“What we saw as an opportunity here is if you could use technology, bring the point of production a little bit closer to the end consumer, you could actually pay people a decent wage, you could build a company that investors and consumers would be proud of, but you just have better produce,” he said. 1, 2021, plugging its stock the day it went public in a business combination with Novus Capital, a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. He was among a roster of celebrities, including media mogul Martha Stewart, who got behind AppHarvest early on, and he spoke positively about the company on Fox Business News on Feb. Vance’s level of involvement in the company while he was a director is unclear. And for good reason: markets are complex, and financial predictions made months or even a year into the future - particularly for a young, public company like AppHarvest - are always uncertain.” “Those laws and relevant pleading standards, however, prohibit pleading fraud-by-hindsight. District Court for the Southern District of New York in a filing last month. “This case is a textbook example of a plaintiff trying to spin a company’s reduction of its annual revenue guidance into a violation of the federal securities laws,” they told the U.S. The litigation variously seeks undetermined monetary damages, governance reform and greater transparency at AppHarvest and, in two cases, jury trials. The lawsuits, which allege misstatements going back to January 2021, contend the training AppHarvest provided to workers was “a joke,” that its workforce “suffered massive attrition, churn and COVID-19-related absences that negatively affected productivity” and that its first harvest last year was “ravaged by operational issues” and 50% was wasted. “AppHarvest will change that, and it will do so by building a sustainable, durable business in Appalachia, and investing in the people who call it home.” “The last few months have taught us that our food system is a little more precarious than we realized,” Vance said in an August 2020 article in Greenhouse Grower. Spokesperson Taylor Van Kirk also emphasized that the actions were all filed after Vance left the board. Vance’s campaign said his Cincinnati-based firm, Narya Capital, is itself an investor in AppHarvest and would suffer if the lawsuits’ allegations were true. He left AppHarvest in April 2021 ahead of announcing his Senate campaign. Senate seat in Ohio, is not named in any of the suits. Vance, the Republican nominee for a critical U.S. Vance’s campaign said he was unaware of those ties.ĪppHarvest said the lawsuits are baseless. In a region that has been devastated by opioid addiction, for instance, he has faced criticism for launching an anti-drug charity that enlisted a doctor with ties to a major pharmaceutical company. Some of those efforts have already come under scrutiny. The suits could raise additional questions, though, about one of the central narratives of Vance’s campaign: that the “Hillbilly Elegy” author left behind a lucrative business career in San Francisco’s tech world to focus on revitalizing his native Appalachia. ![]() Ohio teachers also lost more than $100,000 in retirement savings in AppHarvest’s decline before the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio sold its 16,000 shares in June. Since last year, equity incentive and stock purchase plans that Vance and other AppHarvest directors set up for the company’s mostly Appalachian workforce have lost hundreds of millions of dollars in value. Lawsuits of this kind were not unexpected as the newly public AppHarvest’s stock price plummeted. The suits also argue that investors were misled by press releases, analyst presentations and other public statements, including an interview the company’s chief executive gave to The Associated Press touting a hiring spree. Securities and Exchange Commission filings that investors use to evaluate companies. ![]() ![]() Senate nominee - also briefly sat on the board, repeatedly overstated its hiring and retention figures, including in U.S. They allege the agricultural startup, where Vance - who is Ohio’s Republican U.S. The shareholder suits against Morehead, Kentucky-based AppHarvest were filed between November 2021 and August 2022 by individual investors and a county retirement association. COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - A high-tech indoor farming company in Appalachia promoted by JD Vance and financed in part by his venture capital firm is facing five lawsuits alleging it misled regulators and duped investors.
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