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A $75 million business breach of contract award to Biomedical Systems Corp. is the largest such jury verdict in nearly 20 years in St. Louis, according to Verdict Reporter Inc.
The civil verdict, handed down April 9 in U.S. District Court, ordered GE Marquette Medical Systems Inc. to pay actual damages to Biomedical, its joint venture partner. The lawsuit asserted that Biomedical was poised to tap into a huge, homebased fetal monitoring market until GE Marquette violated its portion of a technology agreement.
The $75 million is about four times the $18.5 million in revenue generated last year at Biomedical, a medical monitoring company founded by Raymond Barrett in 1975 and headquartered in West Port Plaza.
The closest similar jury awards were less than a third that size - one for $20 million in 1999 and one for $17.1 million in 1986, said Judy Riley, president of Verdict Reporter, a jury verdict reporting service that covers courts in the St. Louis region.
While the dollar amount of the verdict is significant in a business-to-business lawsuit, Biomedical had sought...