Originally published July 22, 2010
Judge upholds jury's award in business espionage case involving Chinese and Dubai tire corporations versus American inventor which reads like a spy novel
Washington, D.C. – Yesterday, a Federal judge upheld a jury's verdict to award mining-tire inventor Jordan Fishman and his companies $26 million in damages resulting from the illegal copying of Mr. Fishman's blueprints for unique asymmetrical underground mining tires. The billion-dollar Shandong Linglong Rubber Company, Ltd of China and the multi-million dollar Dubai-based Al Dobowi Tyre Company, LLC were the Defendants in the case.
For seven days, a jury listened to testimony in the Federal District Court in the Eastern District of Virginia and heard how Mr. Fishman had his life's work stolen by former employees and exploited by the mammoth Chinese tire manufacturer and the Dubai-based tire distributor.
The trial of In re Outsidewall Tire Litigation, 09-cv-1217, included testimony from Mr. Fishman, who is the 72-year-old President and Chief Executive Officer of Alpha Mining Systems. The conspiracy began in 2005 with a clandestine meeting at the Jefferson Hotel in Richmond, Virginia.
"This case should serve as a bellwether for foreign multinational corporations who believe they can act with impunity, stealing intellectual property from a small U.S. business, and then avoid the reach of our judicial system," said August J. Matteis, Jr., lead plaintiff's counsel and partner at Gilbert LLP.
"In this case, the court correctly exercised jurisdiction over the defendants and the jury reached the appropriate verdict to compensate Mr. Fishman and his companies for the blatant misappropriation of his life's work," Matteis added.
A former co-conspirator John Canning, a key witness, testified that "Al Dobowi didn't believe Jordan Fishman would ever get this case to court. They believed he would die or run out of money first." To the contrary, the jury entered the $26 million verdict against the Defendants and it was upheld by the judge.
Another cynical comment from Al Dobowi CEO Kandhari to co-conspirator Sam Vance (and then repeated by Vance to Mr. Fishman in Shanghai) was "the one with the most money wins." To which Mr. Fishman now responds, "Maybe not this time."
Scott Gilbert, chairman of Gilbert LLP, assures that "Gilbert LLP will pursue collection of this judgment with the same tenacity with which we pursued the verdict. Our firm has a reputation of consistently recovering every dollar to which our business clients are entitled, and this case will be no exception."
Mr. Fishman credited the legal team of Gilbert LLP law firm with his long-fought win. "If not for the perseverance of Alpha's legal team at Gilbert LLP, this federal trial never would have taken place. Alpha and the Gilbert team were up against two of the largest international law firms representing China's Shandong Linglong Companies and Dubai's Al Dobowi Group."
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