"As the company's data shows, the company's board of directors has always appointed a single director – Chen. In fact, Epstein claims that Chen does not manage the company properly, exploits it to his advantage and harms it. This argument is significant and an infrastructure must be assumed that establishes it. Not only did Epstein fail in this obligation, Chen's reply, which accompanies the affidavit, shows that Epstein's individual claims, which were intended to prove the need to appoint a director, failed the evidentiary test. Thus, it was found that Epstein's claim that Chen was staying in Italy for an extended period of time at the company's expense was incorrect; It turned out that Chen did intend to go to Italy, but he did not. Similarly, Chen's response shows that there is no basis for the claim that the company pays huge sums of money to a law firm in Italy..."
In the decision, I also mentioned my previous decision of February 22, 2024, which included prima facie determinations regarding Epstein's conduct, which will be told shortly.
- It is difficult to reconcile Epstein's request in light of the prima facie determination regarding the acts committed by him for which the counterclaim was filed against him. My decision, which was given on February 22, 2024, dealt with a request for a temporary injunction filed by Chen (along with a counterclaim) whose purpose is to prohibit Epstein from competing in the company's business.
In the application for an injunction, it was claimed that Epstein acted on a number of levels in order to harm the company, exploit its resources and empty it of activity, as well as to contract with the company's suppliers and customers and sell fashion brands in Israel in a manner that directly competes with the company. Among other things, it was claimed that on May 16, 2023, Epstein founded a company in Italy called "My G Brands S.R.L" (hereinafter: Brandes), whose shareholders are his father and his wife's parents, whose activities harmed Mazal Tov on a number of levels: On the first level, Epstein contacted the company's customers and suppliers in July-August 2023, and informed them that the company had ceased its activity, which damaged the company's relations with the suppliers. Thus, Chen claimed that on August 5, 2023, the company received a letter from one of the companies marketing the MC2 brand (St. Barth's Company) with which it has a commercial relationship that it would no longer supply goods to the company, even though the company served as the exclusive distributor of the brand in Israel. At the same time, it was claimed, in September-October 2023, Epstein began selling the MC2 brand himself in Israel through Brandes, while the legal proceedings were pending . He even did so in violation of his undertaking in court on December 4, 2023. On the second level, Chen claimed, Epstein did not deliberately place "pre-orders", which caused a drop in the volume of pre-orders from the company. On the third level, it was claimed that Epstein and his wife were in charge of managing the B2B website and Instagram account and their day-to-day operations, but Epstein thwarted the trading activity in this channel, and as a result, the site's sales turnover dropped from hundreds of thousands of shekels to zero.