Hitting Harley for Millions Called ‘Justice,’ Not Malice

Christy Joseph Dello bears Harley-Davidson no ill will.

He can afford to be generous. An Orange County Superior Court jury last week ordered the motorcycle company to pay Dello $7.2 million in damages for fraudulently using his design for an engine exhaust system.

The victory did not come easily, the 51-year-old Norco man said this week in an interview. After a 10-year fight with the company, Dello said he can now look back and place his experience in its proper perspective.

“I have no malice for Harley-Davidson,” Dello said from his attorney’s office in Corona. “They make the finest motorcycle an American would ever want to ride.”

Dello said his affinity for the motorcycles stems from working more than 20 years in the machinery industry. He used his background in space aeronautics in 1970 to open FUBAR of Anaheim, a parts shop specializing in custom bikes.

“A customized motorcycle is an expression of your individualism,” said the self-proclaimed “real-deal biker,” which he defined as a man who “believes in his country, in honor . . . and rides Harley.”

He said he believes in the company’s superiority in the motorcycle industry, and he strongly believed the same in 1980 when he said he verbally agreed with one of the company’s former officials to be the sole supplier of a custom exhaust pipe he had designed.

However, Dello testified, after he provided Harley with prototype samples and drawings of the system and received a $250,000 purchase order, the company took its business elsewhere.

“They promised me an exclusive, long-term supply relationship,” he said. “But, other than a few (purchase orders), I never received other orders. They just stopped. They didn’t keep their promise.”

By then, Dello testified, he had taken a $300,000 loan to finance his venture with Harley.

“When I didn’t get another large order, I didn’t have the money to pay back the loan,” he said.

Harley-Davidson is appealing the jury awards that total $7,166,892.25. Harley’s vice president, Tim Hoelter, said the company had assumed Dello did not value its business when he raised the exhaust system’s wholesale prices “to at least the retail levels and higher.”

“When he did that, Harley-Davidson elected to take its business elsewhere,” Hoelter said.

Dello denied doing that during the trial and repeated his denial this week.

Dello is a private man and is reluctant to talk about the case. But he said he wanted his peers in the industry to know what happened.

After the orders abruptly halted, Dello said, he was forced to close FUBAR, lost his La Sierra home and in 1984 filed for bankruptcy.

His dealings with Harley were far from over, however. In 1985, while working as project manager for a motorcycle parts manufacturing company, he said he happened to see a prototype of an exhaust system resembling his design. When he confronted the company’s owner, he discovered that companies other than Harley had access to his design.

Last week, when a Superior Court jury found Harley guilty of, among other charges, committing fraud, Dello breathed a sigh of “great relief” and felt “vindicated,” he said.

“The trial has given me justice,” he said. “Now people will find out what really happened to FUBAR.”

Because of Harley’s appeal, Dello said he is apprehensive about the future.

“I just want to get on with my life again,” he said. “At this time, there’s only fishing on my mind.”