Actual finance blog

Americans prefer using their debit cards at the register. But a small fee could change that.

A new Associated Press-GfK poll finds that about two-thirds of consumers use debit cards more frequently than credit cards. But when debit card holders were asked how they would react if they were charged a $3 monthly fee for their debit card, 61 percent say they’d find another way to pay.

If the fee was $5, 66 percent would do the same. If the fee was $7, the figure rises to 81 percent.

The findings come at a time when consumers are seeing unwelcome changes to their debit cards and the checking accounts to which they’re linked. Although banks haven’t started imposing monthly fees for debit cards, there are signs higher costs could be on the way.

Starting in October, a new cap will sharply limit the revenue banks can collect from merchants whenever customers swipe their debit cards. That revenue has been a critical income source for banks; merchants paid issuers $19.7 billion for debit transactions in 2009, according to the Nilson Report, which tracks the payments industry.

Consumers are already seeing the fallout. Chase, PNC Bank and Wells Fargo ended or scaled back their debit rewards programs citing the new regulation. The availability of free checking accounts also declined last year for the first time since 2003.

And more changes could be in store.

Chase, for example, is testing a $3 monthly fee for debit cards on new accounts in northern Wisconsin. In Atlanta, it’s testing a $15 monthly fee on basic checking accounts.

Among the AP-GfK poll respondents who say they would leave their debit cards in their wallets in the face of such fees, more say they’d pay with cash, 53 percent, or check, 42 percent, rather than another form of plastic.

“Cash or checks _ they’re not very expensive,” said Aaron Alto, a 44-year-old resident of Grand Rapids, Minn. Alto says he’d be annoyed enough to look for an alternative to his debit card if the fees approached $10.

Debit card fees would cause 22 percent to switch to credit cards, and 12 percent say they would switch to a prepaid spending card.

For now, the notable preference for debit could be linked to a negative sentiment about credit cards; nearly half of respondents to the AP-GfK poll say the interest rates they’re charged are unfair.

That may be because 30 percent had their interest rates hiked in the past two years. That’s more than twice the number who say their rates were lowered.

Forty-two percent of respondents also say the fees and penalties on their cards are unfair; 37 percent say card issuers recently raised those potential charges.

The higher rates and fees may have surprised consumers in light of the new regulations that were intended to protect cardholders and put an end to questionable billing practices.

Under the rules that went into effect last February, cardholders are now entitled to 45 days notice before their rates are hiked. Card issuers are also prohibited from raising rates on existing balances, a once-common practice that consumer advocates had long decried.

Additionally, the one-time penalty fees for late payments are capped at $25 per violation. But there’s no limit on how high banks can hike interest rates on purchases or the default interest rates that kick in when customers are late on payments.

Earl Law, a 61-year-old resident of Buffalo, N.Y., said the penalty rate on a few of his cards is 30 percent.

“It’s absurd. It’s usurious,” he said. “If you’re struggling with debt, that’s the last thing you need. You’re asking people to fail.”

Despite the widespread discontent with interest rates, the regulations are having a clear, positive impact in one area: monthly statements. Nearly half of respondents say they’re now easier to understand.

Part of the reason is that the new law requires credit card issuers to spell out the cost of carrying a balance. For example, statements now include a chart that shows how long it would take to pay off a balance if only minimum payments were made. The chart also includes the total amount the cardholder would pay over that time, including interest charges.

The increased transparency might be one reason why the majority of consumers _ 78 percent _ say they plan to stick with their cards, despite their grumblings about high rates and fees.

It could also be that consumers have grown numb to unpleasant changes. In the months leading up to the passage of the new regulations, many cardholders saw their interest rates hiked, credit limits slashed and inactive accounts shut down.

The poll was conducted June 16-20 by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,001 adults nationwide, including 715 who have credit cards and 706 debit card holders. Results from the full sample have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points; it is 4.8 points for those with credit or debit cards.

Source

Ivory Coast’s government has named a former rebel leader as the new army chief, replacing the general who served under the former strongman.

Deputy Minister of Defense Paul Koffi-Koffi on Thursday named Gen. Soumaila Bakayoko to the post. Bakayoko led the rebel forces that helped bring President Alassane Ouattara to power in April.

Bakayoko replaces Gen. Philippe Mangou, who switched loyalties three times between former strongman Laurent Gbagbo and Ouattara Business Card Holders.

Gbagbo’s refusal to cede power after losing November’s election plunged the country into five months of violence. Forces loyal by Ouattara arrested Gbagbo in April, allowing Ouattara to take office in May. Most of Gbagbo’s entourage is under arrest and awaiting charges.

Source

Possible cracks emerged in NATO’s Libya air campaign Wednesday as Italy expressed concern about the accidental killing of civilians and called for a suspension in hostilities to allow the delivery of humanitarian aid. However, Britain insisted the alliance was “holding strong.”

Skepticism over the military campaign is growing as weeks of airstrikes have failed to unseat Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi and outrage rises over allegations that airstrikes have caused civilian casualties.

The air campaign continued Wednesday. At least two explosions shook Tripoli before noon as fighter jets soared overhead. It wasn’t immediately clear what had been hit or if there were casualties.

In Rome, the Italian foreign minister called for a suspension in fighting so aid corridors could be set up.

“The humanitarian end of military operations is essential to allow for immediate aid,” including in areas around Tripoli and the rebel stronghold of Misrata, Foreign Minister Franco Frattini said.

Frattini also expressed concern over civilian casualties, referring to “dramatic errors” in the bombing campaign.

“With regard to NATO, it is opportune to ask for more detailed information on results” in the attacks, he said in comments to a parliamentary commission.

Italy is Libya’s former colonial ruler and maintains strong commercial ties to the country. Italy is participating in the NATO-led campaign by allowing use of its air bases to coalition partners and its own aircraft for missions.

Frattini’s comments come three days after Premier Silvio Berlusconi’s key political ally, Northern League leader Umberto Bossi, called for an end to Italy’s participation in the Libyan war.

The League, which is heavily anti-immigrant, has been vehemently opposed to the war because of fears it would unleash waves of refugees on Italy’s shores. Some 20,000 people have arrived in Italy in recent months following unrest in Libya and Tunisia.

A coalition including France, Britain and the United States began striking Gadhafi’s forces under a United Nations resolution to protect civilians on March 19. NATO assumed control of the air campaign over Libya on March 31. It’s joined by a number of Arab allies.

In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron insisted that the NATO-led alliance was “holding strong,” and would complete its task in Libya.

“When you look at what’s happening in Libya, where you see a strengthening of the revolt in the west of Libya, you see more people deserting Gadhafi’s regime,” Cameron told lawmakers in the House of Commons. “You see growing unpopularity in his regime and indeed our coalition holding strong, I think time is on our side, the pressure is growing and I believe we will take it to a satisfactory conclusion.”

Cameron’s office said Britain would not support Frattini’s call for a halt to the air campaign to allow access for humanitarian aid.

“We are very clear that the right approach at the current time is to increase the pressure on Gadhafi’s regime,” Cameron’s spokesman Steve Field told reporters. He said there was no evidence that aid wasn’t reaching civilians.

Britain fears that any pause in the campaign could allow Gadhafi’s forces to regroup and launch new offensives against civilians.

Despite questions raised over the impact of the campaign on stretched defense resources, and worries over civilian casualties, Cameron said the U.K. was “capable of keeping up this operation for as long as it takes.”

The Libyan regime has accused the alliance of targeting civilians _ a charge NATO rejects.

NATO acknowledged it may have struck a residential building and caused civilian casualties in Tripoli earlier this week. It also hammered a compound belonging to a close Gadhafi associate, Khoweildi al-Hamidi, and killed what Libya says was 19 people, including at least three children. NATO called that target a “command and control” center and said it regrets any civilian deaths caused by the strike.

More than a thousand mourners gathered near the compound outside the town of Surman, some 40 miles (60 kilometers) west of Tripoli on Wednesday to bury those killed in Monday’s intense bombing. Al-Hamidi attended the funeral, carrying aloft framed portraits of two grandchildren killed in the strike.

“People are feeling very bitter, angry and sad that this had to happen in the first place,” Libyan government spokesman Moussa Ibrahim told reporters at the funeral. “This conflict has to come to an end immediately.”

Rebels fighting Gadhafi’s forces have taken over much of the eastern half of the country. They also control pockets in the west, including the vital port city of Misrata, about 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Tripoli.

Rebel forces facing barrages of rockets and mortars launched by government troops are trying to push their front line forward from Misrata toward the capital. But an increased number of rockets have been hitting closer to Misrata this week, raising fears among rebels of a renewed push by Gadhafi’s forces toward the city.

After nightfall, Grad rockets fired by Gadhafi forces slammed into a residential area of Misrata. There was no immediate word of casualties.

A hospital official said Wednesday that two people had been killed and two wounded in fighting in Dafniya, some 15 miles (25 kilometers) west of Misrata. Three rockets also struck near the port east of Misrata, but they hit a field and caused no injuries.

The rebels appear to be attracting more international support.

China told Libyan rebel leader Mahmoud Jibril on Wednesday that his Transitional National Council represents a growing segment of the Libyan public and is becoming a major political force in the country.

The comments by Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi were the country’s strongest endorsement yet of the rebel council. Beijing, an important business partner with Libya, says it isn’t taking sides in the more than 4-month-old conflict.

Also on Wednesday, Danish Foreign Minister Lene Espersen made a surprise visit to the rebels’ de facto capital of Benghazi in eastern Libya to offer support for the rebels’ transitional government.

“We recognize the National Transitional Council through the transitional period,” she told reporters. “The Danish parliament wants to continue support of the Libyan cause and that is including military support and the political help including recognizing the NTC.”

Source

Prime Minister George Papandreou has called for a fall referendum on “changes to the political system,” including to the country’s constitution.

Opening a three-day parliamentary debate that will culminate in a confidence vote late Tuesday, Papandreou blames Greece’s bloated state sector for bringing the country to its knees and has vowed to effect deep changes.

He also says the constitutional revision will make it easier to prosecute delinquent government officials saving account pay day loan.

He also says Greece is in talks for a new bailout package “roughly equal” to the first package of euro110 billion ($155 billion) agreed to in May 2010.

Source

A Houston company is in the early stages of planning one of the largest energy infrastructure projects the Midwest has seen in years - a $1.7 billion high-voltage transmission line connecting Kansas wind farms with consumers in St. Louis and throughout the Ohio River Valley.

The so-called Grain Belt Express transmission line, named to evoke images of train hopper cars rolling across the Plains, would stretch 550 miles from southwestern Kansas to southeastern Missouri. It would be capable of moving 3,500 megawatts of electricity - roughly enough to power 3.5 million homes - to eastern Missouri, Southern Illinois and beyond.

The project is being driven by renewable energy demand, more specifically state mandates that have been approved by voters and legislatures including Missouri and Illinois. The goal in each case is to replace coal-fired power with cleaner energy supplies.

While there is solar energy potential anywhere the sun shines, and renewable fuels such as biomass are getting more traction, wind power is eyed as the renewables workhorse.

“The trick is you’ve got to move it from windy parts of the country to where the population centers are,” said Mark Lawlor, director of development for Clean Line Energy Partners LLC, the company planning the project.

That describes the logic behind the Grain Belt Express line. Western Kansas is among the areas with the nation’s best wind energy potential, but development of new projects has stalled somewhat because that area is already awash in wind power.

Developers there are lining up to build new wind farms, representing thousands of megawatts. Projects have been permitted and land has been leased, but work won’t go forward without additional transmission infrastructure, he said.

Lawlor said the existing transmission grid lacked capacity to move Kansas wind power to eastern Missouri. A similar challenge faces wind farm developers in Iowa, northern Illinois and elsewhere. Even if capacity was available on existing lines, it would be difficult logistically - the equivalent of driving 500 miles on winding, two-lane country roads.

ENERGY SUPERHIGHWAY

The answer, according to Clean Line Energy, is a large-scale transmission project, an electron superhighway spanning the better part of two states with no off-ramps between the start and end points.

“We want to do it on a large scale to keep the overall cost of the power at a minimum,” Lawlor said.

Besides scale, the key to making the project viable is direct current technology.

The Grain Belt Express line will look much like existing alternating current transmission lines crisscrossing the country, but the planned high-voltage DC line is preferable for moving large amounts of power long distances. Such lines are more efficient, reliable and economical, Lawlor said. They also require narrower rights of way and smaller towers.

Such DC transmission lines are rare, but not new. Twenty already operate in the United States, the company said.

The Grain Belt Express line will originate near Spearville, Kan., and stretch across southern Missouri to a St. Francois County substation, where it will connect with Ameren facilities. A specific route hasn’t been chosen. If all goes as planned, construction could begin as soon as 2014 and be complete by 2016, Lawlor said.

Developers have a lot of work to do in the meantime. They need approval from federal and state regulators. Then there’s siting and permitting issues and negotiations with land owners, who often object to the installation of infrastructure many consider unsightly.

“We’re spending a tremendous amount of time up front to identify a route that has the least impact,” Lawlor said.

‘TOLL ROAD’

Clean Line Energy applied in March with the Kansas Corporation Commission to be approved as a public utility in the state. The company is expected to seek permission from the Missouri Public Service Commission next year.

Lawlor said the project would be privately financed and ultimately paid for by utilities, their customers, other wholesale power buyers and renewable energy generators that buy capacity on the line. Rates will be set by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Clean Line Energy would maintain the line, but it would be controlled by a regional grid operator.

Who pays for intrastate transmission projects is frequently a thorny issue. Clean Line Energy seeks to avoid such disputes because only transmission customers will pay for it.

“This is like a toll road,” he said. “You don’t pay for it if you don’t use it.”

To help sell the project, Clean Line says the project will be an economic boon for Kansas and Missouri, stimulating $7 billion in new wind power projects and hundreds of permanent jobs in western Kansas and thousands of construction jobs along the entire route, according to a study prepared for the company by St. Louis-based Development Strategies.

Of course, any economic benefit is secondary to the main purpose of the project, to accommodate growing renewable energy demand without breaking the bank.

The Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory said last year in a technical study that the eastern half of the country - an area that’s home to 70 percent of the population - could get at least 20 percent of electricity from wind power by 2024, but it would require tens of billions of dollars in new transmission infrastructure.

PENT UP DEMAND

The study underscored the fact that wind development has outpaced transmission infrastructure, prompting new companies to sprout up to help satisfy a backlog of demand. Those companies include independent transmission developers such as Clean Line Energy as well as utilities such as Ameren, which have formed transmission subsidiaries.

Ameren announced last year a $1.3 billion series of transmission projects spanning more than 500 miles in Illinois. The Illinois projects, collectively referred to as the Grand Rivers projects, is aimed at least partly at moving wind power to the east.

“Ameren is working closely with Clean Line Energy to reliably integrate their project into the transmission system,” said Maureen Borkowski, CEO of the Ameren subsidiary. “We believe it will mesh well with Ameren Transmission’s plans.”

Ameren Transmission plans to target Missouri for its next initiative, but nothing has been announced publicly.

Clean Line Energy is owned by Ziff Brothers Investments LLC and Michael Zilkha of Houston, who previously owned Horizon Wind Energy LLC. Several former Horizon executives are part of the company’s senior management.

The Grain Belt Express project is one of four long-haul transmission projects the company is developing.

Source

Confronted with faulty instrument readings and alarms going off in the cockpit, the pilots of an Air France jetliner struggled to tame the aircraft as it went into an aerodynamic stall, rolled, and finally plunged 38,000 feet into the Atlantic Ocean in just 3 1/2 minutes.

But the passengers on that doomed Rio de Janeiro-to-Paris flight were probably asleep or nodding off and didn’t realize what was going on as the aircraft fell nose-up toward the sea, the director of the French accident investigating bureau said after releasing preliminary black-box data on the June 1, 2009, disaster.

All 228 people aboard the Airbus A330 died.

The brief, highly technical report by the BEA contains only selective remarks from the cockpit recorder, offers no analysis and assigns no blame. It also does not answer the key question: What caused the crash?

But several experts familiar with the report said the co-pilot at the controls, at 32 the youngest of the three-man cockpit crew, Cedric Bonin, may have responded incorrectly to the emergency by pointing the nose upward, perhaps because he was confused by the incorrect readings.

The plane’s external speed sensors, called Pitot tubes, have long been considered a likely culprit in the disaster, with experts suggesting they may have been iced over. And the BEA investigators found that two sets of instruments on the plane gave different speed readings, with the discrepancies lasting less than a minute.

Since the accident, Air France has replaced the speed monitors on all its Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft.

An official at Airbus said the aircraft’s nose should have been pointed slightly downward to enable the plane to regain lift after it had gone into an aerodynamic stall.

“This is part of the general pilot training for any aircraft,” said the official. He was not authorized to speak on that subject and asked not to be identified by name.

Other aviation experts concurred. In an aerodynamic stall, a plane most often loses lift because it is traveling too slowly, and begins to fall out of the sky. Pointing the nose downward enables the aircraft to pick up speed, gain lift and pull out of the stall.

Pulling the nose up is “an inappropriate way to respond” to an aerodynamic stall, said Paul Hayes, director of air safety for aviation consulting firm Ascend Worldwide Ltd. “He either misidentified what was happening or became confused.”

He cautioned that Friday’s report was brief and that it was still unclear how the series of events started.

The flight data recorder and cockpit recorder were dredged from the ocean in early May, along with some bodies.

They showed, in addition to inconsistent speed readings, two co-pilots working methodically to right the plane manually after autopilot stopped. Captain Marc Dubois returned from a routine rest to the cockpit amid what moments later became an irretrievably catastrophic situation.

After the plane went into a stall, warnings sounded, the autopilot and autothrust shut off as designed, and the co-pilot not at the controls “tried several times to call the captain back,” the BEA report said. The captain returned one minute and 10 seconds later, when the plane had climbed to 38,000 feet.

“During the following seconds, all of the recorded speeds became invalid and the stall warning stopped,” the report said, but added that the plane never came out of its aerodynamic stall.

“The airplane was subject to roll oscillations that sometimes reached 40 degrees,” the report said. The engines never stopped operating and “always responded to crew commands,” the BEA said.

“The pilots never panicked,” BEA director Jean-Paul Troadec said on RTL radio, adding that they maintained professionalism throughout.

The passengers, he suggested, probably fell to their deaths without knowing they were doomed.

Dinner had been served and “you can imagine that most passengers were already asleep or nodding off,” Troadec said. He said the cabin crew never contacted the cockpit to see what might be wrong.

“It seems they didn’t feel more movements and turbulence than you generally feel in storms, so we think that till impact they did not realize the situation,” said Jean-Baptiste Audousset, president of a victims’ solidarity association, “which for the family is what they want to hear, they did not suffer.”

He was among a group of representatives of families who met with BEA officials to be briefed on their findings.

At least one expert disagreed with the theory of a soft descent.

Data from the flight recorders shows the plane was falling almost 11,000 feet per minute (124 mph, or 200 kilometers per hour), its nose slightly tilted upward.

“Eleven-thousand feet a minute is a huge rate of descent,” said Ronan Hubert, who runs the Aircraft Crashes Record Office in Geneva. “I would say some of the people on board would have lost consciousness.”

The crew had feared turbulence, and more than eight minutes before the crash the co-pilot at the controls advised the cabin crew “you should watch out” for turbulence ahead. He said the plane could not climb out of the cloud layer where the turbulence was happening because it was not cold enough.

Turbulence caused the pilots to make a slight change of course, but was not excessive as the plane tried to pass through the clouds.

Four minutes later, the plane’s autopilot and autothrust shut off, the stall alarm sounded twice and the co-pilot at the controls took over manual control. A second co-pilot, David Robert, 37, was also in the cockpit.

Pilots on long-haul flights often take turns resting to remain alert. After Dubois returned to the cockpit, he did not take back the controls.

Just over two minutes before the crash, Bonin is heard to say, “I don’t have any more indications.” Robert says: “We have no valid indications.”

Air France said in a statement that, based on the report, it appears “the initial problem was the failure of the speed probes which led to the disconnection of the autopilot” and loss of pilot protection systems.

The airline defended the captain, saying he “quickly interrupted his rest period to regain the cockpit.”

Independent aviation analyst Chris Yates said the report appears “to raise more questions than it answers.”

“It would seem to me, reading between the lines, that the cockpit crew weren’t confident of the information that was being presented to them on the data displays,” Yates said. “Maybe _ and it’s only a maybe _ they took some action that led to the stall warning, and the plane stalling and then being unable to correct it.”

A new, but not final, report with some analysis is to be issued in July.

Source

A private research group’s forecasting gauge suggests some bumps in the economic recovery this summer.

The Conference Board said Thursday its index of leading economic indicators dropped 0.3 percent in April, the first decline since June 2010.

The index had moved sharply higher in four of the past five months as the job market improved and the stock market rallied. Last month’s spike in the number of people filing for unemployment assistance _ which many economists viewed as a temporary event _ and a troubled housing market weighed on the indicators. A measure that suggested the resurgence in the manufacturing sector was slackening also hurt.

In April, only four of the measures the Conference Board uses to calculate the index increased. Six declined.

Conference Board economist Ken Goldstein says “economic growth will likely continue through the summer and fall, but the pace of economic activity may be choppy.”

The dip in the leading indicators may be temporary, said High Frequency Economics’ economist Ian Shepherdson. Natural disasters around the world, particularly Japan’s massive earthquake and tsunami in March, disrupted industry supply chains this spring. Initial unemployment claims, which jumped to an eight-month high of 474,000 last month, fell back to a seasonally adjusted 409,000 last week, the Labor Department said payday loans in 1 hour. Claims around 375,000 or lower are consistent with sustainable job growth. Shepherdson expects claims to continue falling in summer as business hiring picks up.

But many economists are notching down their expectations for economic growth this year, partly because they expect higher oil prices will weigh on consumer spending. Earlier this week, economists surveyed by the National Association for Business Economics predicted that the economy would grow 2.8 percent this year, down from February’s 3.3 percent forecast.

The Conference Board, a private research group based in New York, compiles data that has mostly already been released about real estate, manufacturing, employment, consumer confidence and financial markets. It uses that data to calculate the leading indicator index. The Conference Board also includes its own estimates about manufacturers’ new orders and the country’s money supply.

Source

Americans increased their spending in March as they paid more for gasoline and groceries, suggesting income gains may need to pick up to prevent a bigger squeeze on household finances.

Purchases rose 0.6 percent after a revised 0.9 percent gain the prior month that was higher than previously estimated, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. After adjusting for changes in prices, the spending that accounts for 70 percent of the economy rose 0.2 percent in March.

Workers are finding limited success asking for pay raises, a reason Federal Reserve policy makers will maintain record monetary stimulus after ending large-scale bond purchases in June. Another report showed business activity grew in April at a pace that’s consistent with steady expansion in manufacturing.

“A larger share of consumers’ money must be allocated toward gasoline and food,” said Michelle Meyer, a senior economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in New York. “Manufacturing is continuing to expand and looks healthier than other parts of the economy.”

Stocks gained as results at Caterpillar Inc. (CAT) and Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. beat estimates. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed 0.2 percent to 1,363.61 at the 4 p.m. close in New York.

Source

A federal jury ruled against Mattel Thursday, awarding damages to MGA Entertainment in the latest twist in a dispute over the ownership of Bratz, the most popular dolls since Barbie.

The jurors in a Santa Ana, Calif. court found Mattel does not own rights to the popular Bratz franchise, and that rival MGA did not steal the idea.

The two toymakers have been engaged in a running battle over who owns the lucrative doll line for the better part of a decade. Mattel argued that since the idea was developed by designer Carter Bryant while he was a Mattel employee, it owns the rights.

MGA argued that the language of Bryant’s contract only covered work created within the scope of the job, and not work done during his own time or outside of his duties at the company.

Both sides have scored big wins in the past, but on Thursday MGA prevailed.

The jury found that Mattel’s (MAT, Fortune 500) copyright claim on the franchise was invalid, and that MGA had not stolen trade secrets from Mattel.

Instead, the jurors awarded MGA $88.5 million in damages, finding that Mattel was the party that had stolen trade secrets. MGA had accused Mattel of stealing 114 of them. The jury awarded damages in 26 instances.

"We are grateful for a hard-working and smart jury," MGA CEO Isaac Larian said in an email to CNNMoney.

"This is a victory for all the hard-working entrepreneurs and small companies who get bullied unfairly by large multinational corporations with deep pockets," he said.

Mattel said it would challenge the decision.

"MGA’s claims against us were simply not supported by the evidence at trial. We will ask the court to set aside the verdict. Once the judge rules on our motions, we will evaluate our next steps," Mattel general counsel Robert Normile said in a statement.

The jury did find MGA at fault on one count, saying the company did in fact intentionally interfere with Bryan’s contract with Mattel.

Last year, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco dismissed a December 2008 ruling that gave Mattel ownership rights. 

Source

JEFFERSON CITY