MyPillow is facing a court-ordered eviction from a Shakopee warehouse after the property’s landlord showed the company owes more than $200,000 in rent.
Judge evicting MyPillow from a Shakopee warehouse over unpaid rent
Landlord says Mike Lindell’s Chaska-based pillow company has failed to pay more than $200,000 in rent the past two months.
The Minnesota Star Tribune
March 26, 2024 at 4:52PM
A Scott County judge on Tuesday said she will approve the landlord’s request to vacate the property after at least four default notices were sent to the Minnesota-based pillow maker over the last six months.
The latest eviction notice says the company, headquartered in Chaska, is behind in payments for February and March, owing Delaware-based First Industrial LP more than $217,000 for rent and other charges for the facility located at 4701 Valley Blvd. S.
“MyPillow has more or less vacated but we’d like to do this by the book,” attorney Sara Filo, representing First Industrial, said in a hearing in eviction court Tuesday. “At this point there’s a representation that no further payment is going to be made under this lease, so we’d like to go ahead with finding a new tenant.”
Chief Judge Caroline Lennon in Scott County said the court would issue the order as soon as it’s submitted. MyPillow is still leasing a second manufacturing warehouse and outlet location in Shakopee.
The eviction is the latest in a string of financial woes for the company and its controversial CEO, Mike Lindell, who has said he’s been drained personally and professionally since he became a national figure spreading debunked claims of widespread election fraud in the 2020 presidential race.
Neither Lindell nor lawyers for landlord First Industrial returned a request for comment, and no representative for MyPillow appeared in court Tuesday.
Lindell claims his company lost $100 million in revenue after shopping networks and big-box retailers dropped his products. American Express has tightened MyPillow’s credit, according to Lindell, and last year the company auctioned off thousands of pieces of equipment and started subleasing manufacturing space as business declined.
In January, Fox News stopped running MyPillow commercials in a payment dispute. A federal judge last month ordered Lindell to pay $5 million plus interest in an arbitration award to a software engineer who challenged data that Lindell said proves China interfered in the 2020 election. Lindell has said he’s appealing that decision.
He’s still battling lawsuits in state and federal court over his election fraud claims that threaten to bankrupt him.
The largest lawsuit facing Lindell and MyPillow, a $1.3 billion defamation claim from voting machine company Dominion, has entered the discovery phase. Confidential documents and testimony will be produced over the next several months ahead of a trial, which may not begin until next year at the earliest.
A second voting machine company, Smartmatic, is also suing Lindell and his company for defamation. That case remains at a standstill ahead of a court deadline set for Monday.
In a third defamation case brought by former Dominion employee Eric Coomer, Lindell is asking the judge to dismiss the case and argues that Coomer “cannot prove with clear and convincing evidence that defendants’ statements at issue are false or that such statements were made with actual malice.” Coomer has said his life has been threatened due to statements Lindell made about the 2020 election.
After Lindell’s Minneapolis-based law firm, Parker Daniels Kibort, withdrew from the federal cases over millions in unpaid fees last year, attorneys from McSweeney, Cynkar & Kachouroff in Virginia joined each case.
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