TAMPA, Fla. (BRAIN) — The attorney for former Giant dealer Fran Kane, who won a $3.25 million judgment against Giant Bicycles last week, said Kane is prepared to fight any appeal that the California supplier would file seeking to overturn the verdict.
“We knew that Giant would appeal and we will fight it all the way until the day we make them pay. We are not intimidated and never have been intimidated by their bully techniques. We are fully prepared to keep going,” attorney Steve Anderson told BRAIN in an interview. Kane declined to discuss the case with BRAIN and, instead, referred all questions to Anderson.
Earlier Giant’s attorney, Sheldon Warren, had told BRAIN that he plans to file motions by the end of the month seeking a new trial and that he also will ask the court to vacate the jury verdict. The court must rule on both motions before a formal appeal is filed.
The case centered on Giant’s decision to open up a competitor to Kane’s store, Flying Fish Bikes, after inducing Kane to purchase $120,000 in inventory for the 2013 spring season.
Kane placed the order in September 2012. Giant terminated its dealer agreement with him three months later in December. Kane had been a Giant retailer for six years and prior to the dispute and consistently paid his bills on time, said John Thompson, Giant’s executive director of sales, in a deposition.
Kane’s lawsuit claimed that Geoffrey Godsey, Giant’s regional sales manager, had assured him that the company was fully committed to supporting his store. “At the time Godsey made those statements, they were false and he knew they were false or should have known they were false,” the lawsuit claimed.
In the meantime, according to various depositions, Giant’s then director of retail services, Gregg Frederick, had been discussing the possibility of Outspokin, a Clearwater, Florida, retailer, of opening a Giant Partner store carrying 80 percent of Giant stock in the Tampa area.
Those discussions began earlier in 2012 and were ongoing when Kane placed his spring order in September. However, in an affidavit from Frederick filed in the case, he warned Godsey not to follow through with getting an order from Kane.
“During the late summer, early fall of 2012, I was aware that Giant management intended to take orders from Flying Fish Bikes in Tampa without informing that, at the same time, Giant was working to create a competing Giant Partner Store very close to Flying Fish and was also planning to terminate Flying Fish’s dealer agreement when that competing store was ready to open,” Frederick stated.
“I spoke directly with Geoff Godsey during that time and recommended against selling Giant inventory to Flying Fish under those circumstances because it was not the right thing to do. I recommended that Godsey inform Fran Kane of Giant’s plan so that Flying Fish could make its buying and business decisions based on full knowledge. My recommendations were ignored by Godsey,” Frederick concluded.
Frederick, an 18-year veteran at Giant, was later let go after his position was eliminated in an organizational restructuring. (Frederick recently worked with BRAIN on its Retail Remodel Project.)
The jury — comprised of seven women and two men — took less than an hour to reach a decision awarding Kane $250,000 in compensatory damages and $3 million in punitive damages. Anderson said he was surprised at how swiftly the jury acted.
“Less than an hour? That tells you that the jury figured this case out early and hard. It’s pretty insightful, after listening to eight days of testimony and seeing over 100 exhibits, that they understood and absolutely knew what to do,” Anderson said. (See jury verdict PDF.)
During the trial no Giant employees were on hand to testify. A volunteer reader was allowed by U.S. District Court Judge Steven Merryday to read questions and answers from a series of depositions taken prior to the trial.
“We were fully prepared and were hoping they would show up. But we had depositions from them and they were incredibly incriminating. So we used their (deposition) transcripts,” Anderson said.
Key Giant employees deposed in the case included Elysa Walk, Giant’s general manager, Thompson, Godsey, and several others. Giant attorneys Nhan Lee and Sergio Medina deposed Kane.
Anderson said there was never any discussion of a settlement. However an attempt at arbitration came to an impasse.
