The former head of Personal Communications Devices LLC who is accused of abandoning the Long Island, N.Y., mobile phone distributor as it lost ground in the smartphone era is fighting those accusations in court and has asked the company to pay for the battle, Dow Jones Newswires reported yesterday. Lawyers for Philip Christopher, who left Personal Communications Devices last year to start a competitor called AirTyme, said that he has spent "significant defense costs" while fighting off claims that he broke his duty to be loyal to the company. In recently filed court papers, Christopher's lawyers asked Bankruptcy Judge Alan S. Trust to begin spending money from the company's insurance policies, which had promised to cover legal costs of Personal Communications Devices' top executives.
