The Non-Financial Ledger: What a Debt Dispute Actually Costs Real People

Before we get into the courtroom mechanics, let’s talk about what this case actually looks like in human terms.

Commercial Resources, Inc., was not a bank. It was not a hedge fund. It was a company formed in the year 2000 by Doug Montague and his father to invest their retirement funds. Their retirement funds. The money they were counting on to live on after decades of work. When Radco stopped paying in 2015, and when Dynasty refused to honor the debt it arguably assumed in 2016, Montague and his father were not just watching an abstract corporate liability figure climb. They were watching the clock run on their own financial security.

Montague went so far as to become Radco’s CFO in July 2015, at the same time he was still owed money as a lender, while also serving as Stewart Dubose’s personal attorney. That is not a man with institutional distance from the problem. That is a man trying every angle he could think of to hold together a situation that was already unraveling. He stepped down as CFO in December 2015 after John Dubose Sr. allegedly walked into Montague’s law office, threatened him, and physically took the corporate checkbook and Stewart’s signature stamp. That moment is not in a lawsuit abstract. That is a confrontation between a father and the people his son had trusted to run the family business.

Stewart Dubose sold his own swabbing business to take over Radco from his father in 2004. He spent years growing it, signing mortgages, filing tax returns, stamping corporate checks with his signature. Then his father took it all back in late 2015. Stewart filed a lawsuit against his own father in June 2016. Then he settled that lawsuit, in part because Dynasty promised to release him from the personal guarantees he had signed on Radco’s debts. That release never happened. Dynasty bought the company in November 2016, moved all the employees onto its own payroll the next day, foreclosed on Radco’s building, and kept operating the same services out of the same location. Radco ceased to exist as a functioning business. Stewart was left holding personal liability for debts he had been promised would be taken off his hands.

By the time the jury came back with its verdict in April 2022, more than six years had passed since Commercial Resources last received a payment. More than five years had passed since the lawsuit was filed. The Mississippi Supreme Court handed down its final affirmation in March 2025. That is nearly a decade from the last payment to the end of the road in court. For a pair of retirees trying to recover money they lent from their retirement savings, that timeline is not an abstraction. It is the length of a significant portion of a person’s retirement years, spent in litigation instead of peace.

The legal system ultimately sided with Montague and Commercial Resources. But “ultimately” is doing a lot of work in that sentence. “Ultimately” means years of discovery fights, counterclaims accusing them of fraud and filing a harassment lawsuit, post-trial motions, and a trip to the state Supreme Court. The money was real to begin with. The cost of getting it back was also real.

Legal Receipts: What the Documents Actually Say

The court record in this case contains verbatim contractual language and judicial findings that are more damning than any summary. Here is exactly what was said and what it proves.

Dynasty’s Letter of Intent: The Promise They Made

“Assume and be responsible for timely paying and satisfying, or causing the company to timely pay and satisfy, all indebtedness, accrued liability and expenses of ongoing litigation of the Company outstanding as of the closing” and that “Stewart F. Dubose will be released of all personal guarantees as related to Radco business.”
— Dynasty Energy Services Letter of Intent, August 16, 2016

Purchase Agreement Section 2.1: The Escape Clause They Tried to Use

“Subject to the terms of Section 8.7 of this Agreement, Purchaser does not and shall not assume or in any way undertake to pay, perform, satisfy or discharge any obligation, liability or contractual commitment of any type or kind of Seller or the Company.”
— Dynasty Energy Services Purchase Agreement, Section 2.1, November 28, 2016

Purchase Agreement Section 8.7: The Clause That Swallowed the Defense

“In consideration hereof, Purchaser hereby agrees that within thirty (30) days after the Closing, it shall cause the Company to use reasonable efforts to seek to obtain the release of Stewart F. DuBose and the Seller from all personal guarantees of the obligations of the Company listed on Schedule 4.1 (cc) (the ‘DuBose Guarantees’). In the event the Company is unable to obtain the release of Stewart F. DuBose or Seller from any or all of the DuBose Guarantees, the Company shall indemnify Stewart F. DuBose and Seller for any amounts he is obligated to pay under the DuBose Guarantees… Seller hereby acknowledges and agrees that neither Purchaser nor the Company shall have any obligation to obtain the release of, or to indemnify, either Stewart F. DuBose or the Seller from any personal guarantees that are not listed in Schedule 4.1 (cc).”
— Dynasty Energy Services Purchase Agreement, Section 8.7, November 28, 2016

The Trial Court’s Finding on Ratification

“The shareholders ratified the actions of Stewart DuBose in entering into [the] loan arrangement with Commercial Resources.”
— Hon. Dal Williamson, Trial Court Ruling

The Jury Verdict Alteration

“Allowing the jury’s verdict of $0 damages against Radco and $0 damages against Stewart Dubose to stand would amount to clear error of law in disregard of the Court’s Instruction to the jury to award a judgment against Radco and against Stewart Dubose for the amount of unpaid principal and unpaid interest. It is abundantly clear from the evidence that Radco and Stewart Dubose remain indebted to Commercial Resources for the unpaid principal and unpaid interest under the Accounts Receivable Line of Credit. Any judgment to the contrary would constitute manifest injustice.”
— Hon. Dal Williamson, Order Altering Judgment, February 28, 2023

Societal Impact Mapping: The Broader Damage

Public Health of Small Business Lending

This case documents specific, concrete damage to the informal lending ecosystem that small oil-field service companies depend on when traditional banks won’t serve them at competitive rates.

• Commercial Resources was explicitly formed to deploy retirement savings as private capital into small business financing. When Radco and Dynasty refused to pay, the direct harm fell on two retirees’ financial security. This is the exact segment of the population least able to absorb a multi-year legal battle to recover funds.
• The interest rate structure — 1 percent per month on a $200,000 to $300,000 line of credit — is steep but reflects the risk premium of private lending to thinly capitalized oil-field companies. The debt ballooned to $448,528.60 in principal and interest because the original loan was never repaid, not because of predatory compounding on a small balance.
• Montague had to become Radco’s CFO, personally step inside the company he was owed money by, in order to have any hope of overseeing repayment. That is not a healthy lending relationship. That is a creditor being forced to manage their own collateral because the borrower’s internal governance had collapsed into a family conflict.
• The roughly nine-year span from last payment (June 2015) to final Supreme Court ruling (March 2025) illustrates the real cost of litigation as a collection mechanism for small private lenders. The attorneys’ fees alone — $215,086.16 — represent nearly half the original outstanding debt, suggesting that winning in court is only marginally better than losing.

Economic Inequality: How Corporate Structure Is Used to Dodge Debts

The Dynasty acquisition of Radco is a textbook example of how asset purchases can be structured to absorb the profitable parts of a failing company while attempting to leave the liabilities behind for the people who can least afford them.

• Dynasty bought all the stock and assets of Radco, foreclosed on Radco’s building, moved every employee to Dynasty’s payroll the day after the purchase, and continued offering the same services from the same location. Radco ceased all operations. The only person left at Radco was Brad Cohen, Dynasty’s manager, appointed president of Radco “presumably for the purpose of wrapping up affairs.” The functional company was absorbed. The shell was left to handle the debts.
• The Supreme Court itself cited a 1912 Mississippi case that states the law: “Neither law nor equity will permit one corporation to take all the property of another, deprive it of the means of paying its debts, enable it to dissolve its corporate existence and place itself practically beyond the reach of creditors, without assuming its liabilities.” Dynasty’s transaction matched this pattern precisely.
• Stewart Dubose, the individual who signed personal guarantees on Radco’s debts, settled his lawsuit against his father in part because Dynasty promised to release him from those guarantees. That promise was never honored. Stewart wound up jointly liable for $448,528.60 and $215,086.16 in attorneys’ fees — a total of $663,614.76 — despite having been out of Radco since December 2015, nearly seven years before the jury verdict.
• Dynasty deployed a legal strategy of filing more than 30 affirmative defenses, then doing nothing to pursue any of them for 21 months. This forced the opposing party to spend time and money litigating the existence and validity of those defenses before the court ultimately wiped them all out. The Supreme Court called this the “everything but the kitchen sink” approach. It is a well-documented litigation tactic used to exhaust smaller parties with fewer legal resources.
• The two contradictory versions of Schedule 4.1(cc) — one listing the Commercial Resources debt, one not — represent either a clerical error or an attempt to create contractual ambiguity that could be exploited in court. The Supreme Court found the contract ambiguous and let a jury decide. The jury decided Dynasty knew about the debt and chose to assume it. Dynasty’s own manager, Brad Cohen, admitted at trial that Commercial Resources was “a disclosed known creditor of Radco” at the time of purchase.

The Cost of a Life: Translating the Numbers

What Now: Who Is Still on the Hook and What You Can Do

The judgment is affirmed and carries interest at 1 percent per month until paid in full. Here are the parties still liable and the bodies that govern this industry.

Parties Jointly Liable Under This Judgment

• Dynasty Energy Services, LLC: Manager Brad Cohen, appointed as the sole officer of Radco post-acquisition. Dynasty absorbed Radco’s operations, employees, and building while arguing it owed nothing on Radco’s debts.
• Radco Fishing and Rental Tools, Inc.: The original borrower. Now a dormant shell with one employee, maintained solely to wind down its legal and corporate obligations.
• Stewart F. Dubose: Personal guarantor on both the original $200,000 and expanded $300,000 credit lines. His cross-claim for indemnification against Dynasty was dismissed for procedural failures, leaving him jointly responsible for the full judgment.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Jurisdiction Over These Industries

• Mississippi Secretary of State: Oversees corporate registration, dissolution procedures, and fiduciary obligations for Mississippi LLCs and corporations. Relevant to how Radco’s shell structure was maintained post-acquisition and whether Dynasty’s wind-down of Radco complied with state law.
• Mississippi Bar Association: Doug Montague simultaneously served as Stewart Dubose’s personal attorney, as CFO of Radco, and as the representative of Commercial Resources, which held the outstanding debt. The court did not directly adjudicate this conflict of interest, but the Bar is the appropriate body to examine whether those concurrent roles violated professional responsibility rules.
• Mississippi Supreme Court’s Access to Justice Commission: This case took nearly nine years from last payment to final ruling. For private lenders without institutional legal departments, that timeline is effectively a barrier to recovery. The Commission reviews systemic issues in access to civil courts.
• Oil States Regulatory Agencies (Mississippi State Oil and Gas Board): Dynasty Energy Services operates in the oil-field services sector. The Board regulates operators and service companies in the state. If Dynasty’s financial practices affect its ability to meet ongoing operational obligations, the Board has indirect oversight interest.

Grassroots and Mutual Aid: What Ordinary People Can Do

• If you are a small business owner who provides informal credit or accounts receivable financing: Consult a contract attorney before any deal that involves ambiguous liability schedules. Two versions of Schedule 4.1(cc) in the same court record is not an accident anyone should have to litigate for nine years to resolve. Get every liability explicitly named in the final executed agreement.
• If you are an employee who was absorbed from Radco to Dynasty: Your employer absorbed a corporate judgment of over $663,000 that accrues interest at 1 percent per month until paid. That financial pressure on Dynasty Energy Services is now a matter of public court record. Know your rights if your employer faces financial instability.
• If you follow Mississippi civil court reform: Support advocacy organizations pushing to reduce the timeline for small civil debt recovery. The 21-month window Dynasty exploited by doing nothing while filing 30 defenses is a structural problem the courts themselves acknowledged but did not close.
• Share this ruling: The Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision in No. 2023-CA-00376-SCT is a public document. It establishes that a company cannot absorb all assets of a predecessor, keep the employees and the building, and then argue it never assumed the predecessor’s debts. That precedent matters. Pass it on.