Articles Posted in Commercial Litigation

Last month the New Jersey Legislature introduced Assembly Bill 3970 that if passed will invalidate any restrictive covenant in an employment contract if the affected employee was eligible to receive unemployment compensation benefits. The reasoning behind this rule is that an employee who lost his job through no fault of his own (and thus be…

Companies today that routinely perform criminal background checks as part of their hiring process run the very real danger of running afoul of the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and other federal and state statutes. Generally speaking, an employer may conduct a criminal background check only with the consent of the job applicant. Upon receiving…

The vast majority of family owned businesses fail to reach the next generation of owners as a result of poor succession planning. In fact, according to the Small Business Administration, while almost 90% of business are family owned, less than 30% of these businesses survive its second generation. Family businesses face unique intra-familial succession issues…

Effective December 24, 2012, Pennsylvania became the 29th state to adopt the Uniform Interstate Depositions and Discovery Act (UIDDA). The UIDDA is a model uniform law that allows out of state litigants to obtain discovery in Pennsylvania quickly and in a more cost efficient manner. Here is a link to to the act as adopted…

Earlier this month the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that border agents may not perform a forensic search of a traveler’s laptop merely because he is crossing the border into the United States. In the current climate of heightened security to prevent terroristic acts, we have sacrificed some of our basic…

In a breach of contract case last month (January 2013), a Pennsylvania trial court correctly ruled (in my humble opinion), that a seller did not violate the terms of a covenant not to compete in an asset purchase agreement by providing services to its former clients. The new owners of the company argued for a…

Just this spring, what is usually seen as a pro-business Supreme Court issued a ruling clearly on the side of workers. The case, Kasten v Saint-Gobain Performance Plastics Corp., addressed the question of protection for workers who file complaints against their employers. Smart business owners, with the right policies, will be able to turn this…

Confidentiality terms in settlement agreements are fairly commonplace, but most people do not know that until recently the courts would often ignore them. Historically, the public’s “right of access” to judicial records outweighed a party’s desire to keep their settlement confidential. This makes sense when the issues involve public interests or safety concerns. But when…

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court in a recent decision stated that residential and commercial property owners who hire contractors are not responsible for personal injuries happening during construction on their property. Previously, plaintiffs had argued for a “retained control” exception where property owners could be held responsible for injuries to workers if the owner was present…

Many clients have often been surprised to learn that the attorney client privilege in Pennsylvania did not necessarily apply to advice their attorney’s gave them. Previously, the Pennsylvania Superior Court had held that only communications made from the client to the lawyer were privileged, not those flowing from the attorney to the client. That holding,…