SONY SUES ICC OVER CABLE-TV EQUIPMENT DEBT

Sept. 26, 2001 – Sony Broadcast Corp. has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court on St. Thomas against ICC-TV and its parent company, Innovative Communication Corp., claiming that ICC has failed to make payments on about $5 million in broadcast equipment purchased in May 2000.
ICC-TV, or Innovative Cable TV, was formerly known as St. Thomas-St. John Cable TV and St. Croix Cable TV.
In the lawsuit, filed Sept. 14, Sony claims that it informed ICC that it was in default in August of this year, when ICC failed to make payments of $872,967 on the equipment.
The suit asks the court to order ICC to sell the equipment in order to pay off the debt, and to make other payments to make up any deficit that may remain.
ICC, owned by St. Croix businessman Jeffrey Prosser, has not yet filed legal papers in response to the lawsuit, but Holland Redfield II, the company's vice president for corporate affairs, said it is not unusual for a large company with many subsidiaries to get sued sometimes.
ICC also is the parent company of Innovative Telephone (the former V.I. Telephone Corp. — Vitelco), four other Caribbean cable companies; Innovative Wireless; and the Virgin Islands Daily News.
"Obviously, there are sometimes lawsuits and disputes. We get sued from time to time," Redfield said. "There is a disagreement, and we'll handle it in a court of law."
He declined to comment on any specifics of the matter, as the case is in litigation. But he noted that a lawsuit against a company should not be taken as a sign that the company could be having financial problems.
"A lawsuit doesn't mean a company's in trouble," he said, adding that ICC considers the outlook optimistic for its companies and for the overall economy of the Virgin Islands.
The lawsuit, filed by Gregory Hodges of the Dudley, Topper and Feuerzeig law firm, states that Sony entered into an agreement in May 2000 to sell ICC-TV two television production suites and two remote broadcast vans for about $5.1 million. The agreement was later modified to drop one of the vans and add a cancellation charge for that order, the suit states.
The agreement stipulated that Sony would hold a security interest in the equipment that was sold to ICC-TV, according to the lawsuit. ICC's failure to pay the principal owed on the equipment plus interest and other costs constitutes a default, Sony claims in its suit.
Redfield noted that any dispute has at least two sides to it, and that ICC had not had a chance to make a legal response to Sony's claims.

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