Concert Golf Partners has been named in four notable lawsuits since its founding in 2011: a fraud and antitrust suit over its purchase of Philmont Country Club in Pennsylvania, which ended in summary judgment for the company; an inherited class action tied to membership refunds at Plantation Golf and Country Club in Florida; an ownership challenge at The Club at Longview in North Carolina that a judge resolved in Concert Golf’s favor in December 2025; and an older employment case in Florida with no reported outcome.
Philmont Country Club: North Penn Towns v. Concert Golf Partners
The biggest case in Concert Golf’s litigation history grew out of its 2017 purchase of Philmont Country Club, a financially distressed nonprofit club in the Philadelphia suburbs. Real estate developer North Penn Towns, LP had itself been under contract to buy development land from Philmont before terminating that agreement in September 2016 over zoning and cost disputes. Philmont’s board then approved Concert Golf’s proposal, and the deal closed in early 2017, with Concert Golf paying off roughly $1 million in club debt and committing to about $9 million in capital improvements.
In October 2019, North Penn Towns sued Concert Golf Partners, CEO Peter Nanula, and several co-defendants in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The complaint alleged fraud, breach of contract, conspiracy, and federal antitrust violations, claiming that Concert Golf never intended to fulfill the capital improvement promises it made to Philmont’s board and that its behind-the-scenes work with co-defendant Ridgewood Real Estate Partners compromised the club’s sale price. Ridgewood’s president Jonathan Grebow and then-vice president Michael Plotnick were also named. The court’s factual record noted that Ridgewood never formally offered to purchase the property itself.
Antitrust Claims Dismissed
On August 12, 2021, Judge Karen Spencer Marston dismissed the federal antitrust claims, finding that North Penn Towns had failed to define a relevant market in which competition had been harmed. The state-law claims survived, and an amended complaint followed.
Summary Judgment for Concert Golf
On July 28, 2022, Judge Marston granted summary judgment for Concert Golf Partners and Peter Nanula on all remaining counts. The fraud claims tied to capital improvement promises were barred under Pennsylvania’s “gist of the action” doctrine, which holds that a dispute fundamentally about contractual duties must be pursued as a contract claim rather than as fraud. The court dismissed the fraudulent concealment and nondisclosure claims on the ground that Concert Golf and Nanula had no legal duty to disclose their relationship with Ridgewood, because that relationship was neither material to nor a basic element of the transaction. The aiding and abetting fraud claims fell along with the underlying fraud claims. The case was terminated on March 8, 2023.
Lead defense counsel Walter Weir, Jr. called the outcome “an astounding victory for the defendants” and said it showed “the best of our judicial system to ferret out and make simple what was an unnecessarily complicated case.”
Plantation Golf and Country Club Class Action
The Plantation case did not begin as a Concert Golf lawsuit. In 2016, the club’s board amended its bylaws in a way that sharply reduced the equity reimbursements owed to departing members. Former members who had expected buyouts of up to $24,000 were offered a fraction of that. A class action followed in 2017, alleging breach of contract, unjust enrichment, and fraudulent transfer.
When Concert Golf purchased Plantation’s assets in January 2019, it inherited the litigation. Nanula acknowledged the pending claims at the time of the deal, saying Concert Golf “paid the old refund obligations and took responsibility for the litigation” as part of the recapitalization. Concert Plantation, LLC, the acquiring entity, was added as a co-defendant.
In November 2021, 12th Judicial Circuit Court Judge Andrea McHugh certified the case as a class action, expanding the potential plaintiff class to more than 700 former equity members. The plaintiffs’ legal team estimated potential damages between $2.5 million and $3.2 million. On December 5, 2022, Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal affirmed the class certification, rejecting arguments that the trial court had abused its discretion. The appellate court observed that Concert Plantation, LLC had “subsequently purchased the assets and possibly the refund obligations” of the original club. A mediation session was scheduled. The available record does not confirm a final resolution.
The Club at Longview Ownership Dispute
The most recent litigation involves The Club at Longview in Waxhaw, North Carolina, which Concert Golf bought from its original developer, Mel Graham, in 2021. A small group of HOA property owners then challenged Concert Golf’s ownership, arguing that they should be the rightful owners of the club. Concert Golf has described the plaintiffs as “no more than five” wealthy residents who want the club for themselves.
On December 2, 2025, a judge ruled for Concert Golf on the ownership question. The dispute has continued in narrower form. As of May 2026, the case had moved to Union County court, where the property owners were focusing their remaining claims on limits to golf memberships and club events rather than contesting ownership itself.
Polge v. Concert Golf Partners
Court records show one additional matter, Polge v. Concert Golf Partners, LLC, filed in June 2016 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. It was classified under “Civil Rights: Jobs” and assigned to Judge James S. Moody, Jr. No details of the allegations or outcome appear in the available record beyond the docket entry.
Why These Disputes Keep Arising
Several of Concert Golf’s legal problems reflect friction points that show up whenever an outside operator buys a member-owned club. Two come up again and again.
The first is refundable membership deposits. Many private clubs carry millions of dollars in “refundable” initiation fees on their balance sheets, effectively promising departing members a payout the club may not be able to afford. Concert Golf’s stated approach is to avoid buying those obligations when possible, or to restructure the refund program in exchange for eliminating club debt and committing capital to improvements. That restructuring is what drove the Plantation class action. Nanula has said that club board members, often volunteers rather than lawyers, worry about accusations of breaching their fiduciary duty when navigating these transitions.
The second is governance. When Concert Golf acquires a club, the elected member board is replaced by an advisory board that gives feedback but has no decision-making authority. The general manager reports to Concert Golf’s leadership rather than to the advisory board. The company says it contractually caps future dues increases at the greater of local consumer price inflation or the average increase at comparable clubs in the area, and it offers a written guarantee against special assessments. Those terms address common member objections, but they do not eliminate disputes with third parties, such as the developer in the Philmont case or the HOA owners at Longview, whose interests sit outside the membership relationship entirely.