Commitments and Contingencies |
12 Months Ended |
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Mar. 31, 2020 | |
| Commitments and Contingencies Disclosure [Abstract] | |
| Commitments and Contingencies |
Commitments and Contingencies:
Obligations
The Company has operating leases for three facilities. See Note 3 Leases.
A reserve for a net loss on firm purchase commitments of $46,000 and $167,000 is recorded on the balance sheet as Accrued expenses as of March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively.
Litigation and Contingency Reserves
The Company and its subsidiaries are involved in various assertions, claims, proceedings and requests for indemnification concerning intellectual property, including patent infringement suits involving technologies that may be incorporated in the Company’s products, which are being handled and defended in the ordinary course of business. These matters are in various stages of investigation and litigation, and they are being vigorously defended. Although the Company does not expect that the outcome in any of these matters, individually or collectively, will have a material adverse effect on its financial condition or results of operations, litigation is inherently unpredictable. Therefore, judgments could be rendered, or settlements entered, that could adversely affect the Company’s operating results or cash flows in a particular period. The Company routinely assesses all of its litigation and threatened litigation as to the probability of ultimately incurring a liability, and it records its best estimate of the ultimate loss in situations where it assesses the likelihood of loss as probable.
In the ordinary course of operations the Company receives claims where the Company believes an unfavorable outcome is possible and/or for which is probable and no estimate of possible losses can currently be made. A significant customer was a defendant in two patent infringement claims and is asserting possible indemnity rights under contracts with the Company. The customer has settled one matter, and initially won summary judgment for all claims in the other, but on appeal the decision was reversed. The customer has informed the Company that the customer intends to seek to recover from the Company a share of the settlement and defense costs. For the summary judgment case, the customer provided an initial allocation of their defense costs. During the fourth quarter of fiscal 2019, the Company obtained additional information to evaluate the facts for both cases and has agreed in principle to a combined settlement in the amount of $0.3 million, but had not agreed on the timing of payment. During fiscal year 2020, the parties executed a settlement agreement in which some indemnity rights are reserved. The Company paid the settlement amount in the quarter ended December 31, 2019. As of March 31, 2019, the combined settlement was unpaid and accrued on the Consolidated Balance Sheets presented in Accrued expenses. Both of these claims relate to a business which was previously sold and therefore the related expense is presented as discontinued operations in fiscal year 2019.
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