Fight goes on for Sarasota's Fishman

For the second time in two years, Sarasota entrepreneur Jordan Fishman has won courtroom vindication in a business case that has consumed his life since 2005.

Fishman's next challenge: To get the defendants to pay him the tens of millions of dollars he's owed.

The case, which has now played out in courtrooms in Sarasota and Alexandria, Va., is a complicated tale of corporate espionage and copyright infringement. Fishman, president of Tire Engineering and Distribution, accused a former employee and overseas competitors of stealing documents regarding the specialized tires for underground mining vehicles his company has made since the 1960s. (See Business Review, July 18, 2008.)

“We felt these people knowingly stole what we had worked for all our lives,” Fishman tells Coffee Talk. “They thought they could get away with it. Turns out they couldn't.”

Vindication, however, didn't come cheap: Fishman, 72, estimates he has spent $3 million on the case, which covers everything from depositions and expert testimony to paperwork and attorney's fees. He discovered the theft in 2005.

The latest turn in the case came July 21, when a federal judge upheld a $26 million jury verdict won by Fishman and his lawyers earlier this year. Fishman also previously won a $59 million judgment in a case with similar facts in Sarasota County Circuit Court; that verdict was recently overturned, a decision Fishman is appealing.

The jury in the more recent case, heard in federal court in Alexandria, found that the defendants, Shandong Linglong Rubber Co., Ltd. of China and Dubai-based Al Dobowi Tyre Co., conspired with a former Tire Engineering employee to systematically steal Fishman's blueprints, price memos and other key data.

Even more vindication arrived for Fishman when a former co-conspirator in the case, John Canning, testified in the trial about the defendants. “Al Dobowi didn't believe Jordan Fishman would ever get this case to court,” Canning testified, according to court records. “They believed he would die or run out of money first.”

Still, while Fishman relishes his moral victories, the issue of actually getting any money from the defendants lingers. The defendants in the federal case have until mid-August to appeal, while the appeal in the $59 million judgment from 2008 against other entities could be tied up for more months, if not years.

Of course, even if the appeals are exhausted, extracting money from foreign companies, especially ones in China and Dubai, could prove to be another long-term challenge.

“We will go after the money,” vows Fishman. “Wherever in the world we have to go, that's where we will go.”