Clark, of El Granada, filed the complaint with Superior Court of San Francisco County, claiming the Mavericks Surf Ventures breached contracts with him, withheld payments on those contracts and breached its fiduciary duties to shareholders. He accuses the company Board of Directors of “self-dealing,” “squandering corporate assets” and failing to disclose “basic financial and other corporate information,” and asserts the company and the board acted with “oppression, fraud and malice.”
Clark says the company refuses to honor contracts with him and has “turned the contest into a corporate circus.”
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The lawsuit comes one week after Mavericks Surf Ventures canceled a mediation, according to the release.
Clark is credited with pioneering Mavericks as a big-wave surf spot. In 1998, Clark partnered with Quicksilver in founding the Mavericks Surf Contest. Clark partnered with Evolve Sports in 2003 to represent him as an athlete, and later co-founded Mavericks Surf Ventures to run the surf contest. Mavericks Surf Ventures terminated him as contest director last year.
“I’ve waited patiently and remained quiet in an effort to settle our issues in private, without casting a shadow over the contest that I founded,” Clark said in the release. “But it’s obvious (Mavericks Surf Ventures) has no intention of working this out. They have forced me to file suit in order to move on with my life.”
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