A federal jury last week awarded $125 million in damages to Hawthorne-based OSI Systems Inc. after it argued that a business dispute caused it to unfairly lose potential baggage-screening business after the September 2001 terrorist attacks.

A jury in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on May 24 awarded $33 million in compensatory damages and $92.6 million in punitive damages, finding that New York-based L-3 Communications Inc. engaged in fraud as the two companies sought to acquire a third company.

The company, Perkin Elmer Security Detection Systems, wanted to deal with one buyer, and both companies agreed to acquire it together. OSI, which makes airport security-detection systems, said L-3 did not deliver on its promise to buy the assets of Perkin Elmer, and then give OSI all the rights to the baggage screening business.

“Acquiring the Perkin Elmer business was an opportunity of a lifetime for OSI,” OSI attorney Howard Rubinroit told the jury in his closing argument, according to the Associated Press. “And if L-3 hadn’t fooled around, hadn’t lied, hadn’t breached on its fiduciary duty OSI could have gotten those machines in the middle of the 9-11 rush to put machines into the airports and exploited that opportunity.”

The jury also found that OSI had breached a confidentiality agreement and awarded L-3 nominal damages of $1, OSI said in a statement.

L-3 Communications plans to appeal the verdict.