The company that holds the Palm Restaurant steakhouse’s trademarks filed for bankruptcy hoping to negotiate a settlement over disputed royalty payments among descendants of the 93-year-old chain’s founders, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. Just One More Restaurant Corp., which licenses the Palm name to more than 20 restaurants in the U.S. and Mexico, entered chapter 11 protection on Thursday in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Fort Myers, Fla. The bankruptcy stems from a $120 million judgment issued by a New York court in January in favor of the company’s minority shareholders, who accused its majority owners of exploiting the business to benefit Palm-branded restaurants they owned. The company’s chief restructuring officer Gerard McHale said in court papers the judgment belongs to Just One More Restaurant, not the minority owners. Filing for chapter 11 prevents the plaintiffs from enforcing the judgment against the 80 percent majority owners Bruce Bozzi and Walter Ganzi, McHale said. There are two dozen Palm restaurants in operation, most of which are co-owned by Messrs. Bozzi and Ganzi and pay a $6,000 annual fee a restaurant for using Palm trademarks including the restaurant name and its décor, photograph displays, artistic caricatures and sketches. The minority shareholders — the cousins of Walter Ganzi — said in their lawsuit that those restaurants were paying less than market rates to license the trademarks, depriving Just One More Restaurant of revenue it was entitled to. A New York appeals court was scheduled to hear arguments March 11 on enforcing the judgment.
