Lawyers for Indianapolis power couple Steve and Tomisue Hilbert are slinging “ludicrous allegations” of witness tampering just to cover up their own wrongdoing, according to the latest broadside from the attorneys representing John Menard, the Hilberts’ former business partner.
New court documents accuse attorneys for hardware store titan John Menard Jr. of offering to pay a $200,000 legal settlement to a former executive at a Menard-controlled company if he provided helpful testimony in their cases against Steve and Tomisue Hilbert and their friend Lisa Trudeau
A year and a half after John Menard ousted Steve and Tomisue Hilbert as the managers of the private equity firm they all started, attorneys for the two sides continue to fight bitterly for every tactical advantage in a dozen lawsuits between them.
A skirmish in the ongoing legal war between hardware store magnate John Menard and former business partner Stephen Hilbert will arise in open court on Tuesday, as a trial begins between one of Menard's companies and former model Melania Trump.
Menard has countersued Tomisue Hilbert for “abuse of process,” saying she filed her lawsuit only after companies controlled by Menard removed the Hilberts as managers of a private equity firm and sued to recover millions of dollars in fees paid to the Hilberts.
Throwing the sexual-extortion allegations into the public domain must be a nightmare for Menard, who for decades has doggedly avoided scrutiny of his personal life—even as he built his chain into the nation’s No. 3 home improvement retailer and built his net worth to an estimated $7 billion.
The move, the latest fallout from the executive's feud with hardware king John Menard, puts on hold a Wisconsin lawsuit that sought millions of dollars from the company.
The lawsuit charges Tomisue Hilbert’s rejection of the billionaire is the real reason he launched a bitter battle to remove her husband, Steve Hilbert, as CEO of the Indianapolis-based private-equity funds the three of them started in 2005.
In an explosive new lawsuit, Tomisue Hilbert has accused hardware store owner and former business partner John Menard of pressuring her to have sex with him and then retaliating against her and her husband Steve when she refused.
Tomisue Hilbert quietly settled a 3-year-old lawsuit last month over whether a controversial life insurance policy issued in 2006 on her mother, Suzy Tomlinson, was valid, and whether the beneficiary of the policy, J.B. Carlson, committed fraud.
Businessman J.B. Carlson is in debt for $5.9 million, and he may have been the last person to see 74-year-old Suzy Tomlinson alive. Her $15 million life-insurance policy named him as the beneficiary.
Information that could prove her death was not an accident has surfaced during civil proceedings involving a life insurance
policy.
The wife of Indianapolis businessman Steve Hilbert is working with a team of attorneys to determine whether her deceased mother’s
estate can claim the benefit of a life insurance policy issued by Houston-based American General Life Insurance Co.
