The legal fight between a California strawberry grower and the middleman that gets its berries to Trader Joe’s and other grocery stores is getting contentious, the Wall Street Journal reported today. Lawyers for the Santa Cruz Berry Farming Co. want a bankruptcy judge to punish the middleman, an Illinois firm called Tom Lange Co., for missing a May 28 deadline to pay $140,544. That’s how much Santa Cruz Berry said that it is owed for 10,927 boxes of berries shipped between May 17 and May 23. Santa Cruz Berry officials said they need the money to pay workers — payroll can swell to 300 people during the busiest times — to pick berries on 200 acres of land used by the Watsonville, Calif.-based farm. Owner Fritz Koontz said in court papers that, since it’s early in the harvest season, the farm doesn’t have much cash stored up.
