Recent corporate filings reveal that a long-running international lawsuit alleging an employee raid of a Kansas business settled for nearly $17 million in Jackson County.

Seaboard Corp., an agribusiness and transportation company based in Merriam, Kan., filed suit against South Africa's largest and oldest shipping company, Grindrod Ltd., in 2005, claiming fraud and other counts. Also a defendant in the suit is Kevin Neilson, a former Seaboard executive who left the company in the midst of a profitable joint venture with Grindrod and then allegedly convinced three other key players in the negotiations to resign to take positions with the African company.

"[They] gutted our trading operations," Seaboard's attorney, Patrick Stueve, of Stueve Siegel Hanson in Kansas City, said Wednesday.

The case was dismissed this summer following mediation between the parties, but Stueve and the defendants' attorneys, John Kimball, of Blank Rome in New York, and Richard Modin, of Dougherty, Modin & Holloway in Kansas City, said they've signed a confidentiality agreement and couldn't discuss settlement details. However, Seaboard's Nov. 6 filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shows the company received $16.787 million, net of expenses, in this year's third quarter as a result of resolving a dispute in July with a third party "related to a 2005 transaction in which a portion of its trading operations was sold to a firm located abroad," according to the documents. That amount doesn't include attorney fees.

Stueve Siegel Hanson typically charges 35 percent, which could've yielded an ultimate award closer to $22.7 million. The stakes proved high, as Seaboard alleged in its suit that it would've lost $70 million if it hadn't turned over business to Grindrod, which was making $600 million a year. This is where Missouri comes in: The three Seaboard employees necessary to the operation reportedly traveled to Kansas City in May 2005 to discuss the effect of Neilson's resignation, according the suit. Within three days, the three announced their resignations and "demanded" that Seaboard move the business over to Grindrod so that the African company could maintain the existing contracts, the suit states. The sale was allegedly below fair market value. Seaboard agreed to the deal "rather than face the risks and losses made a near certainty by defendants' scheme," the petition stated. Stueve said the meeting took place at the Sheraton Suites in Kansas City.

Jurors would have considered at least six counts against Grindrod and Neilson if the case had gone to trial, which was set for October. Seaboard was suing for compensatory and punitive damages, alleging fraud, negligent misrepresentations, misappropriation of corporate opportunity, breach of confidentiality agreements, civil conspiracy and tortuous interference with contract. Jackson County Circuit Judge Sandra Midkiff dismissed the case with prejudice in late August following the settlement.

"It's pretty interesting to get jurisdiction over a South African shipping and trading conglomerate in Kansas City, Mo.," Stueve said.

The case is Seaboard et al. v. Grindrod Ltd. et al., 0516-CV27278.