A Little birdie passed this along to me...[Akron Beacon Journal]
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COMPANY SUED FOR $5 MILLION
FORMER PRESIDENT OF ALIVE CENTERS OF AMERICA SEEKS BACK PAY, ASKS COURT TO ASSESS PUNITIVE DAMAGES.
Published: Friday, October 27, 1995
Section: BUSINESS
Page: B2
BY ROGER J. MEZGER, Beacon Journal business writer
An Akron multimedia company and its principal officer are accused of
corporate and securities fraud as well as breach of contract in a lawsuit filed this week in Summit County Common Pleas Court.
Richard L. Herbruck of Akron seeks $500,000 from Alive Centers of America Inc. for back pay and other compensation and $4.5 million in punitive damages.
Also named in the suit are P. Joseph Vertucci, president of Alive Centers, and another of his companies, Interactive MultiMedia Publishers Inc., or IMP.
Vertucci said yesterday that Herbruck was president of Alive Centers until June 1993, when he was relieved of his position because of tax liabilities incurred by the company. Herbruck's contract was not renewed when it expired in December, Vertucci said.
But Herbruck signed on again with Alive Centers in February as an
independent contractor. In his suit, Herbruck alleges that some terms of that employment agreement had not been met, including a stipulation that Alive would discharge Herbruck's responsibility for a portion of the $152,000 in delinquent federal and state taxes the company owes.
Herbruck also alleges that Vertucci "fraudulently sold and converted the assets of Alive Centers of America Inc. on April 26, 1995, to Interactive MultiMedia Publishers Inc. without notice nor approval of the plaintiff or the shareholders of Alive Centers of America Inc."
He says his partial interest in Alive Centers, as well as his financial claims against it, were not publicly disclosed at the time in violation of the law.
Vertucci said yesterday that he had not seen the lawsuit. But he said he was not surprised by the filing because of the circumstances of Herbruck's departure from Alive Centers.
IMP was formed in April after JoTo Interactives Inc., a holding company for Vertucci's copyrights, bought a 90 percent stake in FujaCorp Industries Inc., a North Carolina furniture company that had been dormant since 1991.
The companies were merged into Interactive MultiMedia Publishers Inc.
Alive Centers -- for Applied Learning through Interactive Video -- produced a video disc called The Active Knee in the 1980s and later became the marketing agent for producers of other laser disc software -- a technology that has been superseded by CD-ROM.
Its multimedia work grew to include corporate sales and training programs and informational presentations for the Cleveland Children's Museum and Gund Arena.
IMP's business is developing strategy and content for new CD-ROM titles, while Alive Centers puts the ideas into finished products.
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