The nightspot at 2434 Esquire Drive in Beavercreek was foreclosed last year after failing to pay $245,000 in back taxes.
Kessler said he would issue a written decision, but did not give a timetable.
Reid said $100,000 was used to buy kitchen equipment she leased to Peh before the business opened in 1996.
The two-day bench trial in Greene County Common Pleas Court wrapped up 18 months of wrangling during which Reid alleged Peh never paid a dime, and Peh’s attorney saying Reid never demanded payment until 2009.
Reid’s attorney, John D. Smith, said with simple interest the total is more than $300,000. The original complaint used compounded interest and asked for more than $600,000.
“What there’s been is a cooperation with Mr. Peh to help Wallaby’s pay it and get him off the hook,” Smith told Kessler. “It’s unfortunate, but it didn’t happen.”
Peh’s lawyer, Thomas Kollin, said the situation is estoppel, a legal concept that precludes a party from bringing an action when the party knowingly failed to claim or enforce a legal right in the proper time frame.
Kollin said Peh would have paid in the years the corporation had equity if there had been a demand. That way, more than $200,000 in interest would not have accrued.
“Ms. Reid testified she was in the restaurant four or five times a week,” Kollin said in his summation. “If somebody owes you a $100,000 for 13 years, at some point you would get in their face and say, ‘Hey, I want to be paid.’ ”
Wallaby’s original investors included: Reid’s ex-husband, who is ex-county Judge M. David Reid; their son, Nelson; Michael Buckwalter, now a county judge; Dr. Keith Peh, a gynecologist convicted of molesting patients; and Peter Sung, a pharmacist convicted of selling drugs.
Reid has said she sold her five shares in the company in 2006, 2007 or 2008, but would not name the buyer. She said she mistakenly listed herself as a shareholder in 2007 and 2008 on Ohio Ethics Commission forms.
Wallaby’s, which operated under several names, closed as a restaurant and had its articles of incorporation revoked in 2007, but continued as a bar.
In January 2010, customer Nygel S. Gibbs was shot and killed outside the bar.
The property’s appraised value fell from $1.5 million in 2008 to $1.22 million in 2010 and was sold in July 2010 at a county treasurer’s sale for $813,350. Money was owed to the clerk of courts, the sheriff’s office, the treasurer, the mortgage company and others. Officials said Reid’s claim was too far down the debt list to get reimbursed.
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