Hawaiian Airlines and Mesa Settle

Godzilla.jpgThere were an interesting pair of news releases today regarding the settlement of the suit between Mesa and Hawaiian Airlines.
The settlement calls for Hawaiian to receive $52.5 million from a $90 million bond posted (in cash) by Mesa as security for the original judgment. In return Mesa will drop its appeal and get back the remaining $37.5 million of its own money.
The Hawaiian release characterized the original lawsuit as “Mesa’s misuse of confidential and proprietary information obtained during Hawaiian’s Chapter 11 plan of reorganization in 2004”. The Mesa release characterized it as a “long-running lawsuit over Mesa’s inter-island flight services operated under the go! brand name.”
Tomato, tomahto I guess.
It may see a bit odd that Hawaiian would settle for less than the $80 million awarded, but it is hard to say how long the Mesa appeal would take to run its course. Suffice to say that in today’s environment, “cash is king”, and Hawaiian is probably happier to get $52.5 million today than it is to get an unknown amount (although probably higher than zero) some time in the future. On the other side, Mesa had to $90 million hanging out in that bond and they surely do need that cash, even if HA got the lion’s share.
As for the Aloha suit, if their case is as strong as Hawaiian’s then this kind of puts a number on that asset for them.