Document discovery in litigation is a way for parties to learn about the actual facts underlying a dispute. Sometimes, however, parties intentionally destroy documents in advance of litigation (which is called “spoliation”). Spoliation can have very serious consequences, including a court-imposed “adverse inference” instruction. When a court gives such an instruction, it tells the jury that it may assume that documents deleted in advance of discovery would have been bad for the party who deleted them.
This happened to Janet Murley, a former vice president of marketing for the Hallmark Group. As a result, she is now hundreds of thousands of dollars poorer.
With only two weeks to go until the Mayans’ end of days, what better way to spend your time than reading this week’s latest in Suits by Suits:
On November 19, the University of Maryland announced that it is leaving the Atlantic Coast Conference, its home for 60 years, to join the Big Ten Conference. In weighing its decision, Maryland had to consider one big downside: the $50 million exit fee that ACC presidents voted to adopt in September 2012. Maryland hasn’t paid up, and the ACC sued it on November 27 in North Carolina state court, seeking to recover all $50 million.
The principal issue in the case will be whether the exit fee is a proper amount of “liquidated damages.”
Stop us if you’ve heard this before, but we’re still not a political blog.
Nevertheless, when the former Chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, Jim Greer, sues the Republican Party, Florida State Senate President Mike Haridopolous and Florida State Sen. John Thrasher for unpaid severance pay and $5 million in damages following his 2010 resignation – and the Republican Party replies with allegations that Greer engaged in fraud and money laundering, funneling $300,000 from the Republican Party to his own pockets, well, we can’t resist.
Twice, in fact. Back in September we advised you that Greer was filing suit, and that his lawyer was confident of victory. (“They’re [the Republican Party] dead. … Jim Greer will win the criminal case and Jim Greer will win the civil case.”)
Two days ago, the Republican Party struck back, moving to dismiss the portion of the lawsuit that includes the individual defendants, Sens. Haridopolous and Thrasher. But the Court rejected that argument, permitting Greer's lawsuit to go forward against both the Republican Party and the state senators, apparently on the theory that the individual legislators were acting as individuals and not on behalf of the Republican Party when they allegedly offered Greer $124,000 to resign back in 2010.
(Greer calls the offer a “severance payment”; media sources have not been so generous in their characterization.)
Although most of us don’t face the same sort of political issues that Jim Greer and the Republican Party of Florida do, many employers do face similar risks when they contemplate firing a prominent, high-level employee. For those employers, the “nightmare scenario” is that the employee will run down his or her former employer in the press, or possibly air dirty laundry that the employer would rather not have out in the open.
If you’re thinking that Jim Greer used that exact same strategy, you would be right. In his deposition – leaked to the press, of course – Greer called Republican Party officials “whack-a-do, right-wing crazies” not-so-secretly plotting to suppress minority votes in Florida. (The full transcript of Greer’s deposition can be found here.)
Often times, employers chafe at the idea of paying a high-level employee to go away; after all, they’ve already decided this person isn’t worth keeping. How can they possibly be worth paying? The practical reality is that sometimes the benefits of an amicable settlement – including a general release of all claims and non-disparagement and non-disclosure agreements – can leave the employer better off than simply rolling the dice.
We’re betting that the Republican Party of Florida wishes it had just paid Greer back in 2010.
Postscript: A grand jury indicted Greer on multiple fraud counts in 2010 and his criminal trial is scheduled for February, 2013.
We’ve previously written about the disputes that can arise when an employee leaves a job to start a competing company, such as claims that the employee has misappropriated trade secrets or breached confidentiality provisions. Sometimes the employers win these cases. And sometimes, they lose in a big way – as the American Chemical Society (ACS) found out in a case that went all the way to the Ohio Supreme Court. Am. Chem. Soc’y v. Leadscope, Inc., Slip Opinion No. 2012-Ohio-4193. That court's recent decision serves as a caution to employers: if you don’t have reliable evidence that anything’s been stolen, but you sue your employees’ new business anyway, you can end up on the wrong end of a large verdict.
Many of the cases we talk about here on Suits by Suits are breach of contract cases brought by executives against their former employers. Sometimes, however, the employer turns the tables, bringing an action against a former executive for breaching its confidences. When that happens, the executive can find himself owing the company a lot of money, rather than the other way around.
Such was the fate of a former lawyer for Toyota named Dimitrios Biller, the subject of the Ninth Circuit’s recent opinion in Biller v. Toyota Motor Corp., 668 F.3d 655 (9th Cir. 2012).
Today’s decision of interest, U.S. Electrical Services, Inc. v. Schmidt (D. Mass. June 19, 2012), involves everyone’s favorite strip-mall stop: the Dollar Tree. James Schmidt and Peter Colon wanted to sell lighting and fixtures to the Dollar Tree (presumably for more than $1.00). Their former employer, U.S. Electrical Services (USESI), wanted to stop them, because it wanted to bid on the same Dollar Tree lighting account and it didn’t want Schmidt and Colon using its confidential pricing information to make their bid.
At the time USESI sued, the account was up for bid in only a few days. So USESI didn’t just file a complaint and seek damages. Instead, it asked for a preliminary injunction barring Schmidt, Colon, and their new employer, Munro, from competing for the business.
In my last post, I made the case that new social media haven’t changed the issues that come up in legal disputes between companies and high-ranking employees. But social media can add some new twists. For instance, are a company’s Twitter followers the equivalent of a confidential client list, such that you would be “misappropriating” a company “trade secret” if you left and took the list with you?
Twitter and other social media may be transforming our world, but they haven’t changed laws and company policies against disclosing sensitive company information. Take the recent firing – reported in The Inbox – by women’s clothing retailer Francesca’s Holdings Corp. of its CFO, Gene Morphis.
The latest developments in suits by suits:
As the regulatory and business environments in which our clients operate grow increasingly complex, we identify and offer perspectives on significant legal developments affecting businesses, organizations, and individuals. Each post aims to address timely issues and trends by evaluating impactful decisions, sharing observations of key enforcement changes, or distilling best practices drawn from experience. InsightZS also features personal interest pieces about the impact of our legal work in our communities and about associate life at Zuckerman Spaeder.
Information provided on InsightZS should not be considered legal advice and expressed views are those of the authors alone. Readers should seek specific legal guidance before acting in any particular circumstance.
John J. Connolly
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