181498P.pdf   09/19/2019  Ronnoco Coffee, LLC.  v.  Westfeldt Brothers, Inc.
   U.S. Court of Appeals Case No:  18-1498
   U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri - St. Louis   
   [PUBLISHED] [Loken, Author, with Wollman and Stras, Circuit Judges] 
   Civil case - Successor liability. When plaintiff acquired substantially 
   all of the assets of an unrelated competitor at a secured creditor's 
   private foreclosure sale in an agreement which declined to assume the 
   competitor's liabilities, it was not liable as the competitor's successor 
   for unpaid pre-acquisition inventory purchases from defendant, a third 
   party which had sold coffee beans to the competitor; buying the 
   competitor's assets from its secured creditor at a foreclosure sale in an 
   agreement that disclaimed assumption of the competitor's liabilities 
   protected plaintiff from claims that the asset purchase was tainted by 
   commercially inadequate consideration; defendant failed to show it was 
   prejudiced by the asset sale as there was no evidence that, absent the 
   alleged fraud by plaintiff, the competitor would have been able to pay off 
   its entire debt to the secured creditor and then make payments to 
   defendant; defendant's unfair trade practices claims, conversion and 
   unjust enrichment claims were properly rejected.