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Price to PepsiCo for Not Being in Court: $1.26 Billion

Kandahar

Kandahar

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Price to PepsiCo for Not Being in Court: $1.26 Billion - Yahoo! Finance

What's the cost of not showing up to court? For PepsiCo Inc., it's a $1.26 billion default judgment. A Wisconsin state court socked the company with the monster award in a case alleging that PepsiCo stole the idea to bottle and sell purified water from two Wisconsin men.

Now the company is scrambling to salvage the situation. The damages award was handed down on Sept. 30. PepsiCo filed motions to vacate the order and dismiss the claims on Oct. 13, saying it wasn't even aware of the lawsuit until Oct. 6.
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And you thought YOUR company's bureaucracy was bad. :shock:
 
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According to the article:

In court papers, PepsiCo claims it first received a legal document related to the case from the North Carolina agent on Sept. 15 when a copy of a co-defendant's letter was forwarded to Deputy General Counsel Tom Tamoney in PepsiCo's law department. Tamoney's secretary, Kathy Henry, put the letter aside and didn't tell anyone about it because she was "so busy preparing for a board meeting," PepsiCo said in its Oct. 13 motion to vacate.
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:doh
That's gotta be up there as one of the most costly mistakes a secretary has ever made.
 
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Kandahar said:
According to the article:



:doh
That's gotta be up there as one of the most costly mistakes a secretary has ever made.
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No No. It just doesn't work that way. It's can't work that way. Why would it work that way...
 
Arch Enemy said:
No No. It just doesn't work that way. It's can't work that way. Why would it work that way...
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Depressingly, that's exactly how it works.

Some more details of the ****ups:

A Series of Unfortunate Events Leads to $1.26 Billion Judgment - Law Blog - WSJ

Another breakdown, according to the AmLaw story: Lawyers for PepsiCo distributors Wis-Pak Inc. and Carolina Canners Inc. made court appearances in June and July. PepsiCo was at a loss to explain why it hadn’t heard about the case from them. “It’s just another unfortunate thing that didn’t come together,” Jacuzzi said.

In seeking to dismiss the case, PepsiCo argues that the statute of limitations should preclude the lawsuit. Furthermore, “the $1.26 billion judgment that has been entered is unprecedented in size and justice requires that PepsiCo have a chance to defend itself,” the company said.

The lead plaintiffs lawyer, David Van Dyke of Chicago-based Cassiday Schade, told the National Law Journal that Wisconsin courts have been “pretty clear that they don’t like” vacating default judgments. “There is a possibly that a judge may say we’re going to litigate the damages aspect of it,” Van Dyke said.
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I'd be surprised if the ruling stands. Setting aside the sheer enormity of it, the statute of limitations argument looks pretty good. The plaintiffs filed suit in April of 2009, arguing that Pepsi stole the idea that they had given them in 1981.
 
I can't believe we're actually discussing who invented bottled water-- Only in America.
 
I would bet that this will be 0ver turned. It was awarded only because they failed to show and if they can show it was because of malpractice they have a good case to get it thrown out. They have plenty of money to fight it with.
 
RightinNYC said:
Depressingly, that's exactly how it works.

Some more details of the ****ups:

A Series of Unfortunate Events Leads to $1.26 Billion Judgment - Law Blog - WSJ



I'd be surprised if the ruling stands. Setting aside the sheer enormity of it, the statute of limitations argument looks pretty good. The plaintiffs filed suit in April of 2009, arguing that Pepsi stole the idea that they had given them in 1981.
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Unfortunate my ass!

Pepsi failed to show up for court and they can live with the consequences.

It's called thief's justice.

Learn to like it.
 
Vader said:
Unfortunate my ass!

Pepsi failed to show up for court and they can live with the consequences.

It's called thief's justice.

Learn to like it.
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I don't see how you can prove that you were the first to bottle water.
 
Vader said:
Unfortunate my ass!

Pepsi failed to show up for court and they can live with the consequences.

It's called thief's justice.

Learn to like it.
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It's called "I don't know a damn about the law but can throw out populist rants with the best of them." This is seriously a tired shtick.
 
apdst said:
And, they've probably made 50 billion off the idea. Let's see, go ahead and settle for 1.26 billion and make a 48.74 billion profit. I would take that. Everybody wins.
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How does Pepsi win by paying out $1.26B that they might not have to pay out?

If they fought this and won, it would seem like they would "win" even more, right?
 
RightinNYC said:
How does Pepsi win by paying out $1.26B that they might not have to pay out?

If they fought this and won, it would seem like they would "win" even more, right?
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If they fought it, they might lose and have to pay more. They might fool around and have to pay 5 billion. As it stands now, they make the whole thing go away for less than 10% of their earnings from stealing the idea. Case closed, gone, never to return. The Wisconsin guys are rich beyond their wildest dreams, the lawsuit goes away, Pepsico gets to keep producing the product and make a 90%+ profit in the process. Everybody wins.


Wanna know the best part? They can write off the lawyer fees on their taxes...LMAO!!!! They might even be able to write off the 1.26 billion, but I don't know.
 
apdst said:
If they fought it, they might lose and have to pay more. They might fool around and have to pay 5 billion.
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That's not how lawsuits work. The $1.26B is a default judgment. There is no way that any eventual award could be larger.

As it stands now, they make the whole thing go away for less than 10% of their earnings from stealing the idea. Case closed, gone, never to return. The Wisconsin guys are rich beyond their wildest dreams, the lawsuit goes away, Pepsico gets to keep producing the product and make a 90%+ profit in the process. Everybody wins.
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Or they could pay a few competent lawyers a couple mil to have a very good chance of making the entire thing go away, resulting in savings of approximately $1.258 billion. Which do you think makes more business sense?
 
RightinNYC said:
That's not how lawsuits work. The $1.26B is a default judgment. There is no way that any eventual award could be larger.
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Ok, so show up, or not, the worst thing that could happen is that Pepsico is going to have to pay 1.26 billion. Why spend money on lawyers, when you can go ahead and cough up less than 10% of your profits to make this go away, forever.



Or they could pay a few competent lawyers a couple mil to have a very good chance of making the entire thing go away, resulting in savings of approximately $1.258 billion. Which do you think makes more business sense?
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or, they could pay some cracker-jack lawyers a couple mil and wind up paying the 1.26 billion, anyway. It goes back to what I was saying in another thread about, "risk". There's not mcuh difference between 1.26 and 1.258. I would go ahead and pay the 1.26 and be done with it. Take my 48.74 billion and go on about my business. Not only does the lawsuit go away, all the bad publicity goes away, too.
 
apdst said:
Ok, so show up, or not, the worst thing that could happen is that Pepsico is going to have to pay 1.26 billion. Why spend money on lawyers, when you can go ahead and cough up less than 10% of your profits to make this go away, forever.

or, they could pay some cracker-jack lawyers a couple mil and wind up paying the 1.26 billion, anyway. It goes back to what I was saying in another thread about, "risk". There's not mcuh difference between 1.26 and 1.258. I would go ahead and pay the 1.26 and be done with it. Take my 48.74 billion and go on about my business. Not only does the lawsuit go away, all the bad publicity goes away, too.
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I want to be sure about what you're saying, so you don't complain that I'm mischaracterizing your statement later on: You wouldn't spend $2 million to fight a lawsuit in order to have a strong chance at winning $1.26 billion?
 
RightinNYC said:
I want to be sure about what you're saying, so you don't complain that I'm mischaracterizing your statement later on: You wouldn't spend $2 million to fight a lawsuit in order to have a strong chance at winning $1.26 billion?
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If I had to spend 1.26 billion, to make 48.7 billion, then no, I wouldn't. Please, don't forget the 48.7 billion part. And, I don't know if they made 48.7 billion off the deal, but if they're willing to just write off 1.26 billion like that, you can bet your buns that they made far more than 1.26 billion in profits.
 
apdst said:
If I had to spend 1.26 billion, to make 48.7 billion, then no, I wouldn't. Please, don't forget the 48.7 billion part. And, I don't know if they made 48.7 billion off the deal, but if they're willing to just write off 1.26 billion like that, you can bet your buns that they made far more than 1.26 billion in profits.
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Why should I remember the $48 billion number? You literally pulled it out of your ass.

Furthermore, they weren't "willing to just write off 1.26 billion." Did you read the article? Or any posts in the thread?

Finally, none of that bears on my question: You wouldn't spend $2 million to fight a lawsuit in order to have a strong chance at winning $1.26 billion?
 
RightinNYC said:
Why should I remember the $48 billion number? You literally pulled it out of your ass.

Furthermore, they weren't "willing to just write off 1.26 billion." Did you read the article? Or any posts in the thread?
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Finally, none of that bears on my question: You wouldn't spend $2 million to fight a lawsuit in order to have a strong chance at winning $1.26 billion?
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They chose not to show up to court. So, obviously, that 1.26 billion was chump change, in their eyes. That means that the money they made from stealing the idea + the money made from the bad press going away = a helluva lot more than 1.26 billion.
 
apdst said:
They chose not to show up to court. So, obviously, that 1.26 billion was chump change, in their eyes. That means that the money they made from stealing the idea + the money made from the bad press going away = a helluva lot more than 1.26 billion.
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I'll give you one last chance to read the article before I give up on this thread as well.

(Hint: It involves their "choice" not to show up to court.)
 
RightinNYC said:
I'll give you one last chance to read the article before I give up on this thread as well.

(Hint: It involves their "choice" not to show up to court.)
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Game - Set- Match.

You're still a tool-bag though.
 
apdst said:
They chose not to show up to court. So, obviously, that 1.26 billion was chump change, in their eyes.
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Read the article. They didn't CHOOSE not to show up; they screwed up because the legal documents got lost in the corporate bureaucracy.

apdst said:
That means that the money they made from stealing the idea + the money made from the bad press going away = a helluva lot more than 1.26 billion.
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I hope you don't ever plan on being a CEO.
 
RightinNYC said:
It's called "I don't know a damn about the law but can throw out populist rants with the best of them." This is seriously a tired shtick.
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I forgotten more about the law then you will ever know.

Pepsi is trying to save it's sorry ass from paying out for failing to appear.

You right-wing business peoples may not like it ... BUT EVEN YOU ARE SUBJECT TO THE LAW.

If you want to defend yourself, SHOW UP. If not, SHUT UP and accept the consequences.
 
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