A Los Angeles jury Tuesday awarded at least $371 million in damages to a satellite company in a dispute against Boeing Co. over canceled plans for a satellite network that could beam television programming and other services to mobile-device users around the globe.
ICO Global Communications, whose chairman is cellular phone billionaire Craig McCaw, accused Boeing of thwarting its plans to build the network. The verdict doesn't include punitive damages, which the jury is expected to take up next week.
McCaw said that the verdict would not "get us back to being whole again," but that it provided some redemption.
"We feel particularly so given that it went beyond a mere dispute over a contract," McCaw said in a telephone interview Tuesday. "It isn't about getting even. I feel very strongly what they did was wrong."
Boeing said in a statement that it would appeal the verdict, which came after 21 days of jury deliberations, and suggested that the case might "well take several years to run its course."
"There were fundamental errors in the conduct of the trial," Boeing general counsel J. Michael Luttig said. "There were fundamental errors in the instructions to the jury and in the court's interaction with the jury during the deliberations. We thus have significant grounds for appeal."
The initial award calculated by the jurors was actually much higher at $742.2 million, but Judge Emilie H. Elias said after the jury panel had left the courtroom Tuesday that the jurors had made an error in arithmetic.
Elias said the correct amount for the main damage award was $371 million, but she did not specify whether a $91-million award related to a rocket contract was part of it. Afterward, Boeing contended it was all part of the $371 million, while ICO said the awards were separate and totaled $462 million.
The disagreement, which the jurors probably will have to resolve next week, was par for the course for one of the more convoluted contract cases in the aerospace industry.
Boeing, which denied any wrongdoing, originally sued ICO in 2004 after ICO terminated its contract for the satellites. ICO countersued, accusing Boeing of breach of contract and fraud, among other things.
ICO was seeking $1.5 billion in actual damages -- more than $2 billion with interest -- and unspecified punitive damages. The jury began deliberations Sept. 15 after hearing testimony for 2 1/2 months.
