Solely two weeks after Mike Lynch and his daughter Hannah died in a superyacht accident off the coast of Sicily, Hewlett Packard Enterprises has vowed to press forward with a excessive court docket lawsuit towards the family of the late British tech entrepreneur.
The Silicon Valley big mentioned in an announcement it might comply with the authorized proceedings “by to their conclusion.” The agency is looking for damages of as much as $4bn.
HP’s case pertains to its $11bn acquisition of Lynch’s startup, Autonomy, again in 2011. Following the deal, HP accused Autonomy’s management of fraudulently inflating the corporate’s worth, resulting in a 12-year authorized battle.
In June, Lynch was acquitted on all prices in a San Francisco court docket. Nevertheless, he nonetheless wasn’t utterly off the hook. In 2022, HP received a separate case towards Lynch in the UK that’s nonetheless ongoing.
A ultimate ruling is anticipated quickly, though the choose overseeing the case wrote in 2022 that he anticipated ultimate damages to be “considerably much less” than the $4bn HP sought.
Will HP actually go after Lynch’s widow?
Lynch’s widow, Angela Bacares, was amongst fifteen others that survived the sinking of the superyacht, the Bayesian, in the early hours of August 19. The widow might now be chargeable for the damages declare made towards her husband.
Benson Varghese, a US prison defence lawyer, advised TNW that whereas HP is “legally justified,” the tech firm “should take into account the ethical and reputational implications of such a transfer.”
“If HP decides to drop the lawsuit, it would keep away from detrimental publicity and align itself as a compassionate entity. On the flip aspect, stakeholders would possibly view this as a failure to uphold their fiduciary duties. It’s a tightrope stroll.”
“But it surely’s a fragile steadiness,” he continued. “Within the courtroom of public opinion, empathy can usually weigh greater than authorized rightness.”
Lynch was holidaying in Sicily having fun with his newfound freedom when catastrophe struck. Italian and British authorities are presently investigating what precipitated the Bayesian — which one boat knowledgeable known as “unsinkable” — to plunge to the depths of the Mediterranean in a matter of minutes. Some reviews counsel that the boat could have been struck by a waterspout, breaking the mast and inflicting the vessel to capsize.
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