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Printing Company Xerox Brings Lawsuit Against Metro-Based Tate Publishing

Tate Publishing & Enterprises at 127 Trade Center Terr. in Mustang.
Brent Fuchs
/
The Journal Record
Tate Publishing & Enterprises at 127 Trade Center Terr. in Mustang.

Tate Publishing, a Christian book and music publisher based in Mustang, Oklahoma, is facing a lawsuit from Xerox. The printing company alleges Tate owes over $1.7 million.

 

Xerox and Tate have been working together since about 2003, and Xerox helped Tate increase their printing operation.

 

“There’s $1.3 million in lease payment and goods and services. Xerox also says there’s a $460,000 promissory note personally guaranteed by Ryan Tate,” said The Journal Record’s managing editor Adam Brooks. “They say they renegotiated these contracts in December and they were defaulted in February. So besides the money, Xerox also wants to repossess [their] equipment.”

The Journal Record’s Dale Denwalt spelled out the lawsuit’s details earlier this week.

The five printing presses and their server systems are worth a combined $450,000. Tate said the printers aren’t the only ones the company uses to print books. “We have large networks,” he said. “They do a small portion of our (print) volumes.”

The lawsuit was filed in Canadian County.

Tate Publishing CEO Ryan Tate said this year’s lawsuit with Xerox is a form of intimidation.

“He suggested that maybe Xerox wants more businesses from Tate, and this is sort of a punishment,” Brooks said. “[Tate] largely said that these Xerox printers, even if they don’t have them, they would still be able to continue their business in the same way without that equipment.”

Tate has also said there is a possibility for a counter-lawsuit against Xerox for contractual breaches. There are no details at this time.

Tate Publishing got its start in the early 2000s and specifically seeks out unknown authors, generally who pay to have their material printed. The company employs approximately 200 people.

Tate Publishing is also the defendant in a lawsuit from last year brought against them by a customer who printed a book with the company.

Author Bat-Zion Susskind-Sacks paid the company nearly $12,000. In her lawsuit, Susskind-Sacks alleged that Tate Publishing distributed two versions of her book, both laden with editing errors. Tate has yet to respond to the lawsuit in court. Last year, The Journal Record revealed that the Mustang-based publisher had been the target of nearly two dozen consumer complaints to the state attorney general in just eight months, the second-highest number of complaints for any business.

 

The Business Intelligence Report is a collaborative news project between KGOU and The Journal Record.

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