A German company named MAN A.G. entered a complex and different contract with a Canadian company named Western Star Holdings, Ltd., to purchase a truck manufacturing firm called ERF. Western Star later was purchased by Freightliner, LLC which was actually owned by DaimlerChrysler (D/C). After the purchase went through, MAN began to suspect that somehow it has been tricked by Western Star into acquiring WEF, which now appeared vastly overvalued. In fact, MAN's investigation into the financial records of ERF revealed that Western Star had managed to alter the figures to hide heavy losses suffered by ERF. With few alternatives, MAN sued Western Star's new owners, Freightliner and D/C, for $500 million in damages. MAN won the case in the UK but found that it could not collect the money from Freightliner because Freightliner had depleted its entire bank account and was now without adequate funds. At that point, things looked rather bleak for MAN, which now owned ERF, an overvalued corporation, and could not collect a legitimate judgment from that company's former owner. Fortunately, the attorneys working for MAN noticed that Freightliner had altered a verb in one of the official papers filed in the lawsuit. Before the document in question had been filed, Freightliner had always claimed that the firm, "is" a heavy vehicle manufacturer. In the new document, the verb "is" had been changed to "was", so that the document read that Freightliner "was (but it is denied that is still is) a manufacturer of heavy vehicles." This small alteration led to further investigation, which revealed that the funds in Freightliner's accounts had been redistributed by some very creative accounting so that the money that rightfully belonged to Freightliner, and therefore to MAN, had been transferred to several subsidiaries owned by Freightliner and D/C. MAN went to Freightliner's home state of Oregon and sued. The object of the lawsuit was to force Freightliner and D/C to reverse each of those transactions so that MAN could collect its money. In a final twist, MAN received not only the actual damages owed to it but also $350 million in punitive damages proving, once and for all, that this type of wrongdoing does not pay.

(From Business Law, Gordon Brown, page 140-41)

Discuss on the forum discussion board whether you think the contract between MAN and Western Star should be void, voidable or valid? Do you think punitive damages are necessary here to punish any of the parties?