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Colectivo de Cuba Underground

Purolite should have sued the US goverment for the Trading With the Enemy Act

Morgan Lewis & Bockius defeated today a $20 million breach of contract claim brought by a former client.

The 12 jurors in Bro-Tech v. Morgan Lewis & Bockius came back just before noon after three and a half hours of deliberations over two days. They were unanimous in their defense verdict.

While the jury found that Bro-Tech — operating as Purolite — and its owners Don and Stefan Brodie properly brought the suit within the four-year statute of limitations, they said Morgan Lewis did not breach its contract with the Brodies by advising them to continue selling their water filitration products to companies in Cuba.

The case was held before Judge Albert W. Sheppard in Philadelphia’s Commerce Court Program.

The verdict is a win for Morgan Lewis as well as its counsel, William J. O’Brien and Nancy Gellman of Conrad O’Brien Gellman & Rohn.

“We are very pleased that the members of the jury unanimously recognized that Morgan Lewis acted appropriately and breached no duty to the firm’s former client,” Morgan Lewis’ general counsel, Michael Bloom, said in a statement.

Marc E. Kasowitz of Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman in New York represented the Brodies and Purolite at trial. He had returned to New York and was not in court for the verdict. His colleague, Aaron Marks, said they were disappointed with the verdict and still deciding whether they would appeal.

Stefan Brodie found out from auditing firm Deloitte & Touche in 1993 that Purolite’s Canadian office had made sales to Cuba. He thought those sales should stop but first sought the advice of his longtime counsel at Morgan Lewis, according Kasowitz.

“They didn’t tell him to stop selling to Cuba but that he had to continue selling,” Kasowitz said in the opening statements of the two and a half week-long trial. “That advice was flat out wrong.”

He said the U.S. Trading With the Enemy Act is perfectly clear that no U.S.-based company or person or any U.S.-owned company operating outside of the country can sell to Cuba. He said that should have been clear to an expert attorney in international trade law.

Kasowitz said the firm told the Brodies that Canada and the United Kingdom — where Purolite had another office — didn’t agree with the U.S. embargo on Cuba and created “blocking orders” that prohibited companies from stopping sales to Cuba if the reason was to comply with the U.S. embargo.

Morgan Lewis told the Brodies, Kasowitz said, that as long as there was no U.S. involvement in the sales from the Canadian or England office to Cuba, then the company could not get into trouble.

O’Brien said the firm told the Brodies that it could not sell to Cuba and should send a memo to its offices stating that advice.

“How do you bring a lawsuit against a law firm because you didn’t follow their advice?” O’Brien questioned in his opening statement.

He said Purolite couldn’t force its Canadian employees to break that country’s laws but that Morgan Lewis advised Purolite to follow the U.S. laws and allow the Canadian and United Kingdom workers to follow theirs.