A Federal Appeals Court has ruled in part against Loves’s Travel Stops and Country Stores, Inc. in a legal fight with a firm it hired to help develop a nearly $300 million renewable diesel facility that is still under construction near Hastings, Nebraska.
The Tenth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned part of an Oklahoma City Federal Judge’s ruling in the lawsuit brought by Harvest Group LLC, a firm that helps businesses in acquiring economic development incentives.
The dispute centered over how much of a payment Harvest Group should have received for the work it did beginning in 2018 and 2019 in assisting Love’s in helping with the acquisition of the site for the plant that won’t open until sometime later this year. The contract called for Harvest to receive a fee of 10% of the value of any incentives it helped Love’s secure.
Love’s argued it should not have to pay an invoice of $7,372,300 on the $73,723,000 in benefits that Harvest said it managed to obtain for the plant.
Because of the Appeals Court ruling, the case will go back before the Oklahoma City federal judge who denied summary judgment in favor of Harvest. The Appeals Court also reversed the district court on the issue of Harvest’s entitlement to interest and whether Harvest Group, headquartered in Tennessee was the prevailing party.
As for the project, ground was broken in November of 2022.
The Love’s Family of Companies created a joint venture with Cargill and calledd it Heartwell Renewables. According to an announcement at th time of the groundbreaking, the state-of-the-art facility is projected to have an annual production capacity of 80 million gallons of renewable diesel and will support the growing demand for green fuel products.
