Former Net provider focus of civil lawsuit AcadiaNet co-founder seeks damages

ELLSWORTH – A co-founder and former director of a local Internet service provider testified Wednesday that he was unfairly squeezed out of the company before it was sold three years ago.

Robert Jordan is suing AcadiaNet in a Hancock County Superior Court civil jury trial for unspecified monetary damages.

His attorney, William Reiff of Mount Desert, alleged that the other officers of the company, Jeffrey Kase and Davis Irvin, forced Jordan out and reduced his ownership of AcadiaNet from 33 percent to about 1 percent before selling the company for $1.6 million in 1999.

Reiff alleges that the company received a $450,000 purchase offer in 1998, for which Jordan would have received $150,000. In 1999, when the Canadian Internet service provider Aliant bought the company, Jordan was paid roughly $12,000 for his interest, Reiff said. Irvin received around $1 million for the sale, Reiff alleged.

“That’s why we’re here,” Reiff said in the courtroom Wednesday after testimony ended for the day.

He said Jordan came up with the idea for the Internet service company in 1994 and founded AcadiaNet a year later with Kase and Irwin, he said.

AcadiaNet since has been merged with Bangor Internet company Prexar, also owned by Aliant.

AcadiaNet’s attorney, Thad Zmistowski of Bangor, declined to comment Wednesday on the merits of the case.

The trial, which is being presided over by Justice Ellen Gorman, is scheduled to last into next week, he said.

Jordan took the stand Tuesday after the lawyers made opening statements, and he continued testifying Wednesday.

Under cross-examination by Zmistowski, Jordan said the company was in dire straits financially in 1997 and needed to find ways to recruit more investors. He said Irvin loaned the company more money than he did to help keep it financially viable and that he was never given the opportunity to buy more shares of AcadiaNet.

In 1998 Irvin bought, at a price of $25 per share, 700 additional shares of AcadiaNet, according to Jordan. A further 20,000 shares of AcadiaNet, none of which were offered to Jordan, were issued by the company before it was sold in 1999, Jordan said.

“I voiced an objection to the dilution of my interest in the company,” Jordan testified. Irvin paid less than fair market value for the additional shares of the company that he acquired, he said.

Jordan testified that he steered business toward one of AcadiaNet’s competitors, Great Works Internet, after he stopped working for AcadiaNet in December 1997. Zmistowski raised the issue of the quality of phone line installation work Jordan had done for AcadiaNet, but his line of questioning was stopped when Reiff objected. Gorman told jurors that the grounds for Jordan’s termination are “not something that is germane to the case.”

Irvin testified briefly Wednesday afternoon and is expected to continue testifying when the trial continues today. He said Jordan received more compensation in 1997 than either he or Kase received that year. He also said that as an officer of the company it was his responsibility to protect the investment of the shareholders, including Jordan.