AngioDynamics wins Round 5 against Biolitec

The First Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has denied Biolitec‘s fifth appeal of a $70 million contempt order, saying that the company essentially copied-and-pasted arguments from a previous appeal.

The ruling is part of a long-running spat with AngioDynamics (NSDQ:ANGO).

In 2014, Judge Michael Ponsor of the U.S. District Court for Massachusetts slapped Biolitec with a contempt ruling after finding that it went through with an enjoined merger with an Austrian subsidiary, despite being told not to by the courts.

Ponsor trebled the $23.2 million awarded to AngioDynamics by a New York court in 2012, adding escalating fines and issuing an arrest warrant for ex-Biolitec CEO Wolfgang Neuberger.

Biolitec appealed Ponsor’s decision and the appeals court affirmed the lower court’s judgement, while adding an approximate-$75 million cap to the fines.

In July 2015, Biolitec took its case to the Supreme Court with a certiorari petition which was later denied by the high court.

In the appeals court’s latest ruling, the panel of judges wrote that “all the defendants have done is to restate previous arguments that have been rejected.”

“In fact, the section of Defendants’ brief on this appeal that articulates Defendants’ claim of a purported constitutional violation is an almost word-for-word reiteration of the section of Defendants’ Biolitec IV brief that presented Defendants’ argument that the district court did not
have authority to impose contempt sanctions,” the court wrote.

The company is still on the hook for $70 million. The court also denied AngioDynamic’s bid for sanctions, giving Biolitec’s counsel the benefit of the doubt.

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