Juridico
June 2010
After ADT executives were incarcerated in Mexico, the security company could have quietly tried to put the matter behind it. Instead, ADT fought back— winning a $112 million RICO claim.
Wars
By Andrew Longstreth
Photography By Robert Seal e
Border
In
the summer of 2008, Thomas Ajamie was in Mexico City taking a de-
position for his client,the Mexican affiliate of ADT Security Services Inc. Ajamie was interviewing Juan Reyes, one of ADT’s former executives. Reyes, looking nervous at times, described how over the past four years a handful of ADT executives in Mexico had been arrested and incarcerated, including himself, on charges related to a contract dispute. Reyes had reason to feel uneasy. His four-and-a-half days in a Mexicanjail were a horrific experience. But there was another cause for his anxiety: The Mexican businessman, Jesus Hernandez Alcocer, who Reyes said was responsible for the arrests, was sitting just a few feet from him at the deposition table. Throughout the litigation—which ADT had brought against Alcocer and others in Texas state court—Alcocer had regularly attended depositions of adverse witnesses,which he was allowed to do under Texas court rules. Alcocer, who is in his late sixties, was hard to miss. He wore flashy clothes and could often be overheard on his cell phone at the depositions. In Mexico City, Ajamie says, Alcocer’s wardrobe included a gun in a holster on his belt. (Alcocer’s lawyers deny that he carried a gun.) Apparently Alcocer didn’t like what he was hearing at Reyes’sdeposition. As the interview was concluding, Alcocer began muttering in Spanish. Ajamie warned him to keep it down, or he’d have “big problems.” Alcocer then leaned across the table, according to Ajamie, clenched his fist and cocked his hand back for what looked like a right hook. According to the deposition transcript, Alcocer then told Ajamie: “Te van a partir tu madre.” What did Alcocer mean by thatSpanish colloquialism? Although no punch was thrown, Aja-
mie thought the businessman meant, “I’m going to rip your head off.” But Alcocer’s lawyers contend that their client only meant, “We’re going to beat you in court.” At the time of Reyes’s deposition, ADT and Alcocer were locked in a bruising legal battle. ADT Mexico accused Alcocer of being responsible for the arrests and incarceration ofits executives in an effort to pressure ADT into settling a civil dispute with some of its Mexican distributors. Alcocer claims that he never did anything against the law in Mexico, and that it was ADT—a unit of Tyco International, Ltd.— that broke the law by stealing security equipment from the dealers. Nearly every fact has been disputed in this case, which includes more than 200 motions andaround 75 hearings. Not one of the participants involved, however, disputes that the suit is one of the most brutal legal battles they’ve been involved in. For four years, the two sides have traded vicious jabs. So far, ADT and Ajamie have landed the biggest punch: a $36 million win last fall under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act that was trebled to $108 million. Withinterest, the final judgment entered into by Texas state court judge Raul Vasquez—$112 million—was a record for Webb County. But it didn’t come without a price. ADT was stung with a $9 million judgment in a counterclaim at trial last fall. The case is still a long way from being resolved. Alcocer’s Texas lawyers have vowed to appeal the RICO verdict, which they say will undoubtedly be thrown out. If ADTwants to send a message, it’s going to have to go the distance.
gram, dealers were entitled to a bonus payment, if the customers they signed up renewed their service with ADT after three years. Some of the dealers were also owed money for customer contracts they had sold to ADT in the past quarter. Now the dealers weren’t going to receive anything, and the thousands of workers employed by the...
Regístrate para leer el documento completo.