GlobeSt.com EXCLUSIVE: Post Shareholder Gets Judge's OK to Study Confidential Data

The suit alleges Leventhal and other shareholders he is representing have lost "tens of millions of dollars" through alleged corporate mismanagement by Post executives. Post officials did not respond to an e-mail request by GlobeSt.com for comment on the suit. Leventhal is director of Interfinancial Properties Inc. in Marietta, GA.

Leventhal tells GlobeSt.com he has asked for the Post's internal information for the past six months. "My request for documents to be produced was initially thwarted by [Post] senior management who shrugged off the very minority shareholders as insignificants beneath their feet as they fly over us in their corporate jets," Leventhal says.

"Fortunately, there is at least some justice in that Post, through its seven lawyers who attended one hearing with me, consented to a Federal Court order to provide certain documents about the company's accounting operations," Leventhal tells GlobeSt.com. Those documents can't be disclosed by Leventhal to anyone except his lawyers, advisors, consultants and other experts hired by Leventhal, the court order states.

Leventhal's suit was triggered by Post officials' alleged refusal to answer adequately his questions at the company's May 27 annual shareholders meeting in Atlanta. At that meeting, shareholders reportedly rejected a corporate bylaws change proposed by former chairman and founder, John A. Williams. Williams wanted shareholders, and not the directors themselves, to set the pay for company directors.

"I have challenged the methodology and legitimacy by and through which Post management obtained the votes, particularly by US mail, to support the inner clique making the decisions to dole out millions upon millions of dollars of benefits that are unwarranted to the chairman and senior management," Leventhal tells GlobeSt.com.

In his lawsuit, Leventhal says he "will be addressing what I believe are moral turpitude and related clauses as affecting perks and golden parachutes for Mr. [Robert] Goddard [Post chairman], and seeking court intervention to revoke those millions of dollars in unjustified benefits obtained fraudulently to the detriment of the average shareholders."

GlobeSt.com has obtained a copy of Leventhal's suit. The complaint totals 118 pages and contains 25,488 words. The suit was initially filed in Georgia state court. Post lawyers "removed the case to the US District Court so that I could not take about 25 depositions, until the court rules on a [Post] motion to dismiss [the lawsuit]," Leventhal tells GlobeSt.com.