An appeals court in New Jersey upholds a $2.7 million judgment against 2 Biomet subsidiaries in a royalties dispute with spine surgeon Dr. Neil Kahanovitz.
Two Biomet subsidiaries are on the hook for some $2.7 million in royalty payments to a prominent spine surgeon it stopped paying in 2008, after a New Jersey appeals court upheld a lower court’s ruling in Dr. Neil Kahanovitz’s favor.
Kahanovitz, the former president of the North American Spine Society, sued Biomet units Electro-Biology Inc. and EBI LLC, winning a breach of contract claim on appeal in 2011. He’d inked a royalties deal worth $250,000 a year in 1992, but stopped actively consulting for them in YY, according to the decision by the New Jersey Superior Court’s Appellate Division.
The contract called for the payments to continue “during the term of this agreement and for so long as Kahanovitz is performing services within the agreement field,” according to the appeals court, with the contract set to expire in November 2008.