A senior bankruptcy attorney has left his firm following serious professional responsibility accusations tied to a major Chapter 11 case in Kansas City.
Larry Parres, who led the bankruptcy practice at Lewis Rice LLC, is no longer at the firm under circumstances that raise significant questions about the representation.
Parres worked on the Chapter 11 proceedings of DCA Outdoor, Inc., a Kansas City-based collection of roughly 20 nursery, tree farm, and garden retail entities.
DCA Outdoor filed for bankruptcy in February 2025, owing Frontier Farm Credit around $95 million at the time of filing.
Every entity within the DCA Outdoor group was owned and controlled by founder Tory Schwope, and none of the entities had any independent directors in place.
The Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors filed an adversary complaint in May alleging that Lewis Rice spent seven months representing Schwope rather than the bankruptcy estates the firm technically represented.
The distinction between representing an individual founder and representing the debtor estates is one of the most fundamental issues in bankruptcy professional responsibility.
When that line becomes blurred, the entire representation can become a cautionary tale for legal ethics, with courts and creditor committees scrutinising every decision made during the proceedings.
The adversary complaint filed by the unsecured creditors committee was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice on August 20, removing the formal legal action from the docket.
Shortly after that dismissal, Parres was no longer listed as part of Lewis Rice, with his departure following closely on the heels of the dropped complaint.
Who a lawyer actually represents is one of the most critical facts to establish at the outset of any engagement, particularly in complex multi-entity insolvency matters involving a single controlling owner.
In cases where ownership and control are concentrated in one individual, the risk of professional responsibility conflicts becomes especially acute for any firm advising the debtor estates.
Lewis Rice LLC has not made any public statement addressing the circumstances surrounding Parres’s departure or the allegations raised in the creditor committee’s complaint.