Ralph Bradbury (file).
A U.S. District Court judge last week slapped Ralph Bradbury, former president of the defunct Continental Express of Little Rock, with a judgment of $823,166 for the company’s unpaid payroll tax bill.
Bradbury sued the Internal Revenue Service in 2011 and said the tax bill should have gone to the owners of the trucking company, Ed and Bonnie Harvey, and their financial adviser, Marvin Jones. He said they were the ones who controlled the company during third quarter in 2008, when the taxes were owed.
But U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr. disagreed and ruled against Bradbury in March, saying he was responsible for the tax bill.
In May, the IRS submitted its calculation of how much was owed and Marshall entered his order on Nov. 25.
Bradbury’s attorney, Randy Coleman of Little Rock, told Arkansas Business on Monday that he plans to appeal the judgment to the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
Coleman also said he will move forward with a lawsuit Bradbury filed in 2011 in Pulaski County Circuit Court against his former employer and its owners in connection with the tax bill. Bradbury said the tax bill should have gone to them.
That lawsuit, though, was stayed pending the outcome of the federal lawsuit against the IRS.
The IRS has argued in court filings that Bradbury’s surrounding circumstances were immaterial “because Bradbury was a responsible person during the third quarter; and because he knew other bills were being paid then, but the withholdings were not.”
Ralph Bradbury’s daughter, Rachel Bradbury, is a publisher at Arkansas Business Publishing Group, the parent company of Arkansas Business.
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