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Indianapolis businessman Fred Klipsch is in a court battle to win back ownership of the Klipsch Professional loudspeaker business, which has traded hands like a hot potato and gone insolvent since he sold it in 1992.
Klipsch filed a lawsuit in Marion County Circuit Court last month charging New York-based Consolidated Technology Group Ltd. agreed this spring to sell him the company, then reneged at the last minute and instead sold it to the company's chief financial officer.
Klipsch Professional, with 1996 sales of $5.6 million, is small compared with the Klipsch home-speaker business, Klipsch Inc. That business, which Fred Klipsch continues to control, has annual revenue of $40 million to $50 million.
But Klipsch and his lawyers say they are fighting for the company largely because they want to protect the integrity of the Klipsch brand name. Fred Klipsch believes the quality of the products has declined since he sold the business to focus on the more lucrative home market.
"It's a failed company," said Rusty Denton, an attorney at Bingham Summers Welsh & Spilman representing Klipsch. "They took a good company and turned it into an insolvent company. To have your name associated with that is unacceptable to Klipsch."
Klipsch is chief executive officer of Klipsch Lanham Investments, whose holdings include the Klipsch home-speaker business, car-speaker manufacturer Pyle Manufacturing LLC, health care property developer Hospital Affiliates Development Corp. and the Overhead Door companies in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne, Cincinnati and northwest Indiana.
He and his wife, Judy, bought the fabled...