A judge in the US state of Washington has rejected requests by lawyers for Centerline Logistics founder Harley Franco to reconsider her verdict handing a victory to Macquarie Capital in a four-year court fight.
Judge Suzanne Parisien, of the King County Superior Court in Seattle, issued two rulings that denied both a request to amend her June decision and another to reconsider it.
Robert Sulkin, a lawyer at McNaul, Ebel, Nawrot & Helgren representing Franco, said his client plans to appeal.
Parisien’s decision was part of a court fight centred on Franco’s 2018 ouster from tug and barge owner Harley Marine Services, which was later renamed Centerline.
As TradeWinds has reported, the judge had issued a June verdict throwing out portions of a jury decision, which had awarded Franco $75m from two Macquarie entities for tortious interference and defamation, on the grounds that she had previously ruled that a litigation privilege protected claims made in court filings.
Jurors had found in favour of Centerline’s side on claims of breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty, and they found in favour of company chief executive Matthew Godden —who took over from Franco as Centerline CEO in 2018 — on all counts.
In a decision during trial, Parisien had ruled that claims made in a Delaware lawsuit filed by Macquarie Marine Services against Franco were legally shielded from defamation claims by the litigation privilege in both that state’s law and the laws of Washington.
The judge then agreed to a proposal by Franco’s lawyers to allow jurors to weigh in on the claims but issue a “directed verdict” overturning portions of the jury award that fell under that litigation privilege.
The two sides have been locked in a legal battle over claims by Franco that he was improperly ousted from the company he founded and by Macquarie, a co-owner in the tug and barge outfit, that he diverted assets from Harley Marine.
Sulkin said that his planned challenge in a Washington state court of appeals will be from the position of a “victorious jury verdict”.
“We are confident the court of appeals will right this wrong,” he said, arguing that the judge’s verdict violated Franco’s right to a jury trial.
But Kevin Marino, Macquarie’s lawyer at Marino, Tortorella & Boyle, rejected that argument in court papers filed after the judge’s verdict.
“Plaintiffs argue that the court abridged plaintiff Harley Franco’s right to a jury trial by entering judgment in defendants’ favour. That is not so,” he wrote.
