Last Met payments could come this year

Court ruling strikes blow to remaining asset value Investors who lost tens of millions of dollars when Spokane-based Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities Co. and affiliate Summit Securities Inc. shut down about 14 years ago could receive a final distribution late this year from trusts set up to recoup some of that money.In 2015, a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge here approved a second five-year extension of the two trusts based on the potential for recovering what then was estimated at close to an additional $60 million through remaining property sales.The numerous scattered real estate holdings of Metropolitan, Summit, and affiliate companies ranged at one time from 23 acres of light-industrial-zoned land in Airway Heights and early 100 acres of commercial land in Everett, Wash., to a ranch in _____ Montana, a castle in Phoenix, prime development property in Hawaii, and 10 acres of freeway frontage in Granbury, Texas, near Fort Worth.