The promoters suing Maritime Launch Services let stock options they were paid with expire, and did little that was useful to the Canadian government’s favoured rocket-launching company anyway, the firm says in a statement of defence.

One Network Productions and Alexander Mihailovich—a Canadian journalist turned Russian television anchor turned freelance analyst, consultant and clean-energy entrepreneur—filed suit against Maritime Launch Services (MLS) earlier this year. All parties agree that MLS hired them in 2024 to boost the company’s profile and seek potential investors. At the time, MLS was in deep financial trouble and struggling to stay afloat.

The plaintiffs say they did that in exchange for hundreds of thousands of options to buy MLS stock, which was worth just a few cents a share at the time.

Now that MLS has a multimillion-dollar investment from MDA Space, a $200-million National Defence contract for a 10-year lease on a pad at its Canso, N.S., launch site and a deal with a German rocket company related to Canada’s plan to buy German submarines, its shares have shot up in value.

One Network and Mihailovich allege that they never got the options they’re owed, which—depending on where the share price is on any given day—would be worth around $1 million.

MLS’s statement of defence says One Network, with Mihailovich as an associate, “failed to adequately perform the services” it was hired for “because, among other reasons, One Network and/or Mihailovich did not have the resources to adequately perform the services, nor did [they] have the financial resources to exercise the stock options.” So the options they did earn expired unused, the filing says.

Whatever One Network and Mihailovich did on MLS’s behalf in late 2024 and early 2025, it wasn’t much use, the filing alleges. They did provide some reports on what they were doing but not the regular monthly updates they were supposed to, it says, “nor did One Network introduce potential investors (or anyone) to MLS.”

One thing the plaintiffs were hired to do was increase the company’s share price, the filing says. Instead, during their employment, the price fell from about five cents to 3.5 cents. That was less than the strike price of the stock options, making the options all but worthless.

“MLS pleads that One Network and Mihailovich’s claim is an attempt to ‘revive’ stock options in MLS that they previously chose not to exercise, now that MLS’s share value has materially increased,” it says.

The rocket-launch company says the lawsuit should be dismissed and One Network and Mihailovich should have to pay its legal expenses.