Stockholder’s Baseball Card Suit Is Strikeout : Courts: Plaintiff drops action claiming sports card company executives reprinted valuable cards. He said suit was based on faulty information.

A shareholder in The Upper Deck Company has withdrawn a lawsuit charging that two Orange County men used their positions with a baseball card company to reprint famous cards, made valuable by errors, for personal profit, it was announced Thursday.

In a two-page statement released by the company, shareholder William Hemrick admitted that the lawsuit he recently filed in Orange County Superior Court was based on misleading information provided by a disgruntled former employee.

An investigation into similar allegations also determined the claims were false, the statement said.

“The investigation and Hemrick’s dismissal of his action proves beyond a doubt that we have managed our company on a high professional level,” Stephen Poludniak, vice president of business and legal affairs for the baseball card company, said in the statement.

Orange County residents Boris H. Korbel and Paul D. Sumner, who have both served Upper Deck as officers and directors, were among four defendants named in the suit.

Hemrick, owner of at least 40 shares of stock in the Carlsbad-based company, claimed that defendants reprinted more than 13,500 copies of a famous 1989 error card that featured a reverse negative of retired baseball player Dale Murphy.

The suit also wrongly claimed the defendants reprinted valuable sports cards featuring hockey star Wayne Gretzky of the Los Angeles Kings and Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Joe Montana.

Baseball card printings containing errors are usually scarce and therefore valuable.

The Upper Deck Company is generally credited with revolutionizing the lucrative industry with its upscale sports trading cards. The company’s value is estimated at $1.1 billion.

A former corporate attorney who claimed he was owed a 3% stake in the privately held company was recently awarded $33.1 million by an Orange County Superior Court Jury, but a judge overturned that award after determining it was based on insufficient evidence.