A Matter of Flash--and Substance : Trial: Anthony Maglica denies ‘any commitments’ to his companion, Claire Maglica, and asserts that the $300-million business is all his.
His voice hoarse and straining, flashlight mogul Anthony Maglica said Tuesday that he loved Claire Maglica and was always generous in their 23 years together as an unmarried couple, but that he never “made any commitments” to her.
He asked jurors to “listen to his heart” as they judge him in the couple’s palimony trial, where more than $150 million is at stake.
“I have been loving, not only to Claire but to her family, to her children,” the Anaheim Hills businessman testified in Orange County Superior Court. “Today is devastating to me to see that they put me on trial like I am some kind of criminal. I have done nothing! I have done nothing!”
Anthony Maglica’s testimony came during the second week of a trial over who is entitled to the fortune from the Southern California flashlight empire that grew from a hole-in-the-wall machine shop since the couple met in 1971.
Claire Maglica, the 60-year-old executive vice president of Mag Instrument Inc., has valued the company at $300 million. She says she deserves half, because Anthony promised her they would share everything as they built the business together.
But Anthony Maglica, 64, counters that he always told her the company and the homes they shared belonged to him, and that they signed a property agreement in 1977 vowing never to merge their assets.
Claire Maglica’s attorney called Anthony Maglica to the witness stand Tuesday, and repeatedly sought to portray him as a greedy man who will “say anything” to keep total control of his money. Drawing on depositions that Anthony Maglica gave in lawsuits against the company, attorney John W. Keker showed jurors that Anthony had called Claire’s daughter his “stepdaughter,” and had deferred numerous questions about marketing, advertising and packaging to Claire, who, he said, handled those departments.
Keker showed the jury a videotaped deposition that Anthony Maglica gave in a palimony case, prodding him to explain why his answers often didn’t match up to comments he made before the lawsuit was filed in July. Maglica said he did not recall many previous comments.
While he may have deferred to Claire on certain matters, Anthony Maglica said Tuesday that she never made any final decisions without his approval, referring to her as a “conduit,” his “eyes and ears” at Mag and even as his secretary. He denied that she was a part-owner or a decision maker.
When asked on his videotaped deposition why Claire Maglica was the executive, Anthony Maglica replied: “Because she’s my girlfriend.”
He elaborated for the jury on Tuesday. “She was someone I can trust--a friend. Someone who would tell me everything that was going on in the company,” said Anthony Maglica, a Croatian immigrant who apologized several times to jurors for his broken English and lack of formal education.
The Maglicas were known by presidents and socialites from Orange County to Europe as a married couple, although they never married. Years ago, Claire took on Anthony Maglica’s name.
Anthony said that despite the lawsuit, he has not kept Claire from the couple’s Anaheim Hills home and continues to support Claire’s grandchildren in private school and her wheelchair-bound brother.
Claire Maglica testified that she believed that Anthony considered her a part-owner and would share all assets with her, until she learned in 1992 that he was trying to secretly transfer stock into his children’s names.
On Tuesday, Anthony Maglica said he could not recall the specific confrontation with Claire that she said stemmed from that discovery.
Instead, he talked about his feelings for his children from his first marriage, and the guilt he feels for being an absentee father.
“I spent my life in that shop that they now try to steal away from me,” he testified as two of his sons and his daughter sat in the courtroom. “I didn’t play with my kids baseball. I didn’t take my daughter to the prom. All my life I was in the shop. I gave more help to Claire and her children than I did to mine.”
Keker asserted that the evidence showed the couple acted as “a team” from the beginning. He pointed to homeowner’s insurance policies that name Anthony and Claire as beneficiaries, and insurance policies for Mag that covered Anthony and Claire “only with respect to their ownership interests in the company.”
Anthony Maglica denied that Claire had any interest in the company or the houses that they shared. “The business is all mine. The houses are mine,” he said.
