Deliberate obstruction of business

[MNapoli]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NY
I own a magazine distribution company to which we provide magazines to our exclusive retail stores through the US and Canada. We use a third party agent to ship our magazines to our retail accounts. The agent is a competitive distributor with which we have an NDA and non compete agreement in place. We pay our bills to this vendor each month, sometimes leaving a small open balance. This vendor now refuses to apply our payments to any old open items and is holding back our shipments to our accounts. We have 2 open items that amount to $6000+ and we are behind approximately 15 days if they close out the old open items. By holding back our shipments, they are causing us to miss national on sale dates and are compromising our good relationships with our retail accounts. This in turn slows up our cash flow and makes it that much more difficult to meet our scheduled payments. We have just acquired some new accounts and this may cause us to lose our distribution rights to those stores which would open them up to take over our business. Do we have any legal recourse here?

[HomeGuru]

Originally Posted by MNapoli

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? NY
I own a magazine distribution company to which we provide magazines to our exclusive retail stores through the US and Canada. We use a third party agent to ship our magazines to our retail accounts. The agent is a competitive distributor with which we have an NDA and non compete agreement in place. We pay our bills to this vendor each month, sometimes leaving a small open balance. This vendor now refuses to apply our payments to any old open items and is holding back our shipments to our accounts. We have 2 open items that amount to $6000+ and we are behind approximately 15 days if they close out the old open items. By holding back our shipments, they are causing us to miss national on sale dates and are compromising our good relationships with our retail accounts. This in turn slows up our cash flow and makes it that much more difficult to meet our scheduled payments. We have just acquired some new accounts and this may cause us to lose our distribution rights to those stores which would open them up to take over our business. Do we have any legal recourse here?

**A: let me get this straight; you are behind in paying the vendor and want to know what you can do to not hold up the shipment?

[Zigner]

Originally Posted by HomeGuru

**A: let me get this straight; you are behind in paying the vendor and want to know what you can do to not hold up the shipment?

You forgot the word consistently.

ETA: This is some DEFINITE obstruction of business going on here! But it's not the distribution company doing the obstruction!

[HomeGuru]

Originally Posted by Zigner

You forgot the word consistently.

ETA: This is some DEFINITE obstruction of business going on here! But it's not the distribution company doing the obstruction!

**A: that's moot. A first and only occurance can justify a shipment hold.