(Important note: This article has nothing to do with the billionaire Koch brothers empire or their politics. Stan Koch and his family are not related to those Koch brothers in any way.)
Big news out of Minneapolis District Court as James Koch, one of the three sons of Stan Koch, gets a buyout of his share of Stan Koch and Sons Trucking (SKT) and Koch Industries (KI). The feud is well-known throughout the trucking community.
It started back in 2006 when James stopped working for the companies. James had made a deal to buy out the KI shares of his brothers Randy and Dave if they in turn bought out his SKT shares.
There was a great deal of tension among the brothers over the feud. James was living in Las Vegas and not working. So Randy and Dave changed his status to “non-employee,” meaning he was no longer eligible for the company health insurance. They agreed to reinstate him, as long as he moved back to Minnesota “and came back and actually worked.”
There were agreements made that paid bonuses to the brothers based on company valuation. The time and amount of those valuations is the basis of the court case. All three brothers hired economists. James claimed the figures from May 2020, when the company was worth $216 million.
Unfortunately, Judge Laurie Miller decided to use the amount of $168 million from the Koch Trucking 2017 valuation. That also meant Koch Industries was worth about $30 million. So James’ payout was $48.5 million for his 30.3136% stake in SKT, and $10 million for his one-third share of KI.
James also was awarded $12 million for a breach of contract suit and was awarded attorneys’ fees.
Going through family feuds is always rough, especially if you have to get lawyers involved. Maybe we can all take some lessons from this case and be better prepared. FreightWaves’ John Kingston wrote in more detail about the case in an article linked here.
