Ousted CertusBank execs push for jury trial

The three ousted co-founders of CertusBank want to have their day in court.

Milton Jones, Walter Davis and Angela Webb -- who have sued the Greenville, S.C., bank over their firings earlier this year -- filed a motion in court Friday stating that they don't want their case sent into arbitration. They want to help restore their reputation by having the dispute out in public.

In case you need to be caught up, CertusBank was started as a Charlotte holding company by former Bank of America and Wachovia executives. Its business plan was to buy up failed banks and cobble them together into a regional multi-billion bank. But CertusBank soon began racking up losses, and earlier this year some shareholders began questioning what they considered to be lavish expenses, including private jet flights, corporate condos.

In April, Jones, Davis and Webb were fired. They soon sued over their firings, and defended the spending as necessary for the bank and approved by its board. The former executives called letters sent by the skeptical shareholders as libelous and tinged with racism. Jones, Davis and Webb are black.

And in their court document Friday, they use some of the same language:

"Will the Court allow Certus to skulk into arbitration to escape public scrutiny of Defendants’ concerted actions in wrongfully and falsely destroying Plaintiffs’ hard earned professional reputations via racist and professional occupation defamatory statements, or will this Court allow Plaintiffs a public forum to
rehabilitate their professional reputations through the sunlight of a jury trial?"