Judge threatened CBRE with contempt over subpoena
A judge in Boulder threatened to hold CBRE in contempt of court for ignoring a subpoena this week, then backed off after the brokerage giant handed over documents.
District Court Judge Thomas Ward on Wednesday ordered CBRE to appear before him and explain “why it should not be found guilty of contempt.” If it couldn’t, “CBRE may be fined or its officers … personally involved in the contemptuous conduct imprisoned.”
Before a hearing could be scheduled, CBRE acquiesced and complied with the subpoena.
“CBRE is not party to this litigation,” the brokerage’s spokeswoman, Sara Johnston, told Businessden on Thursday. “We have furnished the relevant requested documents and are in compliance with the requirements of a party that is not involved in this litigation.”
Ten minutes later, Ward withdrew his contempt threat at the request of the case’s plaintiff.
The request for contempt citations came from The John Buck Co. in Chicago, which owns the 70,000-square-foot Railyards at S’PARK office building in Boulder.
For the past nine months, that landlord has been suing what was once its primary tenant: Twitter Inc.
Buck Co. said that Twitter, now under the ownership of Elon Musk’s X Corp., didn’t maintain a $1 million line of credit. Twitter countersued Buck Co. in August, claiming it was wrongly evicted and is owed $5.8 million for improvements that it made to Railyards at S’PARK.
On Dec. 5, Buck Co. served a subpoena on CBRE, demanding that it turn over documents related to Twitter and S’PARK by Dec. 26, according to an affidavit filed by Timothy Gordon, a lawyer for Buck Co. with the Holland & Hart firm in Denver.
But CBRE didn’t.
By Jan. 15, CBRE still hadn’t turned over the documents, so Buck Co. threatened to have Ward hold CBRE in contempt. According to Gordon, “That got CBRE’S attention.” CBRE promised to comply with the subpoena by the week of Feb. 19, but still hadn’t Wednesday.
Ward wrote then “that a contempt may have been committed out of the presence of the court, because of the failure of CBRE to produce documents” and demanded an explanation.
Meanwhile, a seven-day trial is scheduled for November in the Buck Co. and Twitter case.