Articles Posted in Business Litigation

A protected class is a category the law has created to protect certain people. For example, whistle blowers would be a protected class, a person who has objected to or refused to participate in what is an unlawful practice of a business makes an objection or refuses to participate in something. The employer cannot then fire that person or reduce their compensation as a form of retaliation or reprisal against the employee for doing something the law has protected.

There are different types of whistle blowers but the main type of whistle blower is somebody who has objected to or refused to participate in an unlawful practice of the employer. By doing that the employee has done something that he is protected from so that the employer cannot get back at him through some form of reprisal. There are other whistle blower laws that cover what are called [key tam 00:00:28] laws where the employer is being accused of stealing from the government. In that case the employee can bring a lawsuit that’s under seal against the employer and the employee can then bring this lawsuit on behalf of the government and allow the government to investigate the claim. In that situation the employee is allowed to share in the percentage of the recovery against the employer for the theft from the government.

Detriment to reliance is when somebody has made a statement that would have a reasonable expectation that the person who obtained the information or received the statement relied on it and they relied on it in a manner where they took measures and incurred expense or they incurred some hardship on reliance on this other statement, and that could lead to a claim or defense in a lawsuit.

The legal name of a business is the corporate name typically. If you have a corporation such as IBM Inc., that’s its legal name. It may do business in other name, which are called fictitious names, but the legal name is typically the corporate name, or if it’s a partnership, the partnership name.

Vicarious liability is when one party is held liable for the acts of another. For example, an agent of another person goes and commits an act, for example, an accident. The person who is the principal who hired that agent can be sometimes responsible for the agent’s act. That’s called vicarious liability.

Piercing the corporate veil is a way to go behind the corporate form. Typically, people will incorporate the corporation to limit their liability, their risk to the investment in the corporation. It’s very difficult to go behind that corporate veil, which is the corporate entity, to protect your investment in the corporation, but there are situations. Those would include, for example, using the corporate form in a fraudulent manner or not abiding by certain necessary corporate formalities. It’s a difficult process, because the idea behind corporations is to allow you to have the security of investing in an entity that you can use, and your limitation of liability is whatever the investment is.

Florida has a state statute that protects whistle blowers for private employers, it has another state statute that protects employees of public employers. The laws prohibit typically a person who has objected to or refused to participate in an unlawful activity of the employer and the laws protect the employee from a reprisal by the employer such as firing or making things much harder on the employee to continue the employment relationship.

The typical measure of damages in a Breach of Contract lawsuit are what are called Expectation Damages. It’s what the party that signed the contract expected to recover based on the promises of the other party. For example, a builder of a house contracts with the owner of the house. The builder builds the house in exchange for a certain amount of money. If the house is built, the builder is entitled to what he expects, namely, the amount that he was supposed to be paid once he finished the project.