Rodham seeks to reopen loan case

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brother Anthony D. Rodham is asking a bankruptcy judge to reopen a case in which he was ordered to repay more than $100,000 in loans from a carnival company whose founder was pardoned by President Clinton.

The request, filed Thursday in a Nashville federal court, comes weeks after Mr. Rodham was barred from taking money out of a bank account containing about $142,000.

According to a court-appointed trustee for the bankrupt estate of Tennessee-based United Shows of America Inc., Mr. Rodham received $107,000 in loans from the company but never repaid them.

The disputed loans became an issue when United Shows went bankrupt in 2002 and control of its finances was placed in the hands of the trustee, Michael E. Collins.

Mr. Collins is seeking the return of $107,000 plus $46,034 in interest from Mr. Rodham, 51.

Last year, Mr. Collins won a default judgment in a federal bankruptcy court in Nashville against Mr. Rodham, who was ordered to repay the loans.

In June, Mr. Collins filed papers in an Alexandria bankruptcy court to garnish the bank account of Mr. Rodham, who lives in Virginia. A hearing on the matter has been scheduled for later this month.

United Shows was founded by Edgar Gregory Jr. He and his wife, Vonna Jo, received a pardon from Mr. Clinton in 2000 over the objections of the Justice Department. They had been convicted of bank fraud in 1982.

They were accused of illegally giving unsound loans to entities under their control. Mr. Gregory died in 2004.

Mr. Collins won a default judgment because Mr. Rodham never filed responses in the case.

Then, Mr. Rodham’s attorney filed the motions last week in the Nashville court to reopen the case.

Mr. Rodham’s attorney, Samuel K. Crocker, stated his client receive a demand letter and court summons from Mr. Collins but was never served with a motion for default judgment.

Mr. Crocker also states that the default judgment against his client was “a result of mistake, inadvertence, and/or excusable neglect.”

Mr. Rodham says the money he received from United Shows was compensation for his work as a consultant, not loans, according to the legal filings.

However, Mr. Collins, in his June 26 bankruptcy filing, said each of the 16 checks from United Shows to Mr. Rodham had a note at the bottom indicating that the payments were loans.

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