Christensen Shipyards founder David Christensen and former officers of the Vancouver luxury yacht builder are suing the wealthy Tennessee businessman who bought the business, claiming media magnate Henry Luken deliberately drove the company out of business in order to gain full ownership of the internationally known company.
The suit filed in federal court Wednesday alleges Luken is a “corporate raider” who “put hundreds of people out of work, stole a company that the Christensen family had spent decades building, and destroyed the Christensen family’s legacy in Southwest Washington,” wrote attorney Kerry Shepherd of the Markowitz Herbold PC firm in Portland.
The former company officials seek $17 million in damages.
The filing is a countersuit to Luken’s own suit seeking more than $22 million from David Christensen, Joe Foggia, Pat Withee and Dean Anderson for allegedly contributing to the financial ruin of the shipyard, which shut down briefly in 2014 and 2015 and had its assets sold for $5.5 million in a recently settled receivership case. Luken claimed money he invested in the company was mismanaged and that he was cut off from management decisions.
“I think there’s a law on that that goes back to ‘thou shalt not steal?’ ” Luken told The Columbian after filing the complaint in March.
Foggia is Christensen’s stepson and the former president of the company; Withee and Anderson are former officers. Luken and Christensen each owned exactly half of the company for more than a decade.
The new lawsuit claims it was Luken who brought down the company so he could buy “all of its assets for cheap.”
“Henry Luken insinuated his way into the company, took over control as a financier, as a board member, and found ways everywhere he could to take advantage of it, to the detriment of the company’s welfare and his employees,” said Shepherd, the lawyer for the Christensen family, in a phone interview Wednesday.
Luken reopened the shipyard about a year ago after buying it out of receivership, which is similar to bankruptcy. More than 120 people now work there, down from its peak employment of more than 300.
Luken’s lawyer named in this case could not be reached on Wednesday.
At the heart of the money-seeking claims in the countersuit are allegations of “insider deals,” “shareholder oppression” and “intentional interference with economic relations.” The filing also denies many of Luken’s claims of what is owed to him and says bringing Luken on board as half-owner in 2003 was “a bad idea,” Shepherd wrote.
Christensen Shipyards was founded in 1985 and operated with the tight margins and small class of customers typical of a company turning out multimillion-dollar boats. When Christensen’s health deteriorated in 2009, he stepped away from the company and put Foggia, his stepson, in charge of day-to-day operations.
What has happened since differs in the accounts presented in the two lawsuits. Luken claims it was Foggia and the other former officials who mismanaged his funds and caused the company to lay off hundreds and enter receivership.
Shepherd calls those claims “a figment of his imagination — a fabrication, a farce.”
Foggia, Christensen, Anderson and Withee are now saying in the suit filed Wednesday that Luken had his own plans for the company that resulted in self-inflicted financial turmoil. They say that Luken aims through his own lawsuit to secure the shipyard property and then shut down Vancouver operations, moving the company to a shipyard site he owns in Tennessee.
“This is a sad story made worse by the fact my father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s while this was taking place,” said Kathy Maynard, Christensen’s daughter, in a press release Wednesday.
Shepherd said the case won’t go to trial for at least a year, and he has requested a jury.
“It’s going to take a bit of time.”
