Articles Posted in Business Litigation

Federal courts distinguish between “direct” and “indirect” claims of trade secret misappropriation. The United States District Court for the Northern District of California, in Heller v. Cepia, L.L.C., 2012 WL 13572 (N.D. Cal. Jan. 4, 2012), explained that the difference depends on whether a plaintiff alleges the defendant obtained the trade secrets directly from the…

Not all contractual breaches are treated equally. Some breaches are material, while other breaches are not. Materiality matters because a material breach relieves the non-breaching party of his or her duties to perform under the contract. JF & LN, LLC v. Royal Oldsmobile-GMC Trucks Co., 292 So. 3d 500 (Fla. 2d DCA 2020) (“…[N]ot every…

Florida’s broad homestead protection laws are enshrined in Florida’s Constitution. They offer unique asset protection most states do not, and prevent most creditors from levying against a debtor’s home so long as that home qualifies as a homestead. Peter Mavrick is a Miami business litigation attorney, and represents clients in Fort Lauderdale, Boca Raton, and…

Florida law protects employers and similarly situated persons from unlawful competition. But every competitive act does not qualify as an unlawful competitive act. White v. Mederi Caretenders Visiting Services of Se. Florida, LLC, 226 So. 3d 774 (Fla. 2017) (“Section 542.335 does not protect covenants ‘whose sole purpose is to prevent competition per se’ because…

We previously wrote about two potential laws that might limit enforceability of non-compete agreements. The first law is a proposed Florida statute that would constrain or prohibit restrictive covenants for certain medical professionals. The second law is a Federal Trade Commission rule that would ban most non-compete agreements as unfair competition. Congress is proposing a…

The business judgment rule is a critical feature of the law governing corporations throughout the United States. The United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, in In re Bal Harbour Club, Inc., 316 F.3d 1192 (11th Cir. 2003), explained that “[t]he business judgment rule is a judicial presumption that corporate officers and directors…

In a corporate derivative lawsuit, the shareholder does not have a “direct” injury that is particular to the specific shareholder. Therefore, a shareholder must turn to a derivative lawsuit. In these lawsuits, the shareholder sues to enforce rights belonging to the corporation for which the corporation itself could have sued for redress. Medkser v. Feingold,…

Breach of contract claims benefit from a relatively long statute of limitations. In Florida, a plaintiff has five years to assert a claim for breach of a written contract. Fla. Stat. § 95.11 (providing a five-year statute of limitations for written contracts). The statute of limitations begins to run when the contract is breached. State…

The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act (PSLRA) requires plaintiffs to meet a heightened pleading standard before they can participate in discovery. Congress passed the PSLRA because many plaintiffs filed frivolous securities fraud lawsuits based on minimal facts, and then used the discovery process to manufacture evidence establishing their claims. See Novak v. Kasaks, 216 F.3d…

Nationwide, the body of law regulating non-compete agreements (including non-solicitation covenants, non-circumvention covenants, covenants barring poaching of employees) has been mainly regulated by state statutes as well as court decisions in state and federal courts. Federal law has generally stayed out of the regulation of restrictive covenants. About a year ago, the Federal Trade Commission…