Editor’s note: This is the first installment in a series detailing litigation initiated by the State Treasurer and his wife concerning local property disputes.
MARTINSVILLE — Inside his office on South Main Street, Roger Coffin grabs a dusty old lawbook and flips over to the “E” section until he finds the definition for “extortion.”
Coffin is attempting to prove a point, and so he reads the definition aloud: “To gain by wrongful methods, to obtain in an unlawful manner, to take from someone unlawfully.”
Eventually he stops reading and reaches a verdict.
“I think what he’s doing is criminal,” Coffin said.
He, in this case, is Indiana State Treasurer Daniel Elliott — up for reelection this year — and earlier this month, he and his wife, Laura Elliott, filed a lawsuit in Morgan County Superior Court against the Morgan County Public Library Foundation, the Morgan County Veterans Memorial and the Morgan County History Center and Museum.
The lawsuit is over a building at 75 and 77 E. Washington St. in Martinsville. The Elliotts allege they were promised ownership of the property from the Library Foundation and were blindsided when the nonprofit deeded the building to the Veterans Memorial group in September 2024. The Veterans Memorial then deeded the building to the History Museum later that year.
The Elliotts claim to have invested roughly $250,000 into this property since 2015, and their lawsuit against the local nonprofits alleges breach of contract and “unjust enrichment.” They are seeking to have the building either given to them, or to receive $250,000 in reimbursement.
“My wife, Laura, and I had an agreement with the Morgan County Public Library to renovate a dilapidated property owned by the library,” Elliott said in a statement. “Because the county had no interest in maintaining the unoccupied property, we reached an agreement where we would rehabilitate the property.”
Elliott goes on to say that he and his wife learned that the library had transferred ownership of the property through a newspaper article. He said they had no choice but to file a lawsuit against the nonprofits after the library allegedly discontinued mediation efforts.
“We believe it is unjust for a large public institution to benefit from the years of investment our family made, and then walk away from the agreement without a fair resolution,” Elliott said.
Coffin, a longtime local attorney and the face of the Morgan County Veterans Memorial, disputes just about everything Elliott says. He claims the case at hand is an instance of a powerful politician picking on groups with little money to defend themselves.
“It’s a frivolous lawsuit, and we’re gonna sue him,” Coffin said. “It’s extortion. He’s trying to scare people into doing what he wants.
“This is a very odd situation. I’ve never seen anyone behave like this.”
Building history
The disputed building on East Washington Street, a portion of which now houses Krypton Comics, came into the library’s possession in July 2002 when Ann McDaniel along with her husband, Warren, conveyed the property to the Library Board.
This gift from the McDaniel family, however, stipulated that if the library no longer wanted the property, it must first offer the real estate as a gift to the Veterans Memorial Committee.
“If the Veterans have no such entity, or are disbanded or inactive, then the real estate will be deeded to a suitable not-for-profit or governmental incorporated entity for the purpose of promoting the original intent of this gift to serve the historical and patriotic purposes of the Veterans Committee, or a similar historical or patriotic group,” reads the gift agreement from 2002.
In 2009, the library received a grant from the Historic Preservation Fund to conduct a $21,000 feasibility study for the future uses of the East Washington Street building.
Joanne Stuttgen, then-president of the Morgan County Historic Preservation Society, said at the time that the building was threatened by long-term neglect and by the effects of a fire that destroyed the building on the property that is now the site of the Morgan County Veterans Memorial at the corner of Washington and Jefferson streets.
“We need to either get rid of (the building) or fix it up,” library director Krista Ledbetter told the library board back in 2009, according to a news report at the time.
The library opted to fix it up.
The library used the Historic Preservation Fund feasibility study to secure another grant in 2012 that was used to repair the roof of the building, the guttering and the parapet walls. The total cost of those projects was $68,380, with the library supplying half of the funding.
Two years later, the library tapped into a combined $500,000 Community Focus Fund Main Street grant that funded exterior facade work on several of the downtown buildings like the Candy Kitchen and Keller Office supply, as well as the disputed Washington Street building.
The project cost for the building totaled $54,857, with the library supplying $16,457 of that.
Elliotts move in
Around 2015, the Elliotts began using the building, but how that came to be is a matter of great dispute.
Elliott told The Correspondent on Monday that the Elliotts reached a verbal agreement with the library in 2015 that the Elliotts would take over the building.
He said there were attorneys present when this agreement was made and that witnesses to this agreement will be brought out in trial.
As part of the alleged agreement, the Elliotts’ suit claims the library agreed to give them the property “ if Elliott would form a nonprofit business entity, occupy and rehabilitate the buildings located on the property, and make space in the buildings available to the community as a community co-work space to be used free of charge … .”
According to the Secretary of State’s Office, the Elliotts did form a nonprofit — The Source, Inc. — in May 2015, with an address tied to 96 N. Main St. in Martinsville. But according to the state’s website, no Business Entity Reports were ever filed for the nonprofit, and it was administratively dissolved in 2019.
In November 2018, meanwhile, Daniel Elliott formed The Source Cowork, LLC — a for-profit business that listed Daniel as the CEO and 77 E. Washington St. as its registered office. It, too, was administratively dissolved in May 2025, little more than a month after the Elliotts vacated the property.
As to how one entity evolved into another, Elliott said it’s simply a matter of legal maneuvering.
“We were just following legal advice, so you’ll see some slight changes in how that was structured because we were following the advice of attorneys,” he said.
“Changes of address is all that is,” Elliott added.
The heart of the matter
An issue at the heart of the dispute, however, is that there was never an agreement finalized in writing. Elliott alleged the attorneys involved — including Coffin — were supposed to be working toward that, but a written agreement simply never materialized.
Elliott asserts that an agreement was made all the same.
“Why would (the library) have let us stay in a facility for a decade, put that much money into it, put that many repairs, and let people use the building or rent the building if we did not have a legal agreement with them?” Elliott said.
That’s not how the defendants see the situation.
Dale Coffey, the attorney representing the Library Foundation, said that while he has seen some receipts indicating the Elliotts may have put money into the building, he could not verify their legitimacy.
Coffin was more blunt.
“Nothing in the plaintiff’s complaint is the truth,” Coffin said. “This is all about a guy that thought he ought to be given a building as a gift.
“You don’t get a building just for taking the trash out.”
The Elliotts claim to have done a lot more than take the trash out. Elliott told The Correspondent that when they took possession of the building in 2015, it was in shocking disrepair.
“The building was literally falling down,” Elliott said. “The floor was collapsing. Frankly, if we had not come in when we did a decade ago, it probably would have collapsed.”
Receipts
Determining what exactly happened with the building between 2015 and 2024 is the crux of the lawsuit.
Coffin acknowledges that Elliott had “permission to occupy” the building, but that no purchase prices were discussed, and no promises to sell were made. He said the library did not charge Elliott rent because it did not wish to act as a landlord. He said the library simply did not want to continue paying for utilities in the building.
Elliott said that rent was never discussed in his agreement with the library, and that the money he allegedly invested into the building was far more than the cost of rent in Martinsville regardless.
But while Elliott did not pay any rent for his use of the building, he does acknowledge in the lawsuit that he leased a portion of the property to Eric Singer, owner of Krypton Comics.
Coffin alleges that Singer told the defendants that the comic book store had paid for several repairs to the building.
Aside from the utilities, Coffin alleges that it is unclear what the Elliotts paid for, as the initial lawsuit did not provide any receipts.
“Show me the invoices,” Coffin said.
Elliott said that the family made extensive repairs to the building and that plenty of receipts exist that will be presented as the lawsuit progresses.
Gift agreement
Another sticking point in the lawsuit is the gift agreement between the library and the McDaniel family, stipulating that the building had to be used to promote veterans.
Coffin alleges that Elliott likely did not know about this stipulation when he initially took control of the building, and claims the evidence for that is in how Elliott used the building.
The Elliotts intended that part of the building would be used for their business, The Source CoWork LLC, a company that would allow community members to have a co-work space free of charge.
“I’m a person who cares about our community,” Elliott said. “We wanted to create an opportunity for small businesses to grow.”
It’s unclear, though, how The Source catered to veterans specifically, and Coffey said that to his knowledge, The Source had little to do with veterans at all.
Elliott said that it was his intent to work out an agreement with the library to get the veteran stipulation removed from the agreement, but this ultimately never happened.
As a result, the library deeded the building to the Veterans Committee, per the gift agreement, and the veterans deeded the building to the museum when the former realized it did not have sufficient funds to take care of the building.
The museum has explicitly said it intends to use the building to document the history of Morgan County veterans.
“It was always gonna be a problem doing anything with this building,” Coffin said. “No one could buy that property and not be hampered by the gift conditions.”
What’s next
Both Coffey and Coffin have said they plan to meet the Elliotts’ lawsuit with one of their own.
“Most likely, we’ll have a counterclaim,” Coffey said. “I don’t know exactly what all that will entail at this point. But that’s something that I do anticipate probably filing on behalf of the library.”
Coffey said he anticipates this will happen by the end of May.
“I represent an organization that is not real thrilled that they’ve been made a defendant in a lawsuit,” Coffey said. “They hope to be able to end things sooner rather than later, obviously.”
Next time: ‘People don’t know the real Daniel:’ Green Township residents detail 2020 ‘adverse possession’ suit initiated by Elliotts, ultimately resulting in loss of land for elderly neighbor.
