Los Angeles: In one of the largest verdicts in the US in a decade, four brothers from India have been awarded $7 billion after a 20-year legal battle with a fifth brother over alleged breach of a family partnership agreement. After a five-month trial, a jury Monday ordered Haresh Jogani to pay his brothers Shashikant, Rajesh, Chetan and Shailesh Jogani more than $2.5 billion in damages and to divide up shares of their Southern California property empire.
In total, the Los Angeles Superior Court jury awarded the four successful brothers $2.5 billion in monetary damages and more than $4.5 billion in property interests, making the award one of the largest in the United States this year, according to the plaintiffs’ attorneys.
The case arose from a conflict involving the siblings, all from India, concerning more than 170 apartment buildings incorporating 17,000 units, primarily in the San Fernando Valley.
One of the brothers, Haresh Jogani, is listed on paper as the owner of the buildings. His attorneys maintained that there was no oral partnership as his siblings alleged and that he was the sole owner of the real estate portfolio.
But his brothers contended to the contrary and the jury agreed with them, determining that the defendant owed brothers Rajesh Jogani and Chetan Jogani $750 million in damages, plus real estate interests valued at more than $1 billion. “We are grateful to the jurors for their decision,” said attorney Peter Ross of Ross LLP, who represented Rajesh and Chetan Jogani. “Thanks to them, a long-standing wrong has been corrected, and this brother-against-brother war can come to an end.”
Shashikant Jogani, who was represented by another law firm, received the biggest payout; the jury awarded him $4.75 billion, and the fifth brother, Shailesh, received $570 million.
The jury also found that prevailing brothers Rajesh, Chetan and Shashikant are entitled to punitive damages.
The Jogani family from Gujarat, India, built a fortune in the global diamond trade, establishing outposts in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America.
Shashikant “Shashi” Jogani moved at age 22 in 1969 to California, where he began a solo firm in the gem business and started to build a property portfolio, according to a complaint he filed in 2003.
The properties suffered losses in the recession of the early 1990s, which worsened after the 1994 Northridge Earthquake killed 16 people in one of his buildings, leading Shashi to bring in his brothers as partners.
The firm then embarked on a buying spree that eventually built the portfolio to roughly 17,000 apartment units with the brothers collaborating until Haresh “forcibly removed” his sibling from managing the firm and refused to pay him, according to Shashi Jogani’s complaint.
