Former Market Basket CEO Arthur T. Demoulas filed a counterclaim Wednesday towards the board of the corporate after his firing final month.
“(Demoulas) is now answering their suit and filing a counterclaim,” representatives for Demoulas stated. “He is not seeking monetary damages but for the court to find that the board’s actions were unlawful and to reinstate him.”
Demoulas was fired by the Market Basket Board on Sept. 9, after a contentious mediation and rocky historical past between the events.
The board instantly filed a 35-page lawsuit within the Delaware Courtroom of Chancery towards the CEO claiming he exercised “unfettered discretion” whereas “ignoring and stonewalling the Market Basket Board.”
In his 90-page response Wednesday, Demoulas answered the board’s claims and filed counter claims towards them.
These embrace claims the board “manufactured allegations of work stoppage and attempt to humiliate Mr. Demoulas and his team,” points with “lack of independent” or “shallow” investigations, and that his firing was associated to his sisters “push for cash and control.”
The submitting states Demoulas’s three sisters have “family and/or business connections” to the board members.
“The Director-Plaintiffs’ unlawful actions were not motivated by any rational business purpose or to advance the Company’s best interests,” the submitting reads, “but instead were taken at the behest of Mr. Demoulas’s three sisters and their family members, who together own ~60% of DSM and to whom the Director-Plaintiffs are beholden, to further the Sisters’ goals in their family infighting with Mr. Demoulas and the family’s trust litigation pending in Massachusetts.”
The previous CEO holds 28.4% of the corporate’s inventory, whereas the remaining 10.3% is held in a belief for the 14 grandchildren of the 4 siblings, in line with courtroom filings.
In a response Wednesday, the board known as the previous CEO’s allegations “outlandish and untrue” and stated they “exercised independent business judgment in dealing with Mr. Demoulas and (are) not beholden to anyone.”
The board’s assertion repeated allegations Demoulas shut them out of all the pieces from budgets and huge expenditures to coming into Market Basket headquarters and assembly with senior workers. The board additionally accused the previous CEO of avoiding making the outcomes of an unbiased investigation into the state of affairs public.
“Rather than cooperate and accept accountability in his role as CEO of Market Basket, Mr. Demoulas has retained a team of lawyers to hurl untrue accusations at his family and the Board,” the board said. “That is his decision, and it is truly an unfortunate one.”
Demoulas was final ousted from the corporate throughout a household energy battle in 2014, resulting in protests from hundreds of the corporate’s staff. He finally regained management of the corporate by shopping for out his cousins in a $1.6 billion deal.
“Mr. Demoulas acknowledges that it is rare to challenge a board of directors’ decision about to whom it delegates day-to-day management,” the countersuit submitting states. “However, the systematic actions of the Director-Plaintiffs at the Sisters’ direction for personal rather than business reasons make this case unique.”
The board stated they’re “confident in its position.”
The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in Delaware in mid-December, in line with the board of administrators.
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