DAYTON — A jury awarded $17 million in punitive damages Thursday to a Riverside-based defense contractor that accused three former employees of taking its confidential and trade secret information when the three set up their own company.

This is in addition to the nearly $6 million in compensatory damages the jury awarded last week to Innovative Technologies Corp., which lost one of its largest contracts in 2001 after the trio defected, said attorneys Mike Moloney and Jim Dyer.

"When they lost that contract, it was a third of their business," Dyer said. "It took a long time to build the business back to where it was."

ITC filed the lawsuit in May 2003 against David P. Nicholas, James R. Silcott and Sheila K. Silcott, three former employees who formed Kenton Trace Technologies in Cedarville.

KTT was also named as a defendant, as was Advanced Management Techology Inc., based in Arlington, Va.

According to court records, Nicholas and the Silcotts were already working against their employer for months before they left ITC. After they left, ITC filed against them, and a Montgomery County Common Pleas judge issued a preliminary injunction against KTT that barred the company from competing against ITC.

Instead, according to court records, KTT conspired with AMTI, helping AMTI get the C-130 J contract at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. That contract had been ITC's for years, Dyer said.

AMTI will pay all of the punitive damages and most of the compensatory damages, Dyer and Moloney said. KTT was ordered to pay about $470,000 in compensatory damages and the three individuals a total of about $300,000.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2057 or lgrieco@DaytonDailyNews.com.