Flashlight Mogul Tearfully Denies Marital Relationship : Courts: Anaheim Hills man contends he’s not legally obligated to share fortune with longtime companion. Woman is seeking half of $300-million empire.

Sobbing on the witness stand and cradling his head in his hands, flashlight mogul Anthony Maglica vowed at his palimony trial Thursday to care for Claire Maglica until the day she dies, but he insisted that he has no legal obligation to do so.

“I ask this jury to believe that I will provide for Claire as long as she lives, so she will never have to work. This I feel I will do, so God help me!” said Anthony Maglica, 64, of Anaheim Hills. “I feel so ashamed, like a child--to cry--but inside of me I hurt, because I know the truth.”

The Maglicas were never married, but Claire, now 60, took Anthony’s name anyway and they lived together for 23 years. She says she deserves half of Mag Instrument Inc., a $300-million flashlight empire they built together, because Anthony Maglica promised her from the time they met in 1971 that they would share everything.

He contends that Mag Instrument belongs entirely to him and that he never promised her anything during their lengthy relationship. Still smarting from a divorce settlement when he met Claire Maglica, Anthony Maglica said he was adamant about never losing control of his money, and in 1977, the couple signed an agreement to keep their assets separate.

“Ladies and gentlemen, believe me. I work hard for my business and I never wanted to again split it with anyone,” he testified. “I didn’t pull any tricks on Claire or anybody else. . . . I have been fair to Claire. I treated her better than any husband would.”

Legal experts say that if Claire Maglica prevails, she could be awarded the largest palimony judgment ever. Since there is no common-law marriage in California, the case hinges on breach of contract, and whether jurors believe Claire’s version of the 1971 oral agreement, or Anthony’s version of the 1977 written one--which her attorneys claim is fraudulent.

Thursday, Anthony Maglica’s attorney, Dennis M. Wasser, sought to have Orange County Superior Court Judge Robert J. Polis dismiss the case partly because the evidence presented by Claire’s attorneys has revolved around common-law marriages, not breach of contract. Polis denied the motion.

While Anthony Maglica testified that he “had no intention of dumping Claire, and she knows that,” her attorney John W. Keker suggested during his cross-examination that she believed that only because she trusted his promise to share all their assets.

Keker alleges that Claire Maglica’s trust eroded when he told her in January, 1992, that she was merely his “employee,” not his wife or business partner. Up until that time, Keker contends that Anthony Maglica treated Claire like a wife and co-owner of the Ontario-based 600-employee Mag Instrument Inc., where she is still executive vice president. She also claims to have supervised advertising, marketing and packaging.

The Maglicas, Keker suggested, were the only ones at the company not participating in the employee profit-sharing plan, and Anthony Maglica set Claire’s salary in what he described as a random fashion, reinforcing her belief that she was entitled to half of everything.

“She was paid like a wife, wasn’t she?” Keker asked.

“She wasn’t paid like a wife. She was paid like my best friend,” Anthony Maglica answered, adding that she was “well compensated” and could have built a nest egg with her salary rather than spend it on extravagances.

As the plaintiff’s case concluded, Anthony Maglica’s attorneys put him on the stand briefly Thursday to talk about his life. Though born in New York City in 1930, he said he soon returned with his Croatian mother to a tiny island in the Adriatic Sea that his family has called home for generations.

In great detail, Maglica recounted in a hoarse voice the hardships he encountered as he struggled to make something of his life. He said that he survived near-starvation and confrontations with German soldiers during World War II. He recalled slaving long hours for little pay as a machinist when he returned to the United States.

“I worked hard. It didn’t come by itself,” Anthony Maglica testified.