US realty tycoon Haresh Jogani loses 21-year-old case, to pay brothers Rs 20k Cr

A US court has settled a 21-year-old property dispute between five Indian-origin brothers in that country by ordering billionaire Haresh Jogani to pay his bothers $2.5 billion (Rs 20,000 crore) in damages after finding him guilty of not honouring an oral contract.

The source of the dispute was a multi-billion-dollar empire of 17,000 apartments in Southern California. Haresh has also been ordered to split up the shares of the property are share them with his brothers, according to a Bloomberg report.

How the dispute started

The Jogani brothers — Shashikant, Rajesh, Chetan, and Shailesh besides Haresh — belong a renowned family of diamond merchants from Gujarat. The family took their business to Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and North America.

Way back in 1969, Shashikant “Shashi” Jogani moved to California when he was merely 22 to set up a solo property firm. However, when his property business suffered major losses in the economic recession in the early 1990s, Shashi brought in his brothers as partners in his company.

Breach of trust

The brothers then went on a buying spree, amassing 17,000 apartments in Southern California within a decade. All of it happened without any written contract among the brothers. However, one fine day, Haresh “forcibly removed” his brothers from the firm’s management and refused to pay them a penny, prompting Shashi to file a case in 2003.

Since then, the case has gone through 18 appeals, generations of lawyers, and five judges in Los Angeles Superior Court. While Haresh’s lawyer argued in court that without a written agreement, there was no evidence that the brothers were in a partnership, Shashi’s attorney contended that oral agreements are customary in the Gujarati community as well as in the diamond trade.

Court’s order

Eventually, the court, recognising that oral contracts were just as valuable as written ones, held Haresh guilty of violating an oral agreement with his brothers. The current hearings began five months ago.

The jury further concluded that Shashi, now 77, owns 50 per cent of the business. He has been awarded $1.8 billion in initial damages. Reports say that the hearing on punitive damages is listed for Monday (March 4), and the amount could go up much higher than Rs 20,000 crore.

Haresh has even accused the judge, Susan Bryant-Deason, of “racial animus” towards his lawyer, which she has denied. The judge has referred the motion to the court’s supervising judge, where it is pending.