The Trial Balance is CFO.com’s weekly preview of stories, stats and events to help you prepare.
Part 1 — Stanford professor prevails in yearslong legal case involving medtech CFO
The CFO of a Georgia medical device maker is among a trio of executives who have been found liable for allegedly conspiring to have a university professor arrested on false charges.
That’s the latest update in a yearslong legal battle between Alpharetta, Georgia-based Chemence Medical and Stanford University professor James Quinn, who had consulted for the company. On April 8, a jury in Fulton County State Court returned a verdict in favor of Quinn and against three Chemence executives on five allegations, including malicious arrest, negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Robert Wilson, who previously served as CFO, secretary and legal counsel for the company, was among the executives named as defendants in the suit. The jury also ruled against Chemence on the allegations.
Local media reported that the company and the three executives involved have been ordered to pay Quinn $58 million in damages.
The story begins back in 2001, when Chemence CEO Hugh Cooke first called Quinn “with the hope of engaging his services to aid expansion from ordinary glues into the medical adhesive market,” according to an amended complaint by Quinn. Quinn in 2004 went on to enter a consulting agreement, which was negotiated by Wilson.
Things turned sour around April 2011, when Quinn resigned from the company over a disagreement about commission payments for his work. Chemence went on to file a suit in federal court against Quinn, alleging he had shared confidential trade secrets.
Quinn’s complaint described Chemence’s legal actions as a “scorched earth litigation strategy” that reached its “apex when the Defendants orchestrated the issuance of a criminal warrant for Dr. Quinn’s arrest on completely false charges, and then arranged for the arrest to be carried out during the course of a deposition conducted in the lawsuit in which Dr. Quinn sought his commissions.”
Quinn’s arrest occurred in 2014, after a detective obtained three warrants, including for theft of trade secrets. The warrants were ultimately dismissed in 2015 after a local district attorney’s office “determined there was insufficient evidence that a crime had been committed to justify any further prosecution of Dr. Quinn,” the complaint stated.
Then, in 2016, a federal jury ruled in favor of Quinn and against Chemence’s claims that he stole trade secrets. At the time, Quinn was awarded $8.7 million for commissions that the company had failed to pay him.
After the latest jury verdict earlier this month, an attorney for Quinn said the move “represents long-overdue justice for Dr. Quinn, a respected physician, professor, and innovator whose reputation and livelihood were unfairly targeted.”
“This also is a powerful reminder that the legal system cannot be manipulated as a tool for intimidation or leverage in business disputes,” said Stephen Lowry with law firm Harris Lowry Manton, which represented Quinn, in an email to CFO.com
Attorneys for Chemence didn’t respond to a request for comment on Friday.
Part 2 — This week
Here’s a list of important market events slated for the week ahead.
Monday, April 20 — None scheduled
Tuesday, April 21
- U.S. retail sales, March
- Business inventories, Feb.
- U.S. leading economic indicators, Feb.
- Pending home sales, March
Wednesday, April 22 — None scheduled
Thursday, April 23
Friday, April 24
- Consumer sentiment, April final
Part 3 — Quote of the week
“An algorithm doesn’t care who you had cocktails with last week. ... It could open the doors for underrepresented groups.”
Rita McGrath
Academic director in executive education, Columbia Business School
Last week, CFO.com reported on rumors that tech giant Oracle could have potentially used an algorithm to target employees with stock options in its recent layoffs. While there have been concerns about biases in automated platforms on employment decisions, one source in the story, Rita McGrath, academic director in executive education at Columbia Business School, shared that there are times when the tools could actually level the playing field.
