A civil jury in Federal Court in Cedar Rapids, Iowa returned a compensatory damage verdict of $2,1 million and a punitive damage verdict of $17.8 million against Amana. The case filed by Eden Electrical, an Israeli company, arose out of the termination of an Amana distributorship in 1998.
According to court documents and the testimony of witnesses during the three-week trial, Eden claimed Amana committed fraud when it offered Eden the exclusive distributorship for Amana appliances in Israel, conditioned on Eden paying $2.4 million up-front in cash for what turned out to be obsolete and discontinued Amana inventory.
The Jury found that once Amana received Eden's money, and before the obsolete inventory had even arrived in Israel, Amana executives terminated Eden's distributorship without cause. Testimony presented during the three week trial to the jury was designed to show that Amana had considerable debt in its International Appliance Division, that it schemed to get Eden's $2.4 million to pay down that debt, that it fraudulently delivered obsolete inventory to Eden while at the same time abandoning it, that Eden sustained the damages the Jury granted. — (menareport.com)
© 2003 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
