A Chancery Court judge has dismissed a lawsuit between the founder of Grotto Pizza and a former federal judge over an alleged sour business deal.
At the heart of the case, pizza patriarch Dominick Pulieri accused Joseph Farnan Jr. of misleading him on a real estate deal.
Pulieri claimed there was an agreement to sell the Sunview Motel in Rehoboth Beach to Farnan while he shored up his finances and would be able to buy it back at a similar price.
The motel was sold for $3.2 million in 2002, but Farnan claimed there was no deal when Pulieri tried to buy the property back in 2013.
Chief Chancellor Andre Bouchard threw out the suit, writing that the Grotto Pizza founder’s arguments “are not sufficiently definite” to prove there was a valid contract.
Bouchard also noted that it took too long to bring the complaint to have legal standing.
Pulieri filed the Chancery Court suit last summer. He had also tried bringing the case to Superior Court in 2013, but it never materialized there.