The Cedar Rapids Gazette , Tuesday, May 1, 1984

FARM COUPLE WINS $550,000, BANK $206,000
By JERRY PERKINS
Register Agribusiness Writer

A Linn County farm couple was awarded $550,000 in damages Monday by a District Court jury in Cedar Rapids in a suit that claimed that their bank prevented them from participating in the payment-in-kind program last year.

The bank's lawyer called the jury's verdict "totally erroneous" and said the bank will ask a judge to overturn the jury's verdict.

The lawsuit was filed by Keel and Linda Peterson of Marion in March 1986 against Norwest Bank Marion, N.A. The bank was formerly known as the First National Bank of Iowa.

The Petersons claimed the bank took a $240,000 check from the Commodity Credit Corp. on Dec. 6, 1982, and applied it to the Petersons' out-standing loan balance.

The Petersons wanted to use about $50,000 from the check, which was for corn and soybeans stored in the government's 3-year reserve program, to pay their landlord for rending farmland in 1982, said Peter Riley, the Petersons' lawyer .

When the bank applied all of the money to the loan balance, Riley said, the landlord refused to rent his farm to the Petersons in 1983 and they lost an opportunity to participate in the PIK program that year. PIK paid farmers in cash and corn to idle corn ground in 1983.

Riley said the Petersons would have qualified for a PIK payment of 85,000 bushels of corn, if they had been allowed to farm in 1983.

As a result of the bank's actions, Riley said, the Petersons could only farm their half interest in a 160-acre farm in Linn County.

David McManus, the lawyer for Norwest, said the jury also awarded the bank $206,000 in a counterclaim against the Petersons. McManus said the decision on the bank's counterclaim shows that the jury's verdict "is inconsistent."

The jury's verdict awarding the Petersons $550,000 is "totally erroneous, totally contrary to the evidence," said McManus. He said the bank will ask judge Harold Swailes, who presided at the five-day trial in Linn County District Court in Cedar Rapids, to set aside the damages awarded the Petersons.

McManus said the government check was made payable to the Petersons and the bank and that the Petersons told the bank they had paid the rent to their landlords in 1982.

The landlord, Everett Staskal, was killed in a fall from a grain bin in January 1983.

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