Swedish Trucking Co. Moves To Arbitrate Fundraiser’s Claims

Swedish sustainable trucking startup Einride says a California investor must arbitrate claims that he was never paid for his work in rescuing the company from the jaws of failure with a successful $110 million fundraising campaign. 

In a reply brief filed Thursday in California federal court, Einride said that the consultancy contract between “sophisticated venture capitalist” Christian Lagerling and the “fledgling startup in which he invested” clearly governs disputes over both debt financing and equity fundraising. 

The relationship soured shortly after Einride’s May 2020 announcement that it had raised $110 million ahead of its expansion into the U.S. In July of that year, Lagerling sued Einride and its CEO and founder Robert Falk in California Superior Court, saying they “refused” to pay his cut-rate fee after he saved the company from “complete failure.” 

Instead, Einride and its employees tried to “fraudulently evade their obligations” by making false statements and misrepresentations, according to the complaint. Lagerling accused the company of breach of contract, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, unjust enrichment and conversion. He also argued that the dispute does not belong in arbitration because his claims are based on an oral agreement covering equity financing — and not the written contract, which he insists only covered bridge financing in the form of convertible debt notes. 

Lagerling sued over an unpaid invoice for €844,862, which reflected “the previously agreed upon 2.5% fee on the roughly $10 million raised from Build Capital and 1% on the roughly €66,700,000 raised from new investors less roughly €48,000 paid in advances,” according to the complaint. 

On Thursday, Einride told the court that Lagerling’s own email correspondence “disproves his argument that the Consultancy Agreement did not relate to Series B equity investments,” which confirmed that he understood the written contract to govern his payment for B-round financing. 

According to the complaint, Falk contacted Lagerling for help in December 2020 after Einride’s European fundraising efforts had come to nothing and the company needed to raise $50 million in capital just to stay afloat. It was “against this backdrop of extensive prior effort failing to accomplish the necessary fundraising, rapidly dwindling funds, and looming complete failure of the Series B round” that Einride hired Lagerling’s one-man consultancy firm, Beluca LLC, to step in and take over. 

Lagerling put his back into the work, the complaint says, winning the support of U.S. investors in relatively short order. “It was an enormous and game changing turnabout from the complete failure of the European family office efforts pushed by Anders Böös,” which did not produce a single investor, according to the complaint. 

“This breach of contract is especially egregious in light of the fact that the industry standard compensation, which Einride would have owed to any other fundraiser, would be 5-6% of the $110 million raised, or $5.5 million to $6.6 million,” Lagerling said. 

The lawsuit was removed to a federal court in September 2021. The court has scheduled an Oct. 27 hearing on Einride’s motion to compel arbitration. 

Counsel and representatives for the parties did not immediately reply to requests for comment

https://www.law360.com/articles/1429597/print?section=california 1/2 

5/1/22, 3:56 PM Swedish Trucking Co. Moves To Arbitrate Fundraiser’s Claims – Law360 

Tuesday. 

The Einride entities are represented by Edward D. Johnson, Ankur Mandhania and Johnathan S. Klein of Mayer Brown LLP. 

Beluca Ventures LLC and Christian Lagerling are represented by Jonathan B. Gaskin, Steven S. Kaufhold, Liana Mayilyan and Quynh K. Vu of Kaufhold Gaskin Gallagher LLP. 

The case is Beluca Ventures LLC et al. v. Einride Aktiebolag et al., case number 3:21-cv-06992, in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.