Daily Durham Roundup

It's not looking like a holly jolly Christmas for businessman Tim Durham. The IBJ's Greg Andrews is reporting today that Durham's Obsidian Enterprises will be vacating its top shelf office space atop the Chase Tower in downtown Indianapolis in January. According to Andrews, the business hasn't been paying its rent and has agreed to give the space up.

The Star's Ted Evanoff has an interesting story about the second lawsuit investors brought against Durham's Fair Finance in a Ohio state court. Speculation abounds that this lawsuit, which does not name the roughly three dozen plaintiffs, involves the Amish. Evanoff says the Amish had been investing in the company for a generation at the time Durham bought the company from its Ohio owner in 2002. "Although no one has identified any of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, two actions give people in Wooster and surrounding towns reason to believe some Amish families may have been caught in the Fair Financial case," Evanoff reports. "First, the lawsuit was filed by an established Wooster law firm known to Amish families," he says. "And, second, a legal procedure appears to have been employed to conceal the identity of 20 plaintiffs. Evanoff continues, "An organization called a limited liability company was formed to press the legal action against Fair Financial." "In Ohio, lawyers say, these so-called LLCs need not disclose their members in public."