The unfinished Apex 1 battery-materials plant in Hopkinsville, Kentucky, now belongs to the contractor that built it. Turner-Kokosing Joint Venture, the partnership of Turner Construction and Kokosing Industrial, won the plant at a bankruptcy auction on May 26, 2026, and paid for it partly with the bill it had spent more than a year trying to collect from the plant’s owner, Ascend Elements.
That bill is in dispute. Turner-Kokosing says Ascend owes it about $138.4 million. Ascend’s president and CEO, Linh Austin, told the bankruptcy court in a sworn declaration filed April 9 that the company paused the project in early 2025 while “skeptical of TKJV’s revised estimates while also suspecting fraudulent billing.” Ascend filed counterclaims alleging that the joint venture and one of its subcontractors “negligently and/or fraudulently overcharged the project by at least $16 million.” Those are Ascend’s allegations. As of the April filing, the fight was still in arbitration, and no court or arbitrator had ruled on who was right.
The sale ended that fight. The purchase agreement approved in the June 5 sale order requires Ascend to release every claim it had against the buyer as of closing. The deal closed June 10. A half-built plant backed by hundreds of millions of federal dollars went to the company Ascend had accused of overcharging it, and part of the price was paid with that company’s contested invoice.
Kentucky lien law turned a disputed invoice into buying power
Turner-Kokosing filed suit in Christian Circuit Court in early 2025. According to WHOPAM’s courtroom coverage, it sought $138.4 million plus 12% interest for work it says Ascend failed to pay for by December 20, 2024. About 20 lawyers for subcontractors also appeared at an April 2025 hearing. Austin’s declaration says many of those subcontractors recorded mechanics’ liens of their own.
That 12% figure comes from Kentucky’s Fairness in Construction Act, KRS 371.405, which gives owners 30 business days to pay a “timely, properly completed, undisputed request for payment” and then charges interest at 12% a year. The statute covers only undisputed requests, so once Ascend accused the builder of overbilling, the interest claim rose or fell with the fight over what was owed.
The lien is what gave Turner-Kokosing its leverage. Under KRS 376.010, anyone who furnishes labor or materials for a structure “shall have a lien thereon.” Car owners live with the same principle. KRS 376.270 lets a Kentucky repair shop “detain any motor vehicle in his possession” until the reasonable or agreed charge is paid. A lien turns an unpaid bill into a claim against the thing itself, whether that thing is a pickup on a lift or a million-square-foot factory.
Bankruptcy adds one more step. Section 363(k) of the Bankruptcy Code lets a secured creditor bid the debt it is owed instead of cash, unless the judge orders otherwise “for cause.” Ascend asked the judge to do that. Its May 7 credit-bid motion sought to block or limit bids by Turner-Kokosing and two other lien claimants, RMF Nooter LLC and United Electric Company, citing what the disclosure statement describes as “overbilling, defective work, project mismanagement, and overlapping lien claims.”
That motion was never decided. According to the disclosure statement, “the parties resolved that dispute through the sale process rather than continued litigation.” Here is what the buyer agreed to, according to the sale order and purchase agreement:
- A $10,000,000 credit bid for the real estate and $15,000,000 in cash for everything else, less its deposit
- Paying off the City of Hopkinsville’s $3,717,000 mortgage, which secured a November 15, 2022 grant agreement, plus $511,312.50 in 2025 city real property taxes
- A $515,000 payment to the Hopkinsville Industrial Foundation to settle a 2022 promissory note
- Waiving an additional $40 million of its secured claim, which the order says reduces Turner-Kokosing’s total claim against the estate by $50 million once the credit bid is counted
American Battery Technology Company, a Nevada-based battery recycler, was named the backup bidder. The order also preserves the right of the unsecured creditors’ committee, or a later litigation trustee, to object to Turner-Kokosing’s proof of claim. Whatever is left of the builder’s bill can still be challenged. Ascend’s own overbilling claims against the builder cannot.
The $7.5 million federal settlement was paid with grant money, not cash
On July 30, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of Kentucky announced that Ascend would pay $7,497,555.65 to resolve allegations that it submitted inflated reimbursement claims to the Department of Energy between September 18, 2023 and February 18, 2025. Prosecutors said the claims included inflated labor hours, excessive tool purchases and unnecessary equipment rentals, and that the DOE paid more than $5.3 million tied to that conduct. Ascend reported the problem itself and got credit for cooperating. U.S. Attorney Kyle G. Bumgarner said, “Companies that receive taxpayer dollars must be held to the highest standards.”
The bankruptcy record shows how the money moves. In a June 17 declaration, Ascend’s chief restructuring officer, Adam Titus of Alvarez & Marsal, said Ascend learned of the problem from information supplied by “the former employer of a subcontractor,” and that its internal review found “approximately $16 million in overbilling by a single subcontractor.” He put the company’s potential liability at nearly $16 million. The settlement includes $5,316,145.00 in restitution, and Titus wrote that Ascend “will not be required to pay any cash” to the government. Instead, the amount comes out through the government’s “setoff or recoupment of DOE funds owed to Ascend in connection with the closeout audit of the Grant Agreement.”
So the Energy Department is keeping grant money it would otherwise have owed. The “nearly $16 million” exposure follows the False Claims Act formula. 31 U.S.C. § 3729 allows the government to recover three times its damages plus per-claim penalties. Three times $5,316,145 is $15,948,435 (Backfire News’s math). After Ascend’s self-disclosure and cooperation, the settlement came in at less than half of that.
The filings don’t name the subcontractor behind the overbilling that Ascend reported to the government, and they don’t say whether it is the same subcontractor named in Ascend’s counterclaims against Turner-Kokosing. Both filings put the overbilling at about $16 million.
Washington, Kentucky and unpaid vendors come out of the wreck very differently
Apex 1 was supposed to recycle used lithium-ion batteries into cathode precursor and lithium carbonate. According to Christian County Now, it was meant to produce enough of that material for 250,000 electric vehicles a year. Austin’s declaration says Ascend secured two DOE grants totaling $480 million. The company and the DOE canceled the $164 million cathode grant by mutual agreement on February 27, 2025. Ascend had already received $205 million of the remaining $316 million award, the Kentucky Lantern reported, before the DOE canceled the rest. When the company filed for bankruptcy, Austin said Apex 1 was about 60% complete and “has come to a standstill.”
Kentucky set up its incentives differently. When Gov. Andy Beshear’s office announced the project on August 1, 2022, the state offered up to $7.5 million over 15 years through the Kentucky Business Investment program, plus up to $2 million in sales and use tax incentives under the Kentucky Enterprise Initiative Act. The KBI award is performance-based, meaning the company earns the tax credits only as it hires and pays wages, and Apex 1 never opened. The federal grant reimbursed construction spending as it happened, which is why the DOE had money on the table to claw back through setoff. The city comes out whole on its mortgage and 2025 taxes because the buyer agreed to pay them.
Unsecured creditors do much worse. Ascend’s combined disclosure statement and liquidation plan estimates $149.6 million in general unsecured claims and projects a recovery of 0.0% to 0.4%. For vendors with no collateral, that is at most 40 cents per $100 owed. Judge Christopher M. Lopez of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas confirmed the plan on August 17, and it took effect September 8, according to the case docket.
In the Tricolor car-loan collapse, the SEC’s case centers on car loans it says the lender pledged twice. In Hopkinsville, the secured creditor was the builder, and its collateral was the building. Kentucky has courted auto and battery projects from Christian County to Ford’s Louisville operations. Apex 1 shows what public agencies can get back when one of those projects fails halfway through construction: mostly what they secured up front with mortgages, liens and pay-for-performance terms.
Turner-Kokosing is looking for an operator in Christian County
The builder is looking for someone else to run the plant. Carter Hendricks, executive director of the Southwestern Kentucky Economic Development Council, told Christian County Now that the new owners “are actively, aggressively trying to find someone that can come in and get that space and build it out and turn it into an operating facility, just like we all want, that creates jobs and opportunity.” As of WHOPAM’s June report, the site in Commerce Park II was still partly built and empty, and the joint venture hadn’t said publicly what comes next. When it sued in 2025, a Turner vice president said in a statement reported by trade publication Construction Dive that the team kept working on the project and took on millions of dollars in costs while accommodating design revisions.
Two things remain open in the bankruptcy: government agencies have until October 6 to file claims, and a litigation trustee can still object to what remains of Turner-Kokosing’s claim. With Ascend’s counterclaims released, that objection is the only route left to test the overbilling allegations. Any company that wants to finish Apex 1 will be negotiating with the builder whose bills the previous owner said were inflated.
Should a contractor holding a disputed lien be allowed to bid its unpaid bill for the property, or should bankruptcy judges require cash until someone decides what the bill was worth?
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