Curtis Swasey Only Awarded $25,000

So why did the Justice refer to the victory as Pyrrhic? Well…probably because even though Swasey won a total vindication on all his claims, he was only awarded twenty-five thousand dollars in damages. The Judge almost seemed apologetic in stating that he could find no evidence in what was provided by the claimant to base a determination of damages Swasey suffered from the misappropriation of his concept. In the end he used the only figure with which he was presented – a product development fee which M.M.R. Principal Andre Vega claimed he paid to B.T.L.

Kareem Musa, Attorney for Curtis Swasey

Kareem Musa

“We have some concern with that. The learned trial Judge found that the only evidence before the Court was a twenty-five thousand dollar fee that was paid by Mr. Vega to B.T.L. so there wasn’t much else to go on. But our position was that the damage that ought to have been awarded to Mr. Swasey should have been based on royalty and to be tacked on to the profits of MMR. I don’t know if they are still operating but had they still been operating he should have been entitled to a royalty of their profits.”

Reporter

“Did you fall down in any way with this case, in perhaps bringing forward the financial picture of M.M.R. in terms of say this is what M.M.R. has made from point A to point B, and this is what they would make up to point C?”

Kareem Musa

“That was no doubt one of the difficulties in this case. There was absolutely no way of us actually getting that information from MMR to see what their profits are so all we had to go on was projections that were provided by M.M.R. We don’t actually have their financials, their statements to actually show how much profit they’ve made. So that is a huge difficulty in this case. We do not have access to their information. Had we gotten that information no doubt we could have gotten further.”