The lawsuit named Steven Lilly, senior vice president and chief financial
officer, and John J. List, senior vice president, in their personal and
official capacities and accused them of personally supervising and approving
the alleged malicious abuse of the court system.
"The RTFC has turned from being our major lender to a predator seeking to
destroy us," said Sen. Holland L. Redfield, II, Innovative's vice president of
corporate affairs. "The RTFC has loaned Innovative more than $650 million.
Until they filed their baseless case against us and seized $61 million of our
equity without justification, we always made every payment. We have been a
member of the cooperative for more than 15 years and have consistently been
one of its largest borrowers."
"This is an extraordinary case in which a lender filed claims against one
of its best borrowers when it knew the charges had no merit and the only
purpose was to ruin Innovative by publicizing allegations to prevent it from
disclosing the RTFC's mismanagement and possible fraud," said Lanny J. Davis
of Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, attorneys for Innovative.
"Because of clear evidence of malice by RTFC and the individual officers
named, we are seeking at least $200 million for compensatory and punitive
damages," Davis added. "When Innovative informed the RTFC that it had
uncovered mismanagement and improper diversion of profits, on March 13, 2003,
RTFC retaliated with a lawsuit. Not only did RTFC's complaint allege 31
defaults, it maliciously publicized this information to the news media and
Innovative Telephone's public regulators.
"RTFC's voluntary dismissal of 16 claimed defaults, only after Innovative
moved for the dismissal of these claims as being baseless and frivolous, is
evidence that some counts were baseless and added only for publicity," Davis
continued. "RTFC repeatedly told the news media and testified to Innovative
regulators, falsely inflating the number of defaults in its original case.
The withdrawal of 16 alleged defaults because they were totally baseless is
strong evidence of the malice and improper purpose of the complaint by the
RTFC and these officers. These are the subject of this lawsuit."
"When someone gets a mortgage to buy a home there is an implied covenant
that the lender will act in good faith and not take hostile action to cause
the borrower to default so the bank can foreclose and take over ownership of
the home," said Redfield.

Innovative Communication Corporation is a privately-held telecom and media
company headquartered in St. Croix with management offices in West Palm Beach,
Fla. and operations in the U.S. and British Virgin Islands, Sint Maarten,
Saint-Martin, Guadeloupe, Martinique and France.