Helm Financial Corp. v. Iowa Northern Ry. Co.
Decision Date | 31 May 2002 |
Docket Number | No. C01-3006-MWB.,C01-3006-MWB. |
Parties | HELM FINANCIAL CORPORATION, Plaintiff, v. IOWA NORTHERN RAILWAY COMPANY, Defendant. |
Court | U.S. District Court — Northern District of Iowa |
This lawsuit, which is set for trial to begin on July 15, 2002, involves claims by plaintiff Helm Financial Corporation (Helm) that defendant Iowa Northern Railway Company (IANR) failed to pay for rent and repairs on four locomotives leased from Helm and used by IANR in its shortline railroad business in north central Iowa. IANR has also brought various Counterclaims, including claims for breach of lease, tortious interference with business, and punitive damages. This matter comes before the court pursuant to various cross-motions for summary judgment or partial summary judgment, as well as motions by the parties to strike portions of each other's responses to the dispositive motions. These motions have now been fully briefed and the court heard oral arguments on them on May 17, 2002. Therefore, these motions are now ripe for disposition by the court.
Although this matter is before the court on cross-motions for summary judgment or partial summary judgment, the court will not attempt here an exhaustive dissertation of the undisputed and disputed facts in the record. Rather, the court will present sufficient of the facts, both disputed and undisputed, to put in context the parties' arguments for and against summary judgment on the various claims, counterclaims, and defenses in this litigation. This task is not an easy one in this case, however, because the parties hotly contest not only individual facts, but the completeness or context of those facts and the inferences or legal conclusions to be drawn from them.
Despite the intensity of the parties' disputes, what is clear is that, at the center of this litigation is Helm's allegation that IANR has failed to pay for use of and repairs to four locomotives, which IANR used in its shortline railroad business in north central Iowa. IANR leased two of the locomotives at issue, designated IANR 3607 and IANR 3609, respectively, directly from Helm in 1995 and returned them to Helm in January 2001 pursuant to an agreed court order issued by this court in prior litigation. See Helm's Appendix to First Motion for Summary Judgment at 50 (Exhibit 14, Order of December 20, 2000, in Case No. C 00-3095-MWB). The other two locomotives at issue, designated MKCX 4302 and MKCX 4303, respectively, on which Helm also held the lease, were provided to IANR in May 2000 by another railroad, the Canada American Railroad Company (CDAC). IANR returned those two locomotives to Helm in December 2000. Although there is some temporal overlap in IANR's use of the four locomotives, the court believes that a more coherent picture of the facts in this case can be developed by discussing separately the facts pertaining to each pair of locomotives, at least up until the point at which their stories become inextricably intertwined.
IANR and Helm entered into a Lease of Railroad Equipment (the IANR Lease) dated March 28, 1995, for four locomotives. See Helm's Appendix to First Motion for Summary Judgment (Exhibit 1, Lease of Railroad Equipment) at 2. IANR's President executed the lease on March 30, 1995, and Helm's President executed the lease on September 29, 1995. Id. at 19. However, IANR contends that the story begins well before March 28, 1995, with IANR's determination that 2,000 horsepower, GP-38 locomotives, would meet its requirements followed by "detailed" discussions between IANR and Helm regarding IANR's power needs. It is undisputed that Helm represented that it had several GP-38 locomotives that were then or would soon be available to lease to IANR and that IANR's then Chief Mechanical Officer, Richard Adreon, inspected several locomotives at Helm's facility in Oregon in February 1995 before hand-picking four locomotives that he considered best suited to IANR's needs.
The four locomotives selected by IANR became the subject of the IANR Lease, and were described in Annex A of that Lease as "Four (4), two-thousand (2,000) horsepower, GP38 locomotives," with the following "New Unit Numbers": IANR 3606 ("Old Unit Number" HLCX 2034); IANR 3607 ("Old Unit Number" HLCX 3607); IANR 3609 ("Old Unit Number" HLCX 3609); and IANR 3611 ("Old Unit Number" HLCX 3611). See id. at 22. IANR now contends that...
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