Strata Skin Sciences (NSDQ:SSKN) has filed a motion for contempt against Ra Medical (NYSE:RMED) in an ongoing legal battle in which Ra Medical claims Strata and its board chair Uri Geiger made misleading and disparaging statements to financial partners in the time frame surrounding Ra Medical’s initial public offering.
In their complaint, Horsham Township, Penn.-based Strata Skin Sciences claims that Carlsbad, Calif.-based Ra Medical both ignored a previous court decision in its most recent filing against Strata and that Ra is violating a confidentiality order both companies entered last December.
Strata Skin Sciences claims that earlier in the legal battle, the Court of Common Please for Montgomery County, Penn., rejected an argument from Ra Medical claiming that the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California had exclusive jurisdiction over matters.
Despite the rejection, Strata Skin Sciences claims Ra Medical “ignored this Court’s decision and filed a new action against [Strata] in California,” according to an SEC filing.
The confidentiality order concerned certain confidential information and was agreed to by both companies “in order to ensure that confidential information and documents produced in this action would not be misused,” according to the filing.
Strata claims that Ra Medical violated that agreement by supplying the confidential documents to counsel “not authorized to receive the documents because they are not counsel in this action” and by publicly filing the confidential documents in their recent complaint.
“[Strata Skin Sciences] request the Court find Ra in contempt of the Court’s Confidentiality Order and require Ra to compensate Plaintiffs for the violation, including the payment of [Strata’s] costs and attorneys’ fees related to bringing the Motion for Contempt, and preclude Ra from utilizing confidential information produced in this litigation for any purpose other than this matter,” the company wrote in a legal brief in support of the motion for contempt.
Earlier this month, Ra Medical filed a suit against Strata Skin Sciences and its board chair Uri Geiger claiming that the parties “undertook a campaign of false, misleading and disparaging statements” to the company’s financial partners before, during and after its initial public offering.
