The US court ordered Haresh Jogani, one of the four brothers, to pay compensation of $ 2.5 billion, or more than Rs 20,000 crore, to his other brothers and divide the shares of the property in Southern California among themselves. The value of this property alone is more than Rs 17,000 crores.
A 21-year-old legal dispute involving five Indian brothers came into the world’s attention when a US court delivered a historic verdict. These five brothers earned immense wealth in diamonds and real estate of Los Angeles, but then something happened that the pair broke up and the matter reached the court. Remained stuck in court for 21 years. Now a decision has come which is being considered as one of the biggest decisions of decades.
First know the names of these five brothers. Their names are- Haresh Jogani, Shashikant, Rajesh, Chetan and Shailesh Jogani. The US court ordered Haresh Jogani, one of these four brothers, to pay compensation of $ 2.5 billion, or more than Rs 20,000 crore, to his other brothers and divide the shares of the property in Southern California among themselves. The value of this property alone is more than Rs 17,000 crores.
How to start diamond business
The question is why only Haresh has been ordered to pay the fine? So Haresh is accused of breaking the long standing partnership with his brothers. Where did all this begin? To find out, let’s start from the beginning. The Jogani family, natives of Gujarat, India, established outposts for the diamond business in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and North America. According to a complaint filed in 2003, Shashikant alias “Shashi” Jogani moved to California in 1969 at the age of 22, where he started a solo firm in the gem business and started building a property portfolio.
First recession and then touched the heights
The properties suffered losses during the recession of the early 1990s. Then after the 1994 Northridge earthquake, the situation became worse. 16 people were killed in one of his buildings, after which Shashi had to enter into partnership with his brothers. The firm then embarked on a buying spree that eventually built a portfolio of approximately 17,000 apartment units with the brothers’ collaboration. All was going well but things went awry when Haresh “forcibly removed” his brother from the management of the firm and refused to pay.
What was the brothers’ argument in court?
However, Haresh Jogani argued that without the written agreement, his brother could not prove that he had a partnership with him. But after hearing the witnesses, the jury found that Haresh had breached the oral contract and that the oral agreement between the two Gujaratis in the diamond business is equally important. Now, as the trial was about to end, Haresh Jogani accused the judge of having “racial hostility” towards his lawyer and demanded his disqualification. Only last week, Judge Susan Bryant-Deason rejected such allegations. He sent the proposal to the supervising judge of the court, where it is pending.
jogani vs jogani
The 2003 lawsuit has already gone through 18 appeals, multiple lawyers and five Los Angeles Superior Court judges. Some lawyers are drawing comparisons to the fictional probate case of the Victorian era, which Charles Dickens wrote about in his 1852 novel Bleak House. They’re calling Jogani vs. Jogani the new Jarndyce vs. Jarndyce, but there’s a twist. Peter Ross, a lawyer representing Chetan and Rajesh Jogani, said, “At the end of the book, there was no money, hence the name Bleak House. This is not the case here. There are billions of rupees here which are yet to be distributed”.
Whose partnership is how much?
The jury awarded $165 million in damages to brothers Chetan and Rajesh for the breach of the diamond partnership by Haresh, as well as $1.8 billion to Shashi, $234 million to Chetan and $360 million to Rajesh for the breach of the real estate partnership. Gave. The jurors also concluded that Shashi, now 77, owns 50% of the real estate partnership, followed by 24% for Haresh, 10% for Rajesh, 9.5% for Shailesh and the youngest Chetan, who is now 62 years old, holds 6.5% stake.
