In a rare appellate ruling made “on the facts,” a New York state appeals court has thrown out an assault-and-battery lawsuit that was but another salvo in one of most bitter and litigious corporate breakups of the last decade: the war among founders for control of TransPerfect Global Inc., one of the world’s largest language-translation software companies.

The Appellate Division, First Department has decided that co-founder Philip Shawe’s ”improper and willful” discovery misconduct that happened during litigation focused on control of the New York-based company, including him accessing 12,000 of co-founder Elizabeth Elting’s privileged attorney-client communications and deleting documents, means that his assault lawsuit against her cannot stand.