Dan Sweetser won a jury award of $805,000 for our client, Intercon Enterprises, in Newark’s US District Court. With interest, the award amount totaled $1,085,000.

Intercon is a small importing company. In 1999, Kwan Kim, owner/operator of Intercon, learned of a great demand for fiber optic cable by US cable companies. He contacted LGIA, formerly of Ft. Lee, NJ, to inquire if its parent company in South Korea, LG Cable, was interested in exporting fiber optic cable to meet this demand. LGIA jumped at the opportunity and two years later, LGIA had about $100,000,000 in US sales.

Intercon had a verbal agreement with LGIA that it would receive a 2% commission on all sales to four major cable companies, including Comcast and Adelphia. The sales to these two companies alone totaled $50,000,000, but LGIA paid Intercon on only $10,000,000 of the sales. LGIA concealed the other $40,000,000 in sales from Intercon. Since Mr. Kim was not involved in the processing of orders, he did not learn of LGIA’s breach until 2004 when he accidently came across the additional sales.

At trial, LGIA admitted it entered into a verbal agreement with Intercon, but denied that Intercon was owed any additional commissions. The jury did not believe LGIA and rejected its defense. After three hours of deliberations, the jury found that LGIA promised to pay Intercon a 2% commission on all sales to Comcast and Adelphia and returned a verdict for $805,000, the full amount claimed by Intercon. (September, 2008)