Replies to post #406953 on Amarin Corp Plc (AMRN)

[lizzy241]

marjac, thanks for posting the km vs amarin lawsuit.
Personally, I had an experience with the third partner of a company my husband had started with 2 other partners. The third partner was fired/walked off the job and went back to being a full time radiologist. My husband declared in an SEC filing that the company was better off without him because of blah blah. LOL.
The third partner declared war on the company and the CEO, my husband. Well about a year into the lawsuit my husband passed away. I was stuck with dealing with the second partner who was useless, (long story) and the lawyers. After a few years the court determined that the company was liable for defamation of character, the third x-partner kept his founder's stock. To stop the x partner from selling his stock everytime the stock made a move I made an offer to buy his shares. He accepted. The company had to pay his legal fees. It was nasty. I hate to say this but after my experience with the company's lawsuit, KM may have a defamation win and Amarin may have to pay his fees plus some kind of settlement.

[Birdbrain Ideas]

I'm not a lawyer, but I thought that you have to prove that statements were wrong and defamatory to win a defamation lawsuit. And I also thought it's a higher burden for a public figure to win a defamation case because criticism, no matter how fierce, kind of goes with the territory. As the head of the company and the featured speaker at every conference and during earnings calls, KM is a public figure. The president of a company gets a lot of praise, whether he or she is good or bad, and sometimes angry or mean criticism comes too. If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. He should never again head a company.

It seems that KM thinks it was unlawful for Sarissa to attack his reputation and his work at Amarin in the proxy fight. But didn't it go both ways? I assume Sarissa will respond to this lawsuit with a defamation claim of its own, citing all kinds of nasty things Amarin said about it. For instance, didn't Amarin claim that Sarissa's nominees for the Board were unqualified? If a jury believed they were qualified, that would seem to be on a par with some of the claims KM makes against Sarissa in this lawsuit. And didn't Amarin claim that contracts will be lost and the company will be a disaster if Sarissa wins?

In bold print, the lawsuit cites the fact that Sarissa said the board acted in bad faith and engaged in numerous breaches of its fiduciary duties and violations of law. But it also notes that Sarissa begins the claim by saying "we believe." Even somebody who doesn't know what laws are out there can claim they "believe" laws are broken when they see somebody throw a piece of garbage on the street or when a motorist doesn't stop sufficiently for a stop sign. Is it defamation if, in fact, a law wasn't broken? Doubtful.

KM's being a baby. If he truly cared about his reputation, he would have taken Sarissa up on its offer for him to stay in charge and he would have proven to them that he is a great leader. Instead, he walked into the meeting and quit, seemingly without even listening to why they wanted him to remain as the president.