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What You Can Do Under New York Law When You’re Sold Defective Goods

In Bimini Boat Sales, Inc. v.  Luhrs Corp., plaintiff Bimini, a retail boat dealer, bought a fishing boat from boat manufacturer Luhrs, intending to resell the boat to the general public. Unfortunately for Bimini, after they received the boat from Luhrs, they discovered that the boat had several defects that were serious enough to render [...]

Posted Under: Breach of contract, commercial litigation, defective goods
This post was written by Jonathan Cooper on January 31, 2010 Comments (0)

Constructive Fraud: A Lesser-Known, But Powerful Tool in New York To Recover Money That You’re Owed

Many small businesses’ recurring nightmare, particularly in this economy, looks something like this:
Debtor D (we’ll call him “D,” for short) owes you tens of thousands of dollars for product that you delivered months ago. When you inquire as to what the delay is in receiving payment, you get a run-around, and ultimately find out that [...]

Nassau County, NY Insured’s Punitive Damages & Deceptive Business Practices Claims Against Insurer Survive Dismissal

If a jury sides with plaintiff on this issue, and finds that Allstate engaged in deceptive business practices (this law is codified at sections 349 and 350 of the General Business Law), Allstate faces the specter of not only compensatory damages for their alleged breach of contract, but also treble and punitive damages as well.

How An Improperly Drafted Employment Contract Allowed Employee’s Claim To Collect Post-Termination Commissions To Survive Dismissal in New York

In a hot-off-the-presses decision that was handed down this past Thursday, and is scheduled to appear in Tuesday’s New York Law Journal, New York’s Appellate Division, First Department (which covers New York and Bronx Counties) reversed that portion of a trial court’s decision that dismissed a former at-will employee’s claims under Labor Law §§191 and [...]

Posted Under: Breach of contract, at-will, commercial litigation, unjust enrichment
This post was written by Jonathan Cooper on January 17, 2010 Comments (0)

How One U.S. Company Is Protecting Against The Piracy Of Its Proprietary Software

Two days ago, the New York Times reported on a lawsuit that was brought by California-based Cybersitter, claiming that two Chinese software companies had engaged in unfair competition, and misappropriated, or stolen, thousands of lines of the code contained in its proprietary software to develop Green Dam, a type of software designed to block users [...]

Posted Under: Trade Secrets, commercial litigation, copyright, unfair competition
This post was written by Jonathan Cooper on January 8, 2010 Comments (0)

Employment Contract Cannot Be Implied, New York Federal Court Holds

In Bernhardt v. Tradition North America, a case very similar to the one we discussed recently in “Why Whistleblower Protection Clause In Employee Manual May Be Worthless,” the plaintiff, who was a vice president at defendant Tradition North America Inc., notified the SEC of various securities schemes that he had supposedly uncovered at his company. [...]

Posted Under: Breach of contract, at-will, commercial litigation, wrongful termination
This post was written by Jonathan Cooper on January 6, 2010 Comments (0)

When A Company Can Enforce A Contract’s Terms – Even If They Weren’t A Party To The Original Contract – Under New York Law

Strange as it may sound, there are times that you can reap the benefit of a contract’s provisions even if you had nothing to do with the contract at the time it was signed. And this is exactly what happened in Corbett v. Firstline Security, Inc., et al.
In this case, the plaintiff sued to recover [...]