A federal judge on Nov. 14 filed an order awarding a medical distributor $2.2 million in fees and sanctioning an opposing party approximately $70,000 in a breach of contract case against the medical equipment maker Stryker Corporation.
The case involves a dispute between a former medical distributor, ORP Surgical, LLP, and Stryker. ORP alleged Stryker breached two contracts when it failed to pay restriction payments following the termination of the contracts and further breached one of the contracts by soliciting ORP’s sales representatives.
It was originally tried in December 2021 and March 2022, with the court issuing its findings in May 2022.
In May, Law Week reported ORP and Stryker had two contracts, a “joint contract” and a “trauma contract,” granting ORP the right to sell Stryker joint replacement products and trauma products, both of which required ORP to refrain from selling competing products if the contracts were terminated. In return, Stryker had to pay “restriction payments” equal to ORP’s commissions from Stryker sales in the last year of the contract.
Stryker was already ordered to pay about $4.75 million in May, with the court awarding ORP just over $1 million in damages for failing to provide restriction payments following the termination of a joint contract and around $3.7 million in damages for failing to provide restriction payments following the termination of the trauma contract. The cost of attorney’s fees, sanction, costs and prejudgment interest were addressed at an Oct. 12 hearing.
U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson on Nov. 14, ordered Stryker to pay ORP the fees and sanctions. Alongside those costs, the order included $98,366.22 in costs and $446,456.12 in prejudgment interest.