LIHU'E, Kaua'i — A 5th Circuit Court jury this week is scheduled to begin deliberations in a case that alleges that AOL billionaire Steve Case got a sweetheart deal when he bought one of Kaua'i's most venerable companies, Grove Farm.

The year was 2000. Grove Farm, according to witnesses during the past weeks, may have seemed like damaged goods to some, but to others it was a rare gem: a firm with 22,000 acres of Hawai'i land, some of it beachfront. A firm whose value was beaten down by the economy of the 1980s, but holding assets that would soar in value as the predicted economic upturn arrived after Kaua'i's achingly long recession following Hurricane Iniki in 1992.

Case paid $26 million for the company and assumed some $64 million in debt, plus the immediate need to spend millions more for critical needs.

Attorney Richard E. Wilson, representing former Grove Farm shareholders Michael G. Sheehan, Keith Tsukamoto and others, has argued that there were other suitors in negotiation with the company, of whom shareholders were never informed. Wilson argues that the company's board of directors was negligent in rushing to accept Case's deal when it appeared others, including a Dutch partnership called Wattson-Breevast and a firm called Del Mar Pacific, were eager to buy the company and would pay more than Case.

Attorneys Corey Park and Pamela Bunn, representing Grove Farm and its directors, offer witnesses who say the Case deal was the only rock-solid offer made for the company, and that each of the other deals had significant failings.

Testimony in more than three weeks of trial showed that Grove Farm was deeply in debt, and that the board had been soliciting offers to buy it. Several potential buyers had come and gone during early and middle 2000, and the company's leadership grew anxious. It faced a $3.5 million loan payment to First Hawaiian Bank on Dec. 31, 2000, and the need to pay at least $4.5 million to repair severe termite damage at its Kukui Grove Shopping Center — or face the possibility the center would be condemned.

Grove Farm director William Pratt said early in the trial that Case had put up a cash deposit, was willing to act quickly, was financially capable of buying the company and making needed investments, and would accept all the company's liabilities. None of the other suitors met all those qualifications, he said.

Attorney James Cribley, who represented Grove Farm at the time of the sale negotiations, said that delays "could put the company at risk ... you could end up with nothing."

Another issue in the case is the prior relationship between Case and Grove Farm. Case's father, Honolulu attorney Dan Case, long represented the company and Cribley was his law partner — a relationship so close that the Grove Farm board felt the need to waive any conflict of interest. Dan Case's father had been the company's chief financial officer.

Judge Kathleen Watanabe told the courtroom the jury could begin deliberations as soon as late tomorrow or Thursday.

A trial on a second Grove Farm stockholders' suit — this one naming Steve Case as a defendant — is also in the offing, and attorneys in that case have been sitting in on this one.

Reach Jan TenBruggencate at jant@honoluluadvertiser.com.