Workers' Comp an Issue for Hotel Owner Mired in Bankruptcy, Loan Default Proceedings

Tuesday, November 28, 2017 | 0

West Virginia tax lawyers want a Morgantown hotel’s bankruptcy proceedings to play out in West Virginia, not Florida, and they say the owner’s decision to file in Florida is the result of “blatant forum shopping,” West Virginia Metro News reports.

Developer William Abruzzino’s investment group also filed a bankruptcy case in Georgia, but it was kicked out of the proceedings this month because it failed to meet a deadline to prove the Hilton Garden Inn in Morgantown had workers’ compensation insurance.

Abruzzino’s companies have been the subject of several legal proceedings in recent years. The state says Hilton Garden Inn owes it $587,000 in taxes that the hotel collected but never passed on.

Other hotels owned by Abruzzino’s investment group owe tax money, too, the state says. And hotels owned by an Abruzzino company in Clarksburg and Elkins defaulted on a $19 million loan, according to a lawsuit filed by Deutsche Bank Trust Co.

Abruzzino grew up in West Virginia but now lives in Florida. But he “does not appear … to own or lease office space in Florida,” West Virginia’s tax lawyers wrote in a petition to transfer the venue of the Morgantown hotel’s bankruptcy proceedings.

Abruzzino’s company “is not even registered to do business in Florida and can hardly claim the Middle District of Florida as its principal place of business,” the state’s lawyers wrote.

The state’s lawyers filed the petition to transfer the venue in U.S. bankruptcy court last week.