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An unusual small claims lawsuit by a Honda hybrid owner took another complicated turn Wednesday with additional arguments that prompted a commissioner to delay a ruling for more consideration.

Superior Court Commissioner Douglas Carnahan said he was aware of “a media blitz on this case,” and wanted to be clear on all of the issues raised by Honda owner Heather Peters.

Peters told the court she was anxious to get the matter resolved and did not want to waste the court’s time.

“You’re not wasting the court’s time,” said Carnahan. “These are serious issues affecting more people than just you.”

Honda representative Neil Schmidt showed up for the hearing with a stack of envelopes that the commissioner estimated as 8 inches high, purportedly containing letters from satisfied Honda owners.

Carnahan declined to open the envelopes, saying it would just prolong the hearing that has already gone on longer than most small claims court actions.

Peters said she did not want to see the letters and had submitted her own testimonials from those who are dissatisfied with the cars.

“I’ll stipulate there are people who love their cars,” she said as she pointed to the audience where six other disappointed Honda owners were seated, including a woman who drove from Sacramento to attend the hearing.

The woman, Kathy Wood, of Elk Grove said outside court, “I drove from Sacramento because if she can do all this that’s the least I can do.”

Peters, a former lawyer, has been using the Internet to try to rally other Honda hybrid owners to follow her example and go to small claims court rather than accept a proposed class-action settlement by Honda.

Peters bought her car in April 2006.

Peters claimed the car never came close to the 50 miles per gallon (21.26 kilometers per liter) promised and that it got no more than 30 miles per gallon (12.75 kilometers per liter) when the battery began deteriorating. She still owns the car and wants to be compensated for money lost on gas, as well as punitive damages.

She bolted from a class-action lawsuit in order to sue for $10,000 rather than agree to a proposed settlement by Honda with thousands of car owners that would give each owner $100 to $200 and a $1,000 credit on the purchase of a new Honda.

She has said that if all owners of the problem cars won in small-claims court, it could cost Honda $2 billion

Wood said she is planning to opt out of a class-action suit.

“I’m never buying a Honda again,” Wood said.

Schmidt presented charts that he said showed that even with the decreased mileage, Peters benefited from having the car. She called his calculations “laughable.”

“If Honda snuck into my garage and siphoned gas out of my car, that’s a crime,” Peters told the commissioner. “That’s what they’re doing.”

Honda also sent Darren Johnson, its manager in charge of certifications, to explain how Honda tests its vehicles in relation to tests by the environmental protection agency.

Schmidt claimed there was no fraud and said “we’re being sued for telling the truth and she actually benefited from having the hybrid.”

Carnahan said he was taking the matter under submission and would have a ruling probably next week or at least before the Feb. 11 deadline for people to opt out of the class action case.

Outside court Peters said, “I feel great. I did my best. However he decides it I’m happy I did it. It’s brought to light a lot of background stuff that people should know.

“I’m the trailblazer here,” she said, “and everyone else can follow what I did.”

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President Barack Obama is pushing his economic message in Ohio, brandishing his presidential megaphone in a politically important state to make certain his appeal to the middle class is heard amid the boisterous start of the Republican campaign for the White House.

Obama was traveling Wednesday to the most Democratic congressional district in Ohio, a Cleveland suburb, a day after Mitt Romney won Iowa’s Republican presidential caucuses by just eight votes. Obama’s trip signals the White House’s intent to keep the president in the public eye even as the political world focuses on the GOP’s selection process.

The White House’s choice of Ohio for Obama’s first presidential trip of 2012 underscores the state’s high-profile role in presidential politics. It is a swing state that went for George W. Bush in 2004 and for Obama in 2008. A top manufacturing state, Ohio has seen its jobless rate follow the national pattern; unemployment was 8.5 percent in November compared with 9.6 percent a year before.

Obama set the tone Tuesday for a White House strategy that aims to maintain pressure on congressional Republicans while promoting an economic plan that serves as much as a policy prescription as it does a political platform for the general election.

Addressing Iowa Democrats by teleconference as the GOP caucus counting was still under way, Obama described Republicans as embracing a “theory that says we’re going to cut taxes for the wealthiest among us and roll back regulations on things like clean air and health care reform, Wall Street reform, and somehow that automatically that assures that everybody is able to succeed.”

“I don’t believe that,” Obama declared.

Pressing his economic agenda, Obama has said expanding the middle class is “the defining issue of our time.” His spokesman, Jay Carney, on Tuesday called it “his No. 1 focus.”

As defined by the president and by his advisers, his economic argument is that the middle class is facing a “make or break moment.” On that score, Obama still has a few confrontations with Congress in the year ahead.

He still wants to extend a payroll tax cut for all of 2012. Republicans avoided being blamed for a tax increase last month when House GOP leaders agreed to a two-month extension personal loans for people with bad credit. A longer version will have to be decided by the end of February. Obama is also likely to point to elements of a jobs package he advanced last year that failed in the face of Republican opposition.

Obama is also at odds with Senate Republicans over his nomination of Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a central feature of new bank regulations that Congress approved and Obama signed in 2010. Republicans are blocking Cordray’s appointment, effectively hamstringing the bureau’s work. Battling Wall Street overreach has been a recurrent Obama theme as he advocates for the middle class.

Signaling that he would continue to draw sharp lines between the middle class and the wealthy, Obama told the Iowa Democrats in his videoconference Tuesday that he would insist on the rich paying more in taxes.

“If we’re going to make the investments that we need for our kids at the same time as we’re controlling our deficit, then there’s nothing wrong with saying to millionaires and billionaires that we’re going to let your tax cuts expire,” Obama said. “The other party has a fundamentally different philosophy.”

Administration officials say they were especially encouraged by the public’s response to Obama’s call for extending the payroll tax cut and indicate Obama will make such appeals repeatedly to gain leverage over Congress and Republicans, in particular.

“There are more things that need to be done,” Carney said Tuesday. “There are elements of the jobs act that we believe, as we did from the beginning, merit bipartisan consideration and support. This country is in crying need of work on its infrastructure.”

In speaking at Shaker Heights High School on Wednesday, Obama is returning to a Cleveland suburb that he visited in 2009 while pushing his health care overhaul plan. Obama also planned to meet with a family at their home, a tactic Obama has employed before to personalize his agenda.

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Boeing Co. beat Lockheed Martin Corp. to win a $3.48 billion, seven-year contract that lets it keep its role as the primary developer of the U.S. shield against intercontinental ballistic missiles.

The Missile Defense Agency announced the contract in a statement Friday. The agency oversees the Ground-based Midcourse Missile Defense, which includes interceptors in Alaska and California, ground- and sea-based radar, satellites and a command and control system.

The Boeing team, which included Northrop Grumman Corp. of Falls Church, Va., delivered “a cost-effective approach to program management and execution,” Dennis Muilenburg, chief executive of Boeing’s defense unit, said in a statement.

Lockheed, the world’s largest defense contractor, was seeking to dislodge Boeing from the contract it has held since 1998. Boeing has said the program totaled as much as $18 billion during the 10 years ending 2011.

Lt. Gen. Patrick O’Reilly, head of the Missile Defense Agency, said in August 2010, when the agency was preparing to call for bids, that it needed to contain costs.

“But before we get to cost, bidders have got to demonstrate they’ve the capacity and capability, and also an ability to do upgrades,” he said high risk personal loans.

Lockheed’s team included Raytheon, which makes the non-exploding warhead that is designed to seek and destroy enemy missiles. Raytheon was on both teams.

The news for Boeing officials came just one day after they and St. Louis leaders lauded a $30 billion deal for the company to provide Saudi Arabia with 84 new F-15 fighters. The deal will prolong production of the F-15, which is largely built at Boeing’s plant in north St. Louis County, by about five years, through 2020.

The Regional Chamber and Growth Association on Friday estimated that the F-15 work supports 1,000 manufacturing jobs at Boeing and contributes to nearly 4,000 more through local suppliers and spinoff activity.

The Boeing jobs generate $1.1 billion a year in wages and other economic activity, and the indirect impact is another roughly $1.8 billion, according to RCGA economist Ruth Sergenian.

Tim Logan of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.

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Jon Corzine’s three days of testimony on MF Global’s collapse offered little to satisfy lawmakers or clients who lost millions when the securities firm failed. Yet legal experts say Corzine helped himself by choosing words with care and articulating an explanation that’s hard to disprove.

Corzine, a Democratic former senator and governor of New Jersey, told three congressional panels that he never intended to “misuse” client money or order anyone else to do so. He said no reasonable person who worked with him could have concluded otherwise.

He also rebuffed an assertion that he knew about customer money that might have been transferred to a European affiliate just before MF Global collapsed. It could be hard to build a persuasive case that he did know, experts say.

“It’s remarkable how he really has narrowly walked that line _ to be able to communicate effectively while preserving his defenses,” said Jacob Frenkel, a former enforcement attorney with the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of the regulators investigating MF Global. “He could have hurt himself by testifying. That has not happened.”

About $1.2 billion was found to be missing from client accounts when MF Global failed on Oct. 31, becoming the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. Much of the missing money belonged to farmers, ranchers and other business owners who used MF Global to reduce their risks from the fluctuating prices of commodities such as corn and wheat.

Brokers such as MF Global generally are required to keep customer money in separate accounts to protect it in case the company fails. MF Global apparently failed to do so. Congress, regulators and criminal investigators are looking into the case.

Those investigations, still in their early stages, will likely yield clearer answers about how client money came to be misused. For now, it remains a mystery.

“I think it was unrealistic for Congress to expect substantive answers to these questions, because no one is that naive,” Frenkel said. “That’s why these investigations are ongoing _ to figure out what happened to the money and who is responsible.”

Some of the lawmakers who questioned Corzine appeared to agree.

“If you did anything wrong, the criminal investigators will find that; I won’t,” said Massachusetts Rep. Michael Capuano, the top Democrat on the panel Corzine faced Thursday.

Corzine was careful to testify that he never “intended” for client money to be misused. That’s because intent is a key requirement of criminal prosecution, Frenkel said.

“If someone intended to violate (rules requiring the separation of client accounts), then the conduct is criminal,” he said. “If it was unintentional, we are only in the zone of civil enforcement, if that.”

If Corzine or others at MF Global are found guilty of civil violations, they might have to pay financial penalties.

One regulator raised the possibility Thursday that crimes were committed. As a primary dealer, MF Global made trades with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. As the firm’s finances worsened in its final weeks, the New York Fed required MF Global to put aside more money to cover the Fed’s losses in case the firm failed.

New York Fed General Counsel Thomas Baxter testified that MF Global gave “express representation in writing” that the money it put up was not from client accounts.

“If that representation turns out to be false, a federal criminal offense has been committed,” Baxter said.

Michael Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland School of Law and a former regulator, said the hearings resolved none of the questions surrounding MF Global’s failure.

“Regulators’ enforcement divisions and the Justice Department will work together because if the money is missing, somebody did something wrong,” Greenberger said.

And given the damage done by MF Global’s failure, there’s little Corzine can do to revive his public image, said Michael Robinson, a former SEC official who now works in crisis communications.

“Unless Jon Corzine can look under the mattress in his house and find $1.2 billion to give back to customers, his reputation is beyond repair,” Robinson said.

He noted that Corzine spent a career branding himself as an effective manager. Corzine rose from the trading floor of Goldman Sachs to become the investment bank’s co-chairman. He then ran successfully for the U.S. senate and one term as governor of New Jersey. Corzine joined MF Global shortly after losing his bid for a second term.

Now, to protect himself legally, Corzine must avoid being precise about what occurred at the firm he led until last month. That’s why many legal experts had expected Corzine to invoke his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. He never did.

Much of Corzine’s testimony Thursday involved an allegation that he knew about customer money that may have been transferred to a European affiliate just before MF Global collapsed.

“I did not instruct anyone to lend customer funds to MF Global or any of its affiliates,” Corzine told a House panel. He also said he didn’t know about “the use of customer funds on any loan or transfer.”

It was his first public appearance since Terrence Duffy, CME Group Inc.’s executive chairman, alleged Tuesday that he might have known about the $175 million transfer. MF Global traded on exchanges managed by CME Group.

According to Duffy, an MF Global employee told a CME auditor that “Mr. Corzine was aware” of the earlier transfer. Duffy said he referred the matter to the Justice Department and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The transaction Duffy described wasn’t necessarily illegal. Brokers such as MF Global are allowed to borrow from customer accounts temporarily in some circumstances _ to reduce their own risk, for example.

But such cases are a narrow exception. A firm couldn’t use customer money to pay trading partners if its speculative trades lost value. Even in cases where borrowing clients’ money was legal, the firm would have to replace it with a safe, cash-like investment such as a U.S. Treasury security.

Corzine also was questioned about whether he used his relationships with regulators to gain advantages for MF Global.

Corzine has been a major fundraiser for Democrats. He was co-chairman of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. In that role, he worked with two other Goldman executives at the time: Gary Gensler, now chairman of the CFTC, and William Dudley, now president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Gensler has recused himself from the investigation because of his long history with Corzine. Along with other Wall Street executives, Corzine lobbied Gensler and his staff last summer against a possible CFTC rule that would limited how their firms can invest clients’ money. Afterward, the CFTC delayed adopting the rule until earlier this month.

Early this year, the Federal Reserve allowed MF Global to join an elite group of 22 dealers that help the government sell Treasury securities. The Fed did not assess MF Global to see if it was taking on too much risk. Instead, Fed officials relied on oversight by the CFTC, the SEC and others.

The role of primary dealer conferred on MF Global a seal of financial strength. It gave the firm a competitive edge and likely lowered the interest it was charged to borrow, experts said.

Asked whether he received privileged treatment from the regulators because of his connections, Corzine said, “We didn’t ask for special treatment” from the Fed.

And he said, “I do not believe we were given special treatment” from the CFTC regarding the rule to limit firms’ investments of customer funds.

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J.M. Smucker Co. said Thursday its fiscal second-quarter net income fell 15 percent as the food maker’s ingredient costs increased.

The maker of Folger’s coffee, Jif peanut butter and its namesake spreads, like most of its food maker peers, has raised prices to offset soaring costs for ingredients. But companies face a tricky balance between covering costs and not alienating consumers with higher prices. Smucker’s total volume fell 1 percent during the quarter.

Meanwhile, the company’s cost for goods such as oil, flour, milk and peanuts rose 30 percent.

“We are effectively managing this period of significant cost inflation,” said CEO Richard Smucker in a statement. Raising prices on products helped the company grow revenue 18 percent.

Orville, Ohio-based J.M. Smucker earned $127.2 million, or $1.12 per share, from August through October. That compares with $149.7 million, or $1.25 per share, in the same quarter last year.

Excluding one-time items, net income totaled $1.29 per share. That fell short of analyst expectations of $1.39 per share, according to FactSet.

Revenue rose to $1.51 billion from $1.28 billion last year. Analysts expected $1.5 billion.

Shoppers bought more items such as Pillsbury baking mixes and Jif peanut butter, but sales of non-branded drinks, Crisco oils, Folgers coffee and Pillsbury flour fell.

Ingredient costs, particularly for green coffee and peanuts, are expected to remain high for the rest of the year, and the company plans further price increases through April, the end of its fiscal year

Coffee has been an increasing focus for J.M. Smucker. It announced in October that it was buying a chunk of Sara Lee Corp.’s North American coffee and tea foodservice operations for $350 million. The two companies also announced plans at the time for a long-term partnership to work on a new liquid coffee drink.

On Thursday, J.M. Smucker also lowered its full year guidance due to costs related to issuing $750 million in long-term debt in October.

It now expects earnings, excluding restructuring, merger and integration costs and other one-time items, to be $4.90 to $5, from a prior range of $5 to $5.15 per share. Analysts expect net income of $5.11 per share.

The news came as J.M. Smucker said it is recalling 3,000 16-ounce jars of its Smucker’s Natural Peanut Butter Chunky from stores in several states because of possible salmonella contamination.

Another 16,000 jars included in the recall never left warehouses.

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One of the St. Louis area’s leading medical practices for urologists owes more than $338,000 in delinquent property taxes, interest and penalties, St. Louis County records show. 

Five years ago, Metropolitan Urological Specialists announced its plan to invest about $15 million in three outpatient centers, including a sexual medicine clinic, and to take on additional urologists as private physician shareholders. The firm, which is based in Chesterfield, also planned to invest heavily in laboratory and imaging equipment.

Dunard Morris, the medical firm’s former chief executive, said at the time that Metropolitan’s expansion would help meet the growing needs of the baby boomer generation. A large proportion of the firm’s business involves Medicare patients. Morris recently left the firm for unknown reasons. 

But the firm, which still lists 14 physicians on its website, now struggles to pay its taxes. The county has sought to collect the back taxes by filing liens on the firm’s property.

The medical firm’s affiliate, Metropolitan Urological Properties LLC, owes state and local tax authorities $338,224 in delinquent taxes, interest and penalties from 2009 and 2010 on its medical office buildings at 10296 Big Bend Boulevard in Crestwood and at 215 Dunn Road in Florissant, according to St. Louis County Department of Revenue.

Metropolitan Urological Properties also owes state and local property taxes for 2011 totaling $172,652 on those two parcels and improvements to those sites. That amount is due by Dec. 31, and becomes delinquent if not paid or postmarked before Jan. 1, 2012 faxless payday loans.

If the firm’s 2009 tax bill remains unpaid on its medical office complex in Crestwood, whose market value has been appraised at $4.9 million, county authorities are prepared to auction the property next August.

It is unclear when exactly Metropolitan started falling behind on its taxes or what specifically may have caused any related financial troubles. As shareholders, Metropolitan’s physicians could be on the hook if the firm defaults on any of its financial obligations.   

Metropolitan’s property affiliate was able to pay a $29,481 tax bill on its Dunn Road parcel for 2009, but not a larger tax bill on its Big Bend parcel for that year. It did not pay its 2010 tax bills on either parcel.

Bob Lawson, the medical firm’s newly hired interim chief executive, did not return calls requesting comment. Several doctors affiliated with Metropolitan Urological Specialists also did not return phone calls.

Morris, who left the medical practice this fall, returned phone calls placed to one of his residences by leaving a voicemail message that said he was “out of state,” without saying exactly where.

“I have a lot to tell regarding health care and other things. I won’t talk with you if you run your story,” Morris said in the voicemail message. “I got sick of what I see in health care, and specifically in our group. And it’s a much wider story than me or anyone else.”

 

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Stock indexes are edging higher in early trading ahead of a key confidence vote in Italy that is the next step in Europe’s unfolding debt crisis.

Italian bond yields have spiked this week, a sign that markets are questioning the country’s ability to pay its debts. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s main coalition ally urged him to step aside Tuesday ahead of a vote that could force his resignation. Many investors believe a new government would enact additional austerity measures that could help Italy cut its massive debt burden payday loans lenders.

The Dow Jones industrial average was up 30 points, or 0.2 percent, to 12,097 five minutes after the market opened. The S&P 500 rose 4, or 0.3 percent, to 1,265. The Nasdaq composite gained 16, or 0.6 percent, to 2,712.

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Embattled Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou is preparing to start talks to try to form a four-month coalition government, aimed at securing continued rescue funds for the near-bankrupt eurozone country.

Papandreou is due to meet President Karolos Papoulias at noon (1000GMT) Saturday, hours after winning a confidence vote in the Socialist-led parliament on a pledge that he was willing to step aside and form a cross-party caretaker government.

But it remains unclear whether the main opposition conservatives and other parties will take part in the talks and abandon their demand for a snap general election.

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