British Telcommunications Plc and its 51% subsidiary Mitel Corp have been hit by a lawsuit that seeks a cool $15,000m damages for alleged breach of contract. The suit was brought in New York late Tuesday by Insat Inc, a start-up company that claims that it commissioned Mitel to develop and build a switch for use in a revolutionary satellite communications system – the implication is that the switch would have gone into the satellite, but this is not clear. The company says that when British Telecom acquired Mitel, the Canadian company backed out of the agreement, and instead handed rights to the switch over to British Telecom. The $15,000m is Insat’s estimate of profits lost as a result of its consequent inability to implement the planned system.
