A more than 4-year-old legal judgment that Chicago businessman Clyde Engle failed to pay has come back to haunt him.
The $4.2 million liability has led to a $53.8 million judgment against him. A jury in Maui, where Engle lives part of the year with his family, found on Wednesday that he had fraudulently transferred assets to his wife to avoid paying the 2005 judgment. The Hawaii verdict includes $43 million in punitive damages.
One of the many companies Engle once controlled was the Bank of Lincolnwood, a north suburban community bank that failed in June after 55 years in business. He could not be reached for comment Thursday.
Chicago lawyer George Grumley, who brought the Maui case against Engle in 2008, said Engle and his wife, Siobhan, engaged in a scheme to hide his assets from creditors. The scheme, he said, involved the transfer of stock Engle owned in the Bank of Lincolnwood.
The Maui judgment stems from a legal entanglement related to a company Engle owned that developed a failed retirement community outside Nashville, Tenn. In 1994, a group of Tennessee residents who bought property in the development sued Engle’s company, National Development Co., for breach of contract.
See full story: https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-0305-clyde-engle-hawaii–20100305,0,7265208.story