A Williamson County company says it was sued out of spite, and now what began with an upset customer suing over an $18,000 print center purchase has ballooned into a $1.5 million countersuit.
Bren Instruments, of College Grove, filed suit last month in Williamson County Circuit Court against Wet Enterprises Inc., a Sun Valley, Calif., company best known for designing the water fountains at the Bellagio hotel and casino in Las Vegas.
Wet Enterprises had sued Bren and owners Murray Wilhoite and Tom Wilhoite in November 2008 in U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, saying the company misrepresented the capabilities of an $18,000 color print cutter that Wet bought in February. Wet dropped the lawsuit in August.
In its countersuit, Bren claims to know why the lawsuit was dropped: Wet had already exacted its pound of flesh.
Bren said Wet Enterprises owner Mark Fuller "made a statement at a trade show to the effect that he was maintaining the lawsuit until such time as (Bren Instruments) had expended more money on legal fees that he had paid them for the printer. ... True to his word, the lawsuit ... was in fact dismissed after the plaintiffs had incurred such legal expenses."
Bren claims that it incurred legal fees of about $25,000 while fighting Wet's lawsuit, suffered a loss of reputation valued at $250,000, and was forced to forgo business expansion while it diverted funds to the lawsuit. It says that represented another $250,000 loss. Bren is suing to recover those amounts, as well as another $1 million in punitive damages due to "actual malice."
In its original suit, Wet said that Bren misrepresented the capabilities of its print cutter, leaving Wet unable to quickly print "UL" safety labels capable of affixing to outdoor and underwater components. Wet says that because of printer problems, it was forced to ship items to customers without the labels, then hire technicians to affix the labels at various job sites worldwide.
But Tim Hatton, Bren's attorney, said the machine worked fine. The problem was that nobody at Wet could figure out how to use it, despite Bren's attempts to train them. Hatton said that before delivering the machine, Bren had used it to print labels for Wet without any issue.
Robert L. Sullivan of Loeb and Loeb LLC filed a motion Tuesday on behalf of Wet to have Bren's lawsuit moved to U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee. He has not returned a call for comment.
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