
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 22, 1991                   TAG: 9102220178
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: GEORGE KEGLEY BUSINESS EDITOR
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BANK CAN REPOSSESS EQUIPMENT AT HARTMAN

Dominion Bank has won Bankruptcy Court approval to repossess computer equipment at Jack L. Hartman & Co. of Roanoke to satisfy a lien of about $800,000. But the bank had not acted as of Thursday.

The bank is seeking a way for owner Jack Hartman to get investor backing and come back into the business or to find a buyer for the company, said Richard Maxwell, an attorney for Dominion.

The company is open and the business is operating in reorganization under Don Huffman, bankruptcy trustee, Maxwell said.

Bankruptcy Judge Ross Krumm, at a hearing in Staunton on Wednesday, gave the bank the right to take the computer company's equipment.

The bank can sell the equipment "but it is still looking to maximize recovery," Maxwell said. Settling such a case piecemeal is not the best solution, he added.

Krumm is expected to issue similar rulings to allow Transamerica Corp. and Crestar Bank, two other creditors, to recover assets they had financed at Hartman, according to Sara Austin, his law clerk in Harrisonburg. Transamerica had repossessed about $200,000 worth of material before the company entered reorganization last fall.

Hartman reported debt of $1.5 million and assets of $1 million last fall. His Dominion debt originally was $1.1 million but some payments have been made.

Hartman, a major Roanoke Valley computer dealer for more than 25 years, told a Bankruptcy Court hearing that he filed for reorganization in September because sales were slow and he was behind on payments to a major creditor.

by CNB