Durham Farms #1 - Page 66




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          promissory note debt.  In his testimony, Jay Hoyt maintained that           
          he and the Hoyt organization had concluded it was not practical             
          to bring collection actions against a large number of defaulting            
          investors.  He further stated that as a “general principle” the             
          Hoyt organization assumed that the “cattle” securing a defaulting           
          investor’s “note liability” had a value equal to 110 percent of             
          that “note liability”.  However, the Court does not believe Jay             
          Hoyt’s explanation as to why the Hoyt organization never sought             
          to enforce the “note liability” against these defaulting                    
          investors.38                                                                
               In his testimony, Jay Hoyt also noted that certain of the              
          cattle-breeding partnerships had almost “fully paid off” their              
          “promissory note liabilities” with respect to some earlier cattle           
          purchase transactions that they and the Hoyt organization had               
          entered into.  He further indicated that, in substantial part,              
          these notes had been “paid off” through these partnerships’                 
          “transferring back” cattle to the Hoyt organization.  However,              
          the Court does not consider such “payments” to be convincing                


               38Among other things, the record contains standard letters a           
          large group of disgruntled investors (who were allowed to                   
          withdraw from their cattle-breeding partnerships) issued to the             
          Hoyt organization in 1994 and 1995.  In the letters, these                  
          investors noted that the Hoyt organization had represented that             
          the investors would owe no further money because their respective           
          cattle partnership’s assets had a value sufficient to cover an              
          investor’s “note liability”.  If not, the letters advised, these            
          investors requested a full accounting by the Hoyt organization              
          with respect to all cattle that had been owned by their                     
          partnerships.                                                               





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