A jury on Aug. 31 awarded a Texas orthopedic surgeon $7.8M after his business partner locked him out of a stem cell clinic they jointly owned and siphoned off assets to a competing clinic established at the same site.
The jury determined that in 2018 Neil Riordan, PhD, conspired to lock Wade McKenna, DO, out of his ownership stake in the Riordan-McKenna Institute, a regenerative medicine clinic in Southlake, Texas, according to Boyd, Powers & Williamson, the law firm representing Dr. McKenna.
Dr. Riordan transferred Riordan-McKenna Institute assets to another company he owned and continued to operate the clinic at the same location using the RMI initials, but he removed Dr. McKenna's name and began operating as the "Riordan Medical Institute."
The jury reached a breach of fiduciary duty verdict, affirming that Dr. McKenna was not fairly compensated for those assets and the revenue generated by Dr. Riordan's competing clinic.
The $7.8 million awarded to Dr. McKenna included $5 million in punitive damages.