D&S litigators recently prevailed in a major arbitration on behalf of client CT-based manufacturer of tankless water heaters, representing a seller involved in a post-acquisition M&A dispute with the buyer. In the six-day “baseball” arbitration where the D&S team was pitted against aggressive lawyers from the national law firm of Jones Day, each side presented a single number for the damages to be awarded and the arbitrator had to choose one side. Jones Day asserted its client was entitled to $3.4 million in damages. The Arbitrator rejected that claim, awarding only $500,000, the figure advanced by D&S, and ordered the claimant to pay all costs associated with the arbitration. The case presented a thorny and novel issue of how damages are to be calculated in a breach of a representation in a stock purchase agreement when the buyer claims to have based its purchase price on an EBITDA formula. The case was featured in Lawyers Weekly on June 27th. Read article.
