SALEM, N.H., Oct. 22, 2009 – StockerYale CEO Mark W. Blodgett was arrested Oct. 13 for allegedly assaulting the company’s former research and development manager, an act police say was caught on tape by security cameras in the parking lot.

The assault allegedly occurred Oct. 9, when Blodgett, who is 6 feet 6 inches tall, chased the 5-foot-2-inch Dr. Wei Xu into the StockerYale parking lot. According to an affidavit filed by the arresting officer on the case and reported in the New Hampshire Business Review (NHBR), Xu told police that he was getting ready to leave his vehicle when Blodgett opened the driver’s side door, pulled him out, hit him in the face and tried to choke him. Police told NHBR that Xu also claimed that Blodgett tried to toss his car keys on the roof of a nearby building.

“Xu advised me that Blodgett hit him in the face with his hand,” Detective Juan Valerio wrote in an affidavit and quoted in a story posted by local newspaper Eagle Tribune on its Web site. “Xu also stated Blodgett put his arms around his neck as he tried choking him.”

The officer wrote that he observed a red mark on Xu’s neck. After going to police headquarters to make a statement, Xu later was transported to Holy Family Hospital in nearby Methuen, Mass., treated for minor injuries and then released, NHBR said. Police say they have footage recorded by security cameras of the incident.

Blodgett was charged with simple assault, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum fine of $1000, NHBR reported. He was released without bail, pending arraignment next month.

The arrest came the same day that StockerYale signed a deal to sell its North American operations to California-based laser maker Coherent Inc. for $15 million in cash and the assumption of some of its operating liabilities (See StockerYale Sells to Coherent). StockerYale’s Salem operations make specialty optical fiber, while its Montreal base manufactures laser modules. The company kept its LED systems and custom laser modules businesses in England and Ireland.

As for a motive for the assault, NHBR said unnamed sources told the paper that Xu – who was in the process of leaving the company – refused to sign a noncompete clause, which could affect the Coherent sale. According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the deal included an agreement from StockerYale that it will not compete with the purchased businesses for five years.

Xu was a founding technical member of StockerYale and had played a leading role in developing and manufacturing various specialty optical fibers since 2001, according to a November 2007 publication of the New Hampshire section of technical society IEEE. He was instrumental in developing photosensitive fiber and radiation-resistant fiber as well as polarization-maintaining, rare-earth-doped, microstructured and other fibers for telecommunications, medical, defense and industrial sensing applications. 

Before joining StockerYale, Xu was a research fellow at the Optical Fibre Technology Centre of the University of Sydney, Australia. He was a co-principal investigator or key technical staff member for various projects funded by the Australian Photonics Cooperative Research Centre, Ministry of International Trade and Industry of Japan, ABB Sweden, etc. During this period, he first reported that the third-order optical nonlinearity of silica glass could be changed when silica glass was treated under elevated temperature and a strong electrical field, the IEEE said.

Xu earned a BS in radiophysics in 1992, an MS in theoretical condensed matter physics in 1995 from Xiamen University in China and a doctorate in fiber optics in 1999 from the University of Sydney. He has more than 45 publications in peer-reviewed international journals and conference proceedings in the field of photonics and fiber optics. He is a co-inventor of two international patents and a sole inventor of one Chinese patent, according to the IEEE.

According to the StockerYale Web site, Blodgett has been an executive officer of the company and a member of its board since 1989. Before joining the company, he was president of August Capital Corp., a private merchant bank, from 1988 to 1989; corporate vice president at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. in New York from 1980 to 1988; and an associate in the area of mergers and acquisitions for the European American Bank from 1979 to 1980.

The company and Blodgett were the focus of an SEC investigation and a class-action lawsuit in 2005 into press releases issued by the company in April 2004 that allegedly contained false and misleading information regarding a contract it received from defense contractor BAE Systems. According to the SEC complaint, the press release incorrectly stated that StockerYale was developing a customized laser for a missile countermeasure system for commercial planes and incorrectly implied it was developing the laser pursuant to a Department of Homeland Security project.

The SEC also alleged that Blodgett failed to take adequate steps to ensure the accuracy of the information in the press releases. It also questioned certain stock sale transactions Blodgett made after the statements were released. Immediately after publication of the press release, the price and volume of StockerYale common stock surged, and Blodgett sold approximately 7 percent of his StockerYale holdings, the SEC said.

In 2005, Blodgett agreed to pay $900,000 to settle the SEC suit without admitting wrongdoing; the company settled the class-action suit in 2007 for $3.4 million.

For more information, visit: www.nhbr.com