreed on four years ago after months of negotiations.
He asked for a judgment requiring Van Meteren to pay the $388,000 – plus attorney’s fees and liquidated damages – that was owed under the terms of their sales agreement.
Van Meteren had stopped payment because he believed Suhn violated the terms of their sales agreement, which included a noncompete clause.
In a declaration filed with the court, Van Meteren said he wouldn’t have agreed to pay Suhn $760,000 if his former partner had been free to disclose the firm’s confidential information to competitors or could directly or indirectly compete against Singularis.
The case is different from the typical debt collections dispute where only one party – the lender – has already performed their side of the contract and there’s no disagreement.
In this case, there’s a dispute between both sides – Van Meteren and Suhn – over who violated the terms of the sales agreement.
A judge found last month that Suhn had a security interest in The Singularis Group’s assets. But he could not rule on whether consultant’s claim was “probably valid.”
“While it is clear that defendant Van Meteren has, indeed, stopped paying the periodic payments due under the (agreement), there is an obvious dispute between the parties as to whether Suhn breached the agreement prior to the cessation of payment by Van Meteren,” District Judge Christopher Jayaram wrote in his ruling.
“If there was a prior material breach then plaintiff Suhn would have no right to invoke remedies under” the agreement, Jayaram wrote.
“If Suhn fulfilled his contractual obligations, then he may have remedies available to him,” the judge ruled. “This court simply does not have sufficient facts before it to make such a funding absent a trial on the merits of the dispute.”
The judge pointed to a separate but related legal case in which Van Meteren took Suhn to court alleging that he violated their sales agreement.
The lawsuit accused Suhn of trying to poach clients and business that Van Meteren agreed to pay for as part of the deal, according to court documents.
Suhn’s lawyers argued that the agreement provided a broad exception for him to work as a consultant and advise clients about their best interests.
In an email, Van Meteren said he saw the ruling in Suhn’s lawsuit as a victory.
“Rather than seeing Judge Jayaram’s ruling as some kind of loss, I see it as just the opposite,” Van Meteren wrote.
“My layman’s reading of the ruling is that the judge said that at some point, Suhn may have a security interest in TSG’s assets but not until the underlying, original suit I filed against him back in 2021 is litigated,” Van Meteren said.
“He denied Suhn’s attempt to immediately come in and shut down TSG or gain control over its assets saying only that, at some point – after the initial suit is litigated and resolved – Suhn may have a security interest if he prevails,” Van Meteren said.
Suhn’s attorney, Ryan Kriegshauser, said the court ruling spoke for itself.
“Mr. Suhn has a valid and enforceable security interest in all of The Singularis Group’s assets. Mr. Suhn will enforce his rights accordingly,” Kriegshauser said.
Suhn has been fighting Van Meteren’s lawsuit for about two years, successfully getting a district court to strike one count of breach of contract in the lawsuit. He has flatly said that he didn’t violate the agreement, according to court documents.
Suhn is now asking the state Supreme Court to review the case and decide whether the other four counts in the lawsuit should be struck as well.
In court filings, Suhn has described the case as “political harassment”
He says he negotiated an unrestricted right to work as a general consultant without interference from his former business partner.
He said he agreed to accept a smaller sum of money in exchange for his ability to compete as a consultant.
He accused Van Meteren in a court filing of trying to rewrite the terms of the sales agreement because he was unhappy with the pact.
Meanwhile, Van Meteren is refusing to pay Suhn, claiming that his former partner didn’t adhere to their sales agreement.
In his 2021 lawsuit, Van Meteren accused Suhn of violating provisions of the sales agreement by disclosing confidential information about the company and urging Singularis clients not to do business with the firm or redirect that business to himself or others.
Van Meteren accused Suhn of engaging in various activities in violation of their agreement, including creating concepts and writing copy for a direct mail piece for Americans for Prosperity-Kansas, a Singularis client, court records show.
Van Meteren also accused Suhn of intervening in the firm’s relationships by working on a mail schedule for state Sen. Kellie Warren after an employee at the firm had already completed the mail schedule, according to court documents.
He also accused Suhn of submitting a proposal to the Republican House Campaign Committee, “a longstanding client of TSG.”
