The highest court in Massachusetts largely denied
St. Jude Medical‘s (NYSE:STJ) bid to overturn the few portions of a lower court’s decision that didn’t go its way in its long-running laser technology spat with Volcano (NSDQ:VOLC).
The Mass. Supreme Judicial Court last week ruled to uphold the court’s decision to exclude 1 of St. Jude’s expert witnesses on the grounds that his testimony was too speculative, according to court documents. The Bay State high court also declined to impose a permanent injunction against Volcano, but granted St. Jude’s move for declaratory relief, according to the documents.
Before its 2010 acquisition by St. Jude, LightLab launched a suit against Billerica, Mass.-based Axsun accusing it of violating a contract the companies signed prior to Axsun’s 2008 acquisition by San Diego-based Volcano. A Mass. Superior Court jury found that Axsun violated that contract, which covers the company’s agreement to supply tunable lasers to LightLab until 2016, and that Volcano interfered with LightLab’s business relationship with Axsun.
The companies agreed that Axsun would pay damages of $200,000 during the second phase of the trial, but no damages have yet been awarded. According to the terms of the deal, Axsun also agreed not to sell any of its lasers for use in other cardiology imaging applications during the life of the contract. Volcano does not have any products that use Axsun’s technology, a company spokeswoman told MassDevice.com at the time.
In its July 28 ruling, the Supreme Judicial Court decided that the lower court was correct in excluding the testimony of Roy Weinstein, LightLab’s expert witness on lost profits damages, because "it was not based on a demonstrated reliable methodology capable of being validated and tested," according to the documents.
But the Supremes went along with St. Jude’s bid for declaratory relief, ruling that Lightlab is entitled to have a declaration inserted into the record reflecting the ban on Axsun supplying tunable lasers to Volcano "in all fields of use, and not just in the field of human coronary artery imaging" while the contract is in effect, according to the documents.
