Orange County Sheriff seized China Lucky booth at PMA

On March 27, 2009 a jury found China Lucky liable for negligent misrepresentation, breach of warrant and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing arising out of its business dealings with Royal Marketing, a local photo-imaging distribution business with warehouses located worldwide. Although Royal Marketing and China Lucky had entered into a long term distribution deal, the jury foundChina Lucky refused to sell them one of the main products set forth in the written agreement. Royal Marketing found out later, after having purchased and re-sold in the United States hundreds of thousands of dollars of the China Lucky photo paper, that the paper was not manufactured to U.S. standards and was of poor quality. A China Lucky consultant actually admitted at the trial that the China Lucky paper was not suitable for the U.S. Market. “That admission was astonishing” noted Bob Bakhshi, Royal Marketing’s President.

Royal Marketing had been in business 25 years when it started purchasing photo-imaging products from China Lucky. Prior to that, the company was one of Konica Minolta’s successful independent distributors of its photo imaging products. “Our deal with China Lucky killed our business”, said Bakhshi. “We have never been able to recoup the losses we sustained to our goodwill nor were we able to locate any alternate suppliers. The jury made it clear that they harmed us, and that they must reimburse us for the substantial and severe damages they caused. Incredibly, and after everything they put us through, they refused so far, to pay any sums ordered by the jury.”

While the unprecedented action of the Orange County Sheriff at PMA enforced the jury’s ruling, another Chinese company, Prismlab Ltd., was harmed by ”collateral damage”: Since the company shared the booth with China Lucky to present its PSD-18B minilab that is capable of processing China Lucky’s unique double-sided photo paper, the minilab was seized by the Sheriff and could only be returned to the company after it had proven its ownership. By then, the show was over.