Legal Fight Grounds New Airline : Fired Executive Sues, Claims He Founded Maui Island Carrier
A fledgling airline with operations in Hawaii but headquarters in Orange County is having trouble getting off the ground because of a bitter legal fight over who founded the company.
In a lawsuit filed in Orange County Superior Court late last month and scheduled for a hearing Wednesday, former flight instructor Carl Strombitski of Santa Ana is trying to prove the he fathered a company he called Air Maui and was subsequently ousted by a group of investors who renamed the firm Maui Airlines Inc.
Although incorporated in Hawaii with plans to fly only between Honolulu and Maui, the airline’s corporate offices are in Newport Beach.
Robert C. K. Lee, vice chairman of Grand National Bank of Santa Ana and a former engineering professor at UC Irvine, is president of Maui Airlines and is the man Strombitski says engineered his ouster. Strombitski is seeking $500,000 in compensation plus unspecified punitive damages.
Lee, in an interview this week, spoke freely of his plans for Maui Airlines without mentioning Strombitski. He said that planning for the company only began in April, 1984. Lee declined to discuss specific charges in Strombitski’s suit, saying only that the allegations of fraud, misrepresentation and breach of promise “are not true.”
The airline had planned to begin service Tuesday. But a letter from Strombitski informing the Federal Aviation Administration of his dismissal and alleging improprieties at the airline has touched off an FAA probe. A top regional FAA official in Honolulu said Thursday that the investigation “undoubtedly” will delay Maui Airlines’ efforts to begin inter-island passenger flights next week.
Strombitski obtained a temporary restraining order last week, barring Maui Airlines and Lee and several other individuals from using the inter-airline baggage and cargo contracts Strombitski obtained for Maui Airlines or the investment brochures, marketing materials and business plans Strombitski says he developed during the two years he spent organizing Air Maui.
Maui Airlines filed an unsuccessful bid Thursday to dismiss the temporary restraining order. Superior Court Commissioner Greer Stroud denied that motion and scheduled a hearing Wednesday on Strombitski’s request for a preliminary injunction, which would remain in effect until resolution of Strombitski’s suit.
In his suit, Strombitski claims he met Lee in May, 1984, when he was using Lee’s Laguna Hills printing company to print Air Maui brochures and investment books. He said Lee asked to become an investor and subsequently arranged a series of investor meetings in which about 20 people agreed to pump $50,000 each into the company.
In return for his organizational work, the suit claims, Lee agreed to make Strombitski president of the airline, give him 10% of the common stock and pay him $50,000 a year for a minimum of five years. Strombitski never obtained a written employment contract.
The suit claims that Lee and his backers never awarded Strombitski stock in the company; reduced his position to vice president and then to vice president of marketing and incorporated the company in Hawaii as Maui Airlines without informing Strombitski.
Strombitski claims he was fired without cause in late November and was offered $6,000 in severance pay and $24,000 worth of the company’s stock, to be held in trust for two years. Strombitski said he rejected the offer as “worthless.”
