Nearly 10 years after the ex-president of Templeton Funds was fired following the firm’s merger with Franklin Resources, Dan Calabria won an $858,000 NASD arbitration award.
Calabria was president and CEO of Templeton Funds, and when he was fired one month after the 1992 merger of Templeton and Franklin Resources, he claimed he was entitled to 44,500 shares of restricted stock, according to Calabria’s attorney, Allan Fedor of the Largo, Fla.-based law office of Fedor and Fedor.
Calabria had signed a severance agreement in 1993, but later claimed he was “fraudulently induced” into entering the agreement and that such inducement amounted to “civil theft,” according to the case summary of the NASD award. Franklin-Templeton argued that Calabria’s claims should be barred by the severance agreement and the statute of limitations.
Fedor said he proved that Calabria “wasn’t limited to the terms of the severance agreement,” and that he was “entitled to the same benefits and employment contract status as other key employees and senior executives.”
The NASD awarded Calabria $458,208 in monetary compensatory damages, plus interest from Oct. 30, 1992, to March 8, 2001, that brought the total award to $857,652.
Franklin-Templeton refused comment on the case.
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