‘It really hurt us’
Conway not only one left hanging by Get Lit
The MainStreet Higginsville group in Missouri has decided it’s not worth suing the former Get Lit LLC of Springdale for taking the group’s money and not doing work on Christmas decorations, but Conway city officials were still pondering legal action last week as the city’s problem tree was being erected downtown.
“This is definitely an issue that’s concerning the city, and we want to be able to take care of it,” said Chuck Clawson, Conway city attorney. Clawson said that for him to proceed with litigation, Mayor Tab Townsell would have to recommend it and ask the city council to approve the action. “When that happens, my office will be ready to do it,” Clawson said.
The 54-foot artificial Christmas tree was purchased from Get Lit for $134,000, using money from Advertising and Promotion funds. The tree was purchased without bids, which was legal, Townsell said, so that it could be delivered for the 2013 holiday season. He also said if there was a problem, it would be easier to deal with an Arkansas company.
The lights on the tree didn’t work from the get-go, and Get Lit representatives made several trips to Conway to try to fix the problem. After Christmas, the tree was taken back to Springdale to be refurbished. When Conway city officials started calling about the tree, they discovered the company was out of business, they said.
Two city officials, Jack Bell, the city’s chief of staff, and Steve Ibbotson, director
of the Conway Parks and Recreation Department, recovered the tree in the summer from a semitrailer in Springdale that was located across from the shuttered business.
To get the tree in working order, the city has added branches and ornaments and rewired it. Ibbotson said in an earlier interview that an additional $3,000 had been spent to overhaul the tree, but he said Wednesday that $6,500 has been spent on the tree, to date.
Townsell said earlier this month that the tree was a lemon from the start and that “we owe it to the taxpayers” to try to get a monetary payback. However, he said he was realistic about getting any money from the now-defunct corporation or its former owners, Summer and Jason Hull.
Hull said in a River Valley
& Ozark Edition article published Nov. 9 that she and her partners were not the corporation.
“The city can spend as much time and money as they choose to fight a corporation that no longer exists,” she said. Hull also said she cooperated by telling Conway officials where the tree was being stored.
Ibbotson said Hull did finally respond via email and let him know the tree was in a trailer, but she didn’t say where. The tree was found in the trailer in an open area across from the former company building, he said. The trailer wasn’t locked, and the tree’s branches were put inside in a way that damaged many of the ornaments, he said.
Donna Brown, economic developer for Higginsville, Missouri, a city of about 5,000 people, said she can relate to Conway’s dilemma. She said Higginsville was left high and dry, too, when Get Lit closed.
Brown said Get Lit approached the Higginsville Chamber last year and made a pitch to refurbish 34 decorations that hang on light poles. She is on the board of MainStreet Higginsville, which raised the money to pay $5,125 to refurbish the Christmas decorations, she said. The decorations were shaped like wreaths, candles and such, and she said the garlands on them were looking tattered.
“It was just going to be the LED lights on the wire frame, which I guess is what more of the new look is,” she said. Get Lit refurbished three of the decorations to show what they would look like.
However, Get Lit took all 34 of the decorations to Springdale and didn’t repair the other 31, she said. MainStreet Higginsville made two of three payments to Get Lit, a total of $3,400, and she said Hull asked for the third payment before the city got the decorations back but was not paid the final $1,708.34.
“We went out and solicited from mom-and-pop businesses in the community to get this done, or the Rotary Club or Lions Club,” Brown said.
Brown further said the decorations were supposed to be done in late summer, but when she started calling, the number to Get Lit was disconnected.
“We were beginning to get worried. We found a location of a business next to Get Lit, and they said, ‘ No, nobody’s been there for a while,’” Brown said. She contacted the police in Springdale, who located Hull. “It took a month to track her down,” Brown said.
Hull sent an email and assured Brown that although Get Lit had closed, “ours was the final contract” they were going to honor and that Hull would send weekly updates to Brown.
She said she never heard from Hull again.
Brown said she had to get the Higginsville police chief involved to contact the Springdale Police Department. Brown said law enforcement got in touch with Hull, who told officers the decorations were at a powder-coating company in Springdale.
“All they had really done is strip them down. They had not put one hard dollar into them,” Brown said, referring to Get Lit.
The MainStreet group paid $500 to the powder-coating company to do the work and an additional $2,000 to get the lights ready for this season. Brown praised city employees, who she said worked nonstop last week in freezing weather to get the lights up.
She also said the Higginsville Chamber of Commerce did its due diligence in talking to references for Get Lit.
Brown said the MainStreet Higginsville board met last week and had earlier talked with the Higginsville city attorney about possibly taking legal action against the Hulls.
“He said, ‘You’re chasing good money after bad,’” she said. “When you go across state lines to place liens on something, it’s almost impossible,” she said the attorney told her. “He said, ‘ You will spend more money in the end than you will ever get back.’”
Reinders, a Christmas-treelight company in Wisconsin, took legal action against Get Lit and won a judgment.
Get Lit was allowed to open a cash-on-delivery account in 2012 with Reinders, a company spokesman said. After Get Lit didn’t pay its bill, Reinders sued Get Lit LLC and Summer Hull and in December 2013 was awarded a $14,000 judgment for money owed the company, including attorney costs and fees, according to the Waukesha County circuit clerk’s office.
“Even though we won the judgment against her, we have yet to collect any money from her,” said Laurie Reinders, product manager-seasonal lighting for Reinders.
Two other companies won judgments against Get Lit in cases filed in Washington County Circuit Court in Fayetteville.
Holiday Technology in Kansas sued Jason Hull, doing business as Get Lit Decor and Get Lit LLC, for not paying for goods for a lighting project. The items were purchased on credit by Get Lit and sent by express delivery, according to the complaint. The judgment against Get Lit entered in June was for $5,094.75, which has not been paid, said Ashley Aurand, an employee in the Washington County circuit clerk’s office.
Also, Airways Freight Corp. in Fayetteville won a $14,270.75 judgment against Get Lit for failing to pay for freight and shipping, according to court documents.
“Neither of these has been satisfied,” Aurand said.
Paul Sessel, owner of Creative Displays in Kansas, said he is owed money from Get Lit, too. Sessel said he stopped doing business with Get Lit a couple of years ago after he was owed $8,000 for merchandise.
Sessel said Hull called him one day to place an order.
“She was on the job site; her credit card wouldn’t go through. She said, ‘I need these overnight. I’ll get you the money tomorrow,’ blah, blah, blah,” he said. “We’d done business with her for a long time, so we trusted her.”
He said he never received payment. Sessel said he didn’t seek a legal remedy. He just stopped doing business with Get Lit.
Conway ordered shatterproof ornaments from Creative Displays this year to match the ones Get Lit had on the Conway tree.
Valerie Piechur is the owner of Christmas LEDs in the small city of Walworth, Wisconsin. Piechur said she was never paid $2,700 from Get Lit, who had been a customer in 2011 and 2012.
In December 2013, however, Piechur said, Hull called, “frantic about getting cases of lights overnighted to her husband, Jason, who was to do a big decorating job in East St. Louis, Illinois.”
Piechur said Hull kept changing her mind on the quantities of lights she wanted, “and we’d have to unpack the boxes. Three times we did this.” Piechur said she finally told Hull she was going to have to cancel the order, but Hull made a decision.
The lights cost $2,000, and overnight shipping was $700, Piechur said. The credit card Hull used was expired, Piechur said, but Hull said she was “on the road” and would call back with a different credit card, but she didn’t. “She even went to the point of telling me that her card was caught up in that Target thing,” Piechur said. “I emailed her back and said, ‘That’s all straightened out.’” Hull stopped all contact, Piechur said.
“We are a small mom-andpop company, and $2,700 may not seem like much compared to the $130,000 the city of Conway put out, but it really hurt us,” Piechur said. She said she consulted her attorney about taking legal action against Get Lit, but he advised against it. “He said, ‘Honestly, by the time I do the work, for $2,700, it’s going to be a wash,’” Piechur said.
“Potentially,” Clawson said, “there could be a claim to go after them personally. [The Hulls] basically were the LLC,” something, as previously noted, Hull disputed in an earlier interview with the River Valley
& Ozark Edition.
Clawson said the case isn’t closed.
“If it’s just getting a lien against them, or a judgment against them, or going after them personally, we’re going to do that,” Clawson said.