A Rockland construction company whose owners are deeply mired in debt has been ordered to pay back more than $3.3 million to a bank.
Highbury Concrete Inc. owes the money because it failed to answer a breach of contract complaint filed eight months ago by First Insurance Funding, according to a Dec. 17 default judgement issued by U.S. District Judge Jessica G.L. Clarke.
Thomas A. Fogarty incorporated Highbury in 2013 and based it at Blue Hill Plaza, Pearl River. Fogarty, of Blauvelt, and Thomas P. Gorman, of Orangeburg, each owned 40%. Bernard Griffin, of West Nyack, owned 20%.
The business booked $189 million in 2023, according to personal bankruptcy records filed by the three men, but dropped “to very little in 2025.”
First Insurance Funding is a division of Lake Forest Bank & Trust Co., in Lake Forest, Illinois.
Highbury borrowed $3,374,046 from the bank in late 2024 and promised to repay $250,000 a month for five months and then a final $2,209,988 payment on April 15, 2025. Most of the debt was not paid, according to the First Insurance lawsuit, and as of April 21, 2025 Highbury owed $3,330,868. Since then, the default debt, including 10% interest, has grown by about $844 a day.
Though court records in the First Insurance case do not explain why Highbury’s revenues plummeted sharply from 2023 to 2025, the personal bankruptcy records offer clues.
Collectively, the three owners declared about $2.1 million in personal assets and $7.7 million in liabilities, in Chapter 11 petitions filed last summer. They were making $500,000 each in 2024, and $60,000 each in the first half of 2025.
They owed $2 million to former employees who sued them for violating the federal Fair Labor Standards Act.
They decided to “cease doing business,” the owners stated in bankruptcy affidavits, “return leased equipment to the lessors and generally dispose of their assets for the benefit of their direct and secured creditors.”
Fogarty’s estranged wife, Sai Malena Jimenez-Fogarty, accused Fogarty of fraudulently diverting tens of millions of dollars from the business, and asked bankruptcy court to dismiss her husband’s case.
As with many debtors, Fogarty responded in a court filing, “his business incurred debt to stay afloat until things improved, but unfortunately things did not improve. Many of the allegations [by his wife] are nothing more than the debtor’s efforts to reduce expenses after he recognized that the business was not going to recover and he would be unable to meet all of his obligations.”
Bankruptcy judge Kyu Young Paek ruled on Dec. 15 that Jimenez-Fogarty had no standing in the case because she failed to identify any personal financial claims against the company owners.
