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…
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 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…
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…
Plaintiffs often assert the common law cause of action of tortious interference in conjunction with other claims associated with unlawful competition. This is because the elements needed to prove the common law tort frequently use the same or substantially similar facts as those needed to establish breach of a restrictive…
Florida’s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act (FDUTPA) can be a powerful statute because plaintiffs can bring a wide variety of claims due to the expansive nature of what constitutes an unfair method of competition. FDUTPA prohibits “[u]nfair methods of competition, unconscionable acts or practices, and unfair or deceptive acts…
The Florida restrictive covenant statute allows employers to restrain employees from working for a competitor so long as the non-competition agreement is supported by a legitimate business interest and is reasonable in time, area, and line of business. Fla. Stat. 542.335. Employees that enter contracts containing non-compete agreements can be…
A trade secret plaintiff may have to divulge its claimed trade secret with reasonable particularity to the defendant before engaging in discovery because a growing number of courts require trade secret plaintiffs to do so. This rule places the plaintiff in a “Catch-22.” See DeRubeis v. Witten Techs., Inc., 244…
Arbitration is a voluntary process to resolve disputes and is favored by the courts. The Federal Arbitration Act (commonly referred to as the “FAA”) sets forth the requirements for arbitration and rules for judicial review and confirmation of an arbitration decision. Judicial review of commercial arbitration awards is narrowly limited…
Some employers have confronted the situation where employees have taken corporate trade secrets to use in competition against their former employer, but the employees had not signed a non-compete agreement. Under Florida law, however, the fact that the former employees did not sign a non-compete agreement is not dispositive concerning…