New York Business Litigation Lawyer BlogPlaintiff, purchaser of defendant’s credit card debt, sought court approval to settle the case. The court scheduled a conference to determine the fairness of the settlement terms and found that the defendant had been intimidated into signing the settlement agreement. The court decided that plaintiff’s ability to prove its claims were questionable, the terms of the settlement agreement were onerous and agreed to without proper consideration, and allowed the defendant to void the settlement agreement.
Articles Posted in Litigation
Robo-Signed Affidavit Sufficient to Establish Liability
Defendant denied the amount he owed to American Express. American Express submitted an affidavit of the Custodian of Records to establish the amount due. The court decided that although the affidavit looked “robo-signed, ” it was sufficient to establish that something was owed, but insufficient to establish the amount, especially because the records relied on were only copies of part of the file.
Competition and Existing Contracts
In the normal course of events, two parties that enter into a contract are obligated to perform in accordance with that contract. Where a party fails to do so that party has breached the contract and will ordinarily be liable for any resulting damage to the other, non-breaching party. Although in most cases only the breaching party can be liable, there are limited scenarios where others may be liable as well. This article will discuss situations where a third- party that is not a party to the breached contract can also be liable to the non-breaching party. This third-party’s liability is based on its improper interference with an existing contract, known as tortious interference with an existing contract.
Before discussing the details of this claim and liability, it is important to understand that courts will generally sanction and encourage legitimate business competition. Courts will not penalize a third-party’s ordinary attempts to solicit business, even when doing so may result in the breach of a contract between two other parties. Therefore, the fact that a party to a contract breached that contract to respond to the solicitations of a third- party, does not automatically create liability for that third-party. As discussed below, the conduct of the third-party in soliciting the business often determines whether its conduct was proper.
For example, Tire Supply, Inc., has an exclusive contract to sell tires to Tire Depot, Inc., for $10 a tire. The agreement provides that Tire Supply may sell to no one other than Tire Depot and Tire Depot may purchase tires only from Tire Supply. Tire Meddler Corp., approaches Tire Supply and offers to buy all of its tires for $12 a tire, $2 more than Tire Supply receives from Tire Depot. Selling to Tire Meddler will require that Tire Supply breach and terminate its agreement with Tire Depot. Assuming that Tire Supply agrees to sell to Tire Meddler, and breaches its contract with Tire Depot, and is sued by Tire Depot for that breach, can Tire Depot sue Tire Meddler for causing Tire Supply to breach their agreement? Has Tire Meddler done anything legally wrong considering that from a strict business point of view, Tire Meddler did nothing more than offer Tire Supply a better deal?