The city is waging a legal war to gain control of the defunct Vaccine & Gene Therapy Institute of Florida.
But it already seems to have lost the fight on virtually every financial front.
Port st Lucie taxpayers, directly or indirectly, are footing the bill for nearly every part of the legal case the city brought against VGTI in May, when it asked a judge to block the biotech-research institute from moving out of the city and to force it to make good on the 2.6 million dollar mortgage payment that was due May 1st.
That legal action came nearly two weeks after VGTI asked the city for a 21 million dollar bail out.
Yet the city is now paying not only its own legal Fees,—As high as $450 an hour to a Fort Lauderdale law firm, but potentially also attorney fees for TD Bank, VGTI’S mortgage holder.
TD Bank claims it incurred more than 112,000$ in legal fees through November, according to court documents. It’s the city’s responsibility to cover those costs and future fees if VGTI can’t, bank attorneys argued in a court filing last month.
VGTI’S lawyers made it clear at a December hearing that its cash has all but been dried up.
