Plaintiff made a claim to its insurance company for water damage and loss of business. After what appears to have been a contentious investigation, the claim was denied because the carrier alleged that plaintiff did not provide it with all of the necessary documents and information and because some of…
Suffolk County Commercial Division Justice Elizabeth Emerson refused to vacate a FINRA arbitration decision which awarded the petitioner $3,229,097, plus interest, after respondent defaulted in the underlying arbitration. The facts, briefly, are as follows. Respondent was petitioner’s investment advisor and broker. After withdrawing her participation in a FINRA investigation, respondent…
In another demonstration of New York’s inclination not to enforce non-compete agreements, two weeks ago, the Second Department refused to enforce the non-compete agreement of a professional, a class of people for whom a such an agreement has a better shot of enforcement than in most cases generally. Plaintiff is…
In an interesting case from the California Supreme Court, the court decided, in a 102 page split 4-3 decision, that an order compelling a writer to remove a post on Yelp cannot be used to compel Yelp to remove that post when the poster defaults or fails to do so.…
Although this took place in a setting of a personal injury action, the court’s decision with these facts is broad enough to include other settings. In this case, the plaintiff was injured in a car accident and accepted a settlement from the driver’s insurance company for a nominal sum. In…
A broker was hired to find a tenant for a residential apartment in Manhattan. The parties agreed that the broker would receive a six percent commission if the tenant purchased the apartment within six of months after the lease expired, or any extension thereof. The broker found a tenant, and…
While we don’t have a criminal practice, a decision out of Louisiana’s high court highlights the importance of demanding counsel — clearly. From the Washington Post: “[W]hen a suspect in an interrogation told detectives to “just give me a lawyer dog,” the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled that the suspect was, in…
As promised, we write about another recent trade-secret case where the court refused to enforce an employer’s claims that its information was secret. After plaintiff was indicted for a host of crimes, some of its employees left to form a competing business, in violation of their non-compete and confidentiality agreements.…
Earlier this year, we wrote about the First Department’s decision addressing the question, as framed by the Court of Appeals, of “whether the mere commencement of an action seeking ‘rescission and/or reformation’ of a contract constitutes an anticipatory breach of such agreement.” The First Department found that it did. The…
Two cases, one State and one Federal, declined to prevent a competitor from using what was alleged to be another’s secret information. In Art and Cook, Inc. v. Haber, the Eastern District court found that the secrets alleged to have been infringed or disclosed were in fact not secrets, legally…