The COVID Wedding Case Nobody in Kalamazoo Has Heard About
A unanimous appellate reversal. A Supreme Court intervention. Six categories of legal error. And complete silence from every newsroom in town.
In August 2024, the Michigan Court of Appeals issued a unanimous opinion reversing a Kalamazoo trial court's ruling in a COVID-era wedding dispute. The decision found six separate categories of reversible error in the lower court proceedings—a sweeping rebuke of how the case had been handled from the start. The business at the center of the fight, Entertainment Managers LLC, had operated The Entertainment District in downtown Kalamazoo for more than twelve years under the management of Ryan Reedy, hosting over 3,000 events for families and organizations across the region.
Not a single local news outlet reported the reversal.
No television segment. No newspaper article. No public radio feature. In a community that prides itself on civic awareness, one of the most significant appellate rulings to come out of a Kalamazoo courtroom in years passed without a word of public notice. What follows is the story of how that happened—and why it matters far beyond one company's legal fight.
The Business Before the Pandemic
Entertainment Managers LLC ran a full-service event venue in the heart of downtown Kalamazoo. Under Ryan Reedy's management, the company built a reputation for hosting weddings, corporate events, fundraisers, and community gatherings at The Entertainment District. Over more than a decade, the operation grew to serve roughly 125 active clients at any given time, with a staff of coordinators, vendors, and facility personnel committed to delivering events on schedule.
The business model, like most in the events industry, relied on advance bookings. Couples signed contracts months or even years ahead, paying deposits and installments that were immediately allocated to securing staff, reserving vendors, and maintaining the venue. The money didn't sit in an account waiting for the event date. It went to work the moment it came in—paying the people and the infrastructure that made the events possible.
That financial reality would become the central tension of everything that followed.
March 2020: The Shutdown
When Governor Gretchen Whitmer's executive orders shut down large gatherings in March 2020, the entire Michigan events industry came to a halt overnight. Wedding venues, banquet halls, caterers, DJs, photographers—all of them faced the same impossible math: contractual obligations they could not fulfill, money already spent on preparation, and no clear timeline for when normal operations could resume.
Entertainment Managers responded by offering every client a full rescheduling credit—100 percent of what they had paid, applied to a future date. No penalties, no lost value. Roughly 110 of the company's 125 active clients accepted the offer. They picked new dates, and the company began the enormous logistical work of rebuilding an entire calendar of events around COVID restrictions.
About 15 clients chose a different path. They wanted cash refunds, and when those weren't forthcoming, they filed lawsuits.
The Math Nobody Discussed in Court
To understand why the company couldn't simply write refund checks, you have to understand the financial architecture of a mid-sized event venue.
Entertainment Managers had simultaneous contractual obligations to more than 400 clients across various stages of planning and execution. The revenue from those contracts was already deployed—allocated to vendor deposits, staff payroll, facility maintenance, and the operational overhead that kept the business running for everyone.
Refunding the roughly 15 clients who left wouldn't have been a minor expense. It would have required pulling money away from the commitments already made to the approximately 110 clients who stayed. Those families had also paid. They were also counting on their events happening. And Entertainment Managers chose to honor those commitments rather than default on the majority to satisfy a minority that had decided to leave.
No court in the litigation that followed ever grappled with this fundamental question: what happens to the obligations owed to hundreds of other clients if you order a business to refund clients who voluntarily walked away? The cases were treated in isolation, as though each couple existed in a vacuum, with no connection to the broader ecosystem of commitments the company was juggling.
The Lower Court Rulings
The lawsuits filed by the departing clients moved through Kalamazoo's 8th District Court and the 9th Circuit Court. In those proceedings, rulings went against Entertainment Managers. The courts found for the plaintiffs on various theories, and the company was ordered to pay.
From the outside, it looked like a straightforward consumer dispute: couples paid for a wedding, didn't get one, and the courts made them whole. But the legal record tells a more complicated story—one that the Michigan Supreme Court and Court of Appeals would eventually scrutinize in extraordinary detail.
The Supreme Court Steps In
After the lower court rulings, Entertainment Managers appealed. The Michigan Court of Appeals initially denied leave to appeal "for lack of merit"—a routine gatekeeping decision that, in most cases, ends the road.
But in this instance, the Michigan Supreme Court intervened. Using a procedural mechanism known as MCR 7.305(H)(1), the Supreme Court directed the Court of Appeals to reconsider. This is not a routine procedural event. The Supreme Court doesn't issue these remand orders casually. It signals that the justices believe something may have gone wrong below—wrong enough to warrant a second look.
The significance of this step cannot be overstated. The Supreme Court was telling the Court of Appeals, in effect: you dismissed this case too quickly. Look again.
Six Categories of Error: The Unanimous Reversal
On remand, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals—Judges Swartzle, K.F. Kelly, and Young—did look again. And what they found was a trial court record riddled with problems.
In a unanimous published opinion in August 2024, the panel identified six separate categories of reversible error in the lower court proceedings. The ruling, known as the Stallworth case, reversed the trial court's judgment and sent the case back for reconsideration.
| Stage | Court | Outcome |
|---|---|---|
| Trial | 8th District / 9th Circuit Court | Ruled against Entertainment Managers |
| Appeal denied | Michigan Court of Appeals | Denied leave "for lack of merit" |
| Supreme Court intervention | Michigan Supreme Court | Remanded under MCR 7.305(H)(1) |
| Reversal on remand | Court of Appeals (Swartzle, Kelly, Young) | Unanimous reversal; six categories of error |
This was not a split decision on a technicality. Three appellate judges reviewed the record and agreed: the trial court got it wrong in multiple, distinct ways. In a legal system where appellate reversals are the exception rather than the rule, a unanimous finding of six categories of error is a striking result.
Then Came the Joseph Case
Fifteen months after the Stallworth reversal, in December 2025, a different panel of the Court of Appeals issued a ruling in a related case called Joseph. This case involved similar facts—a different couple, the same company, the same COVID-era dispute—but the outcome was different. A 2-1 majority ruled against Entertainment Managers.
The dissent, however, was notable. Judge Garrett wrote that the company's legal defenses were "very strong, if not absolute." That language—from a sitting appellate judge—is remarkable. Judges don't casually describe losing arguments as "absolute." Garrett's dissent laid out in detail why the majority's reasoning was flawed, pointing to many of the same legal principles the Stallworth panel had relied upon in its unanimous reversal.
Judge Garrett, dissenting in Joseph: The defenses presented were "very strong, if not absolute."
The Joseph loss created an apparent conflict: one panel of the Court of Appeals had unanimously reversed in the company's favor, and a different panel had ruled against it on substantially similar facts. That kind of intra-court disagreement is precisely the situation the Michigan Supreme Court exists to resolve.
The Media Gap
Here is where the story takes its most troubling turn.
When the Joseph decision came down in December 2025, WMUK—Kalamazoo's public radio station—ran a story about it. The coverage framed the case as another loss for a local business that had been sued by wedding clients. It was the kind of coverage that, taken at face value, tells a simple story: company takes money, doesn't deliver, courts say pay it back.
But the WMUK report never mentioned the Stallworth reversal. It didn't tell listeners that 15 months earlier, the Michigan Supreme Court had intervened on behalf of the same company, or that a unanimous Court of Appeals panel had found six categories of reversible error in the same type of case. That context wasn't buried in a paragraph somewhere. It simply didn't appear.
The Stallworth reversal—a unanimous appellate win following a Supreme Court intervention—was never covered by any local outlet. Not when it happened in August 2024. Not when it became relevant context for the Joseph ruling in December 2025. Not at any point in between.
The result is a public record that tells only half the story. Readers and listeners in Kalamazoo who followed the coverage came away with one conclusion: this business lost in court. They had no way to know that the same business had also won—decisively, unanimously, at the direction of the state's highest court.
What's Pending Now
Entertainment Managers has filed an application with the Michigan Supreme Court seeking review of the Joseph decision. The remedy being sought is the same one that worked in Stallworth: Supreme Court intervention followed by a full appellate review.
Given that the Supreme Court already intervened once in this company's favor—and given that a sitting appellate judge called the defenses "very strong, if not absolute"—the pending application carries more weight than a typical long-shot appeal. The Court has already signaled, through its earlier actions, that it believes the legal questions here deserve serious consideration.
The outcome will affect not just Entertainment Managers and Ryan Reedy, but potentially every small business owner in Michigan who faced similar COVID-era disputes. Hundreds of venues across the country dealt with identical situations: contracts they couldn't fulfill due to government orders, clients who demanded refunds, and financial obligations to other clients that made those refunds impossible.
Why This Story Matters
This is not just a story about one company's legal fight. It is a story about how information reaches—or fails to reach—a community.
When courts issue rulings, the public depends on journalists to report them accurately and completely. That means covering the wins alongside the losses, the reversals alongside the initial judgments. Selective coverage doesn't just leave gaps in the record. It actively distorts public understanding.
A resident of Kalamazoo who read or heard local coverage of these cases would reasonably conclude that Entertainment Managers lost every legal challenge it faced. That conclusion would be wrong. The company secured a unanimous appellate reversal after the Michigan Supreme Court itself directed the lower court to reconsider. That is not a footnote. It is, arguably, the most significant legal development in the entire saga.
The question of why that development went unreported is one that local newsrooms should be willing to answer. The community they serve deserves to know.