Buettner Trial: Claims For Billions Fail

In a lawsuit against Bertelsmann AG, two former AOL Germany executives, Jan Henric Buettner and Andreas von Blottnitz, have failed to recover their claim for billions of dollars in damages from a Santa Barbara (California) Superior Court jury. Buettner and von Blottnitz had at times claimed they were owed $5 billion, then reduced their demand to $3.5 billion. The jury found they should each recover 104,655,000 euros in damages.

The judge made clear that he will not enter final judgment until after next week's hearing on the jury's verdict. Bertelsmann now awaits the final judgment and reserves the right to appeal.

The plaintiffs based their claim on alleged promises of an equity stake in either AOL Europe or one of its subsidiaries, AOL Germany. Plaintiffs' claims were not supported by the language of their written German-language employment agreements, but they argued to the jury that these German contracts could be "translated" to provide them equity.

Bertelsmann General Counsel Ulrich Koch said: "The jury's decision only complies with the plaintiffs' demands to a fraction of what they sought. Still, it does not reflect the facts or German law, which applied to the case. The plaintiffs were managing directors hired as employees by the Bertelsmann group and were generously compensated for their work. There never was a joint venture between plaintiffs and Bertelsmann."

During the course of the trial, many claims made by the plaintiffs in their complaint were exposed as incorrect and as distortions of the actual events.