Appeals Court denies Weavers’ emergency stay

Sixth Circuit refuses to pause receiver’s authority to investigate Grant Sidney in the Uncle Nearest case

5:50 p.m. July 2, 2026

DUANE CROSS
MCO Publisher•Editor

A federal appeals court has refused to pause the expansion of the Uncle Nearest receivership to a company owned by Fawn Weaver, leaving receiver Phillip G. Young Jr. with authority to investigate Grant Sidney Inc. while the appeal continues.

The ruling, filed Thursday, July 2, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, does not decide the larger fight over Uncle Nearest, its assets, or Farm Credit Mid-America’s claim that it is owed more than $108 million.

But it does keep the current receivership structure in place.

For now, Young may continue looking into whether Grant Sidney holds assets that belong to Uncle Nearest or any other company already under receivership. He cannot sell, transfer, pledge, or otherwise burden Grant Sidney’s assets without further approval from the district court.

That distinction sits at the center of Thursday’s order.

The Weavers and Grant Sidney asked the Sixth Circuit to stop two things while they appealed: the district court’s decision to expand the receivership to Grant Sidney and the court’s handling of public notice, bidding, and a hearing tied to the planned sale of a Martha’s Vineyard property.

The Sixth Circuit denied both requests.

“We deny the motion for interim stay relief,” the three-judge panel wrote.

The panel included Judges Norris, Nalbandian, and Hermandorfer.

What the ruling means

The decision is not a final ruling on the appeal. It is not a final ruling on Farm Credit’s claims. And it is not a final accounting of Uncle Nearest’s assets.

It is a ruling on whether the Weavers and Grant Sidney were entitled to emergency relief while the appeal moves forward.

The Sixth Circuit said they were not.

To win a stay pending appeal, a party must show several things, including a strong likelihood of success and a risk of irreparable harm without a stay. The appeals court said the likelihood-of-success question drove the decision here.

The panel found problems at nearly every level of the request: the Martha’s Vineyard sale-preparation order was not listed in the notice of appeal, the request to stay the receivership expansion had not first been presented to the district court, and the Weavers and Grant Sidney had not made a strong showing that the district court likely abused its discretion by bringing Grant Sidney under the receiver’s authority.

In plain English: The appeals court was not convinced this was the time, or the right legal posture, to stop the lower court’s order.

The fight behind the appeal

The case stems from Farm Credit Mid-America’s breach-of-contract lawsuit against Uncle Nearest and the Weavers.

According to the Sixth Circuit order, the Weavers founded Uncle Nearest in 2016 as a spirits company named for the first known African American master distiller. The brand grew rapidly, helped in part by multiple loans from Farm Credit beginning in 2022.

By the start of 2024, however, Uncle Nearest was having trouble paying its bills, the court said. Farm Credit renegotiated the lending arrangement more than once. When payments still were not made, Farm Credit sued, saying it was owed more than $108 million and asking for a receiver to protect its collateral.

Farm Credit said it holds a security interest in almost all of Uncle Nearest’s property.

The district court granted the receivership request and appointed Young.

The receivership initially covered Uncle Nearest Inc., Nearest Green Distillery Inc., Uncle Nearest Real Estate Holdings LLC, and several closely related entities, including Domaine D’Anatole, UNAH Inc., S1 Organic Vodka LLC, UN House MV LLC, Uncle Nearest Ventures LLC, and the Nearest Green Historical Preservation & Culture Fund.

Among the property tied to the receivership was a house on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., that the Weavers had purchased for corporate events.

After he was appointed, Young asked the district court to clarify whether the receivership should reach other apparently related entities. Those included Grant Sidney, which the Sixth Circuit described as a company owned by Fawn Weaver and Uncle Nearest’s largest shareholder.

The district court later treated Young’s request as a motion to expand the receivership. It granted that request only as to Grant Sidney.

Bankruptcy filings did not stop the case

The order also describes a bankruptcy effort that unfolded while the receivership fight was underway.

According to the Sixth Circuit, Fawn Weaver filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy petitions on behalf of Uncle Nearest, Inc., Nearest Green Distillery Inc., and Uncle Nearest Real Estate Holdings LLC. Young did not know about those filings at the time, the court said.

The bankruptcy court quickly dismissed the cases, finding that the receivership order had stripped Fawn Weaver of authority to initiate legal action in Uncle Nearest’s name.

Appeals from those dismissals remain pending in district court.

Meanwhile, the district court continued to move on Young’s request involving the Martha’s Vineyard property. The court directed Young to publish notice of the proposed sale, accept bids, and appear for a hearing. That hearing was held June 11.

Separately, the district court expanded the receivership to Grant Sidney and denied the Weavers’ effort to undo Young’s appointment in the order now before the Sixth Circuit.

That led to the appeal and the emergency stay request decided Thursday.

Sale issue missed the mark

The Sixth Circuit first addressed the Martha’s Vineyard sale-preparation order.

The Weavers and Grant Sidney wanted the appeals court to stay that order. But the panel said there was a basic problem: They had not actually appealed it.

Their notice of appeal identified the district court order expanding the receivership. It did not identify the separate sale-preparation order entered two weeks earlier.

Appeals courts generally review the orders listed in a notice of appeal. Because the sale-preparation order was not listed, and because the appellants offered no other basis for jurisdiction, the Sixth Circuit said it appeared to lack power to review that order.

That was enough to defeat the stay request tied to the Martha’s Vineyard sale preparations.

The appeals court also noted that on June 15, the district court entered a separate order approving the sale of the Martha’s Vineyard property but barred Young from disbursing any proceeds to Farm Credit while the underlying breach-of-contract claims remain pending.

On July 1, the Weavers and Grant Sidney filed a separate motion in district court seeking to stay that sale order while they pursue reconsideration and any appeal.

Receivership challenge also falls short

The appeals court then turned to Grant Sidney.

Here, too, the Sixth Circuit said the Weavers and Grant Sidney had problems before the court even reached the heart of the dispute.

Under federal appellate rules, parties usually must first ask the district court for a stay before asking the appeals court to step in. The Weavers and Grant Sidney argued that going back to the district court would have been impractical.

They pointed to pending motions in the bankruptcy cases, the district court’s delay in addressing earlier receivership concerns, and a receiver’s notice that a confidential buyer had signed a non-binding letter of intent to purchase Uncle Nearest assets, with a formal agreement expected sometime in mid-July.

The Sixth Circuit was not persuaded.

The bankruptcy motions, the court said, related to the Martha’s Vineyard sale-preparation order, not the Grant Sidney expansion. The panel also said the appellants mischaracterized an earlier fight over proprietary information as if it were a prior request to stay the receivership expansion.

Just as important, the appeals court said the district court had already built a guardrail into the expansion order: Young must seek court approval before taking action to sell, transfer, pledge, or otherwise encumber Grant Sidney’s assets.

So if the receiver seeks that kind of action, the Weavers and Grant Sidney can object first in the district court.

A question of appeal power

The Sixth Circuit also raised a larger question: whether it has authority to review this kind of receivership order right now.

Federal law allows immediate appeals of some receivership orders, including orders appointing receivers or refusing to wind up receiverships. But the panel noted that ordinary midstream orders entered during a receivership are often not immediately appealable.

That creates a problem for the Weavers and Grant Sidney because they were not asking the appeals court to halt the entire receivership. They were asking only to pause the portion that extended the receivership to Grant Sidney.

“To the extent appellants seek review only of a mid-stream order expanding the receivership, rather than an appointment or refusal to wind-up the receivership, this Court may lack jurisdiction to entertain their request,” the panel wrote.

Even setting that issue aside, the court said, the stay request still failed.

Why the district court pulled in Grant Sidney

The heart of the order is why the district court pulled Grant Sidney into the receivership.

The lower court gave three reasons.

First, the district court found that Fawn Weaver previously used Grant Sidney to help shelter funds from Farm Credit.

According to the Sixth Circuit order, Uncle Nearest sold $20 million in convertible promissory notes to MP-Tenn LLC while the company was struggling to repay Farm Credit. Fawn Weaver opened a new Uncle Nearest account for the sole purpose of receiving those proceeds, then immediately transferred the money to an account controlled by Grant Sidney.

She testified that she moved the money out of Uncle Nearest’s control so Farm Credit could not “snatch” it.

The district court acknowledged that the $20 million eventually went to Uncle Nearest or its vendors. It also acknowledged that Fawn Weaver did not commingle Uncle Nearest funds with Grant Sidney funds.

Still, the district court concluded that Grant Sidney had been used as part of a “scheme to hide and misrepresent the source of the $20 million.”

Second, the district court pointed to a 2021 transaction involving LS Cream Liqueur.

The court said Fawn Weaver transferred money from Uncle Nearest to herself and then to Grant Sidney to facilitate a $150,000 investment in LS Cream Liqueur. Fawn Weaver claimed Uncle Nearest owed her that money, but the district court said she offered no proof beyond her own word.

The district court rejected that explanation after finding she was not a credible witness during the proceedings.

Third, the district court cited concerns about Grant Sidney’s financial transparency.

Grant Sidney had agreed to provide Young with all bank statements from the previous five years. After Grant Sidney said it had complied, two more bank accounts came to light.

Fawn Weaver said she had forgotten about them.

The district court was not satisfied with that answer, saying there could be other forgotten accounts “lurking in the shadows.”

Taken together, the district court found those facts justified expanding the receivership to Grant Sidney to prevent assets related to Uncle Nearest from being improperly dissipated.

Appeals court gives district judge room

The Sixth Circuit said the Weavers and Grant Sidney had not shown they were likely to prove the district court abused its discretion.

That is a difficult standard.

An appeals court does not simply ask whether it would have made the same decision. It asks whether the district court relied on clearly wrong facts, used the wrong legal standard, misapplied the law, or made a clear error of judgment.

The Sixth Circuit said the role of a receiver is to safeguard disputed assets, administer property when needed, and help the court reach a fair distribution of assets if necessary.

Given the record, the panel said those goals reasonably supported expanding the receivership to include an entity Fawn Weaver had used to move or shelter funds connected to Uncle Nearest.

The court also said Grant Sidney’s financial transparency issues supported the district court’s view that lesser remedies would not be enough.

The Weavers and Grant Sidney disputed the district court’s reading of the MP-Tenn transaction and its assessment of Fawn Weaver’s credibility. But the Sixth Circuit said appeals courts owe deference to district courts on factual findings and credibility determinations.

“In all, appellants have not carried their burden to show that it was likely an abuse of discretion for the district court to expand the receivership to Grant Sidney,” the panel wrote.

For now, the receiver’s reach into Grant Sidney remains intact – and the larger fight over Uncle Nearest’s assets moves forward without the pause the Weavers sought.