``From the Court papers I cannot tell if you there is a case for a countersuit but I will tell you that as a practical matter a countersuit will be filed. I am not even sure from these papers that the original complaint, which is what we are looking at, has any validity. The problem with trying to access the validity of case from the complaint is that you cannot. The reason for that is that at this stage of the litigation, it is all fluff put up by the plaintiff. It will not be until the case gets into the discovery phase (i.e., depositions and interrogatories and so forth) that any real assessment of the validity or value of a case can be made.

The way I read it is that they want their contract value ($750K) plus interest plus attorneys fees and costs and punitive damages. It is the rare case that in a contract dispute that the entire contract value is recovered. It is even more rare that punitive damages are allowed. Punitive damages are meant to punish a defendant such as the tobacco industry for hiding information or in the pharmaceutical drug industry as you have no doubt read about in the newspapers.

This case is in its infancy. It could go 500 different ways. They could settle tomorrow or the case could get thrown out of court on technical grounds tomorrow. There is simply no way to predict at this point, especially not knowing any of the detailed background which I am sure we will not be able to find on the web.``