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7-Up vs. Coke Part 2

Continued from page 4

At a January 2006 hearing in Haines' case, St. Louis County Circuit Court Associate Judge Dennis Smith voiced his suspicion that Gladney had come to court while under the influence. The judge proceeded to cut off all visitation rights until further notice. Seven months later, on July 19, 2006, Haines was granted full custody. Two months earlier, Gladney had been stripped of custody rights to his elder son.

In December 2006, Ken Keiser's company, PRG Properties, filed suit, seeking access to Downtown North Development's books and compensation for damages. Last summer, after one of the Taylor & Taylor attorneys got stuck in the "working" elevator and had to climb half a flight through the shaft, Joe Taylor found office space elsewhere. His firm, too, filed suit against Downtown North.

Claus Schmitz quit paying Gladney rent in January 2007, opting to escrow payments via his attorneys. A battle of wills ensued, with Gladney demanding his money and Schmitz insisting that Gladney indemnify him against damages in the federal EEOC litigation. The chef says Gladney made harassing phone calls to his home, to his bookkeeper and to other Mosaic employees and told a maintenance contractor he was going to kill Schmitz if he didn't get his rent.

Schmitz attempted détente on several occasions. At one point last summer, the chef says, he agreed to sign a check made out to Gladney for $5,000 if Gladney signed an indemnification pact.

Gladney had instructed Schmitz to bring everything by his townhouse, but no one answered the door when he arrived. He put the check in the mailbox along with paperwork for Gladney to sign. The check was cashed, Schmitz says, but Gladney never signed the agreement. Schmitz went back to escrowing.

Ultimately, Downtown North and Mosaic sued one other in St. Louis Circuit Court.

On December 7 Judge John Garvey heard arguments in the non-jury proceeding. (Gladney had failed to attend the initial trial date of November 2.) Garvey issued a ruling one month later.

Gladney's management of the building, the judge wrote, was "abysmal," the evidence of sexual harassment on his part "uncontroverted." Garvey also noted Gladney's "overall bizarre behavior" on the stand, terming it "sometimes evasive, other times rambling, but most of the time incoherent." Wrote Garvey: "Many times during the trial, the Court had to admonish Gladney from testifying too fast. His demeanor on the witness stand was disturbing."

Garvey ruled that Schmitz may continue escrowing monthly rent in order to protect himself in the event of foreclosure, and that the restaurateur should subtract from the rent the cost of defending Mosaic in the EEOC lawsuit. Additionally, Garvey awarded Schmitz's attorneys $12,000 to cover fees and court costs and ruled that a constructive trust (essentially a lien) must be placed on any sale or foreclosure proceeds that Gladney is entitled to involving 1101 Lucas. Garvey has yet to rule on Schmitz's request to be indemnified against all potential damages in the EEOC matter.

Schmitz says he is on the verge of opening a second Mosaic downtown and a third location in Kirkwood.

"Even though we had a very ugly divorce, I could tell you good things about him," says Andrew Gladney's ex-wife, Cindy Lee, before deciding to leave it at: "He used to be a completely different person."

A Yale friend, who would only be interviewed on the condition that his name not be published, calls Gladney "one of the more entertaining people I've ever met, a great storyteller, a great joke-teller, has a magnetic personality." Gladney, the former classmate says, was "usually the life of the party — the guy who would end up singing at the end of a friend's wedding."

"He could be really kind and thoughtful — he's such a bright person," adds a former female friend. "But he was kind of a lost soul. I think he had a really shitty family life and somehow missed the self-worth chapter of his life-book."

Tim Roberts, his old partner in Savvis, thought Gladney's mother's losing battle with leukemia in the mid-1990s left him extremely lonely. "I knew if I needed money for the company I had to do whatever he said, but he was a lot more demanding about just having you around," says Roberts. "If he wanted you at dinner, there was no excuse for you not to go with him."

But it's hard to pinpoint any one moment in time when Gladney might have begun coming untethered. He is estranged from old friends. The mother of his second son has moved to northern Illinois with the boy. (She could not be reached for comment.) His sister, Hope Gladney Jessup, through Frank Gladney, declined to comment because she "[doesn't] have anything positive to say." His current trustee, Carl Lothman, did not return a phone call. A woman who answered the phone at the home of Warren Maichel, a former trustee, exclaimed, "He's not interested!" and hung up. Gladney's cousin John Ross also opted to remain mum.

The friends who attended a December hearing in U.S. District Court in order to guarantee Andrew Gladney's bond went unnamed when attorney Scott Rosenblum pointed them out to the judge.

Besides the ongoing litigation with Claus Schmitz, and the EEOC's sexual harassment allegations, and the cases with Ken Keiser and Joe Taylor, Gladney is a defendant in a number of civil lawsuits in St. Louis County Circuit Court. Among others suing him for outstanding debts is the exclusive St. Louis Racquet Club.

According to documents in his criminal case, Gladney's net worth is approximately $3.9 million. But, says Rosenblum, "His financial picture is complicated because there's a trust and a trustee involved. It's not like he can just write checks." Rosenblum says he does not know how federal officials arrived at the $3.9 million figure, nor whether it is accurate. According to Frank Gladney, his father left individual trust funds to each of his children. Upon the death of each child, the trust is to be passed to the next generation — in Andrew Gladney's case, to his two sons.

But, Frank Gladney adds, he is unsure of how his half-brother's trust is distributed today. "Four or five years ago, I learned that Andrew's trust was shifted to other trustees. I don't know them. I presume that there, too, the fiduciaries are looking after [my father's] grandchildren and trying to meet the needs of [Andrew] at the same time."

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