I have remarked before how hard the Business Court has been on Plaintiffs making trade secrets claims. You can look here and here for example of these prior posts. The Court has often dismissed trade secrets claims on a 12(b)(6) Motion because the trade secrets were not described with sufficient particularity.
This week, in Le
There’s a new roadblock for plaintiffs in the Business Court suing over trade secrets. It was imposed last week by Judge Bledsoe in DSM Dyneema, LLC v. Thagard, 2014 NCBC 50, and it bars the plaintiff from proceeding with discovery until the trade secrets allegedly being misused by the defendant are identified with
If you were thinking that an arbitration agreement needs to be signed in order to get an order compelling arbitration, your world may have been turned on its ear by the Order from the Business Court last week in Morton v. Ivey, McClellan, Gatton & Talcott, LLP, 2013 NCBC 23..
There’s certainly a fair
Long time readers of this blog know that you can’t designate a case limited to a covenant not to compete to the Business Court. That’s the Lifecare case, from 2008, in which Judge Tennille said "every suit based upon a breach of a restrictive covenant . . . [will not] give rise to a mandatory
Be careful what you request in your complaint, particularly if it’s a request for judicial dissolution. According to a Court of Appeals opinion this week, you’ll be stuck with that request if your defendant asks for the same thing.
In Bradley v. Bradley, a husband-wife team were the shareholders and officers of a legal
For anyone who has agonized over a decision between moving to dismiss or moving to compel arbitration, your strategic torment may be over. A short but important order from the Business Court yesterday ruled that the two options are not mutually exclusive.
In Triad Group, Inc. v. Wachovia Bank, N.A., a bond swap lawsuit filed
The City of Richmond was kind to the City of Greensboro last week. After nearly a decade of litigation and arbitration, the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court’s rejection of a challenge to a nearly $15 million arbitration award against the general contractor of a wastewater treatment facility.
The published opinion in MCI Constructors, LLC v. City of
We can’t say it better than Mack Sperling did about eight months ago: "If you are thinking of designating a case to the Business Court because the Complaint raises allegations that the corporate veil should be pierced, stop. Those types of allegations, without more, aren’t enough to invoke the mandatory jurisdiction of the Court. "
In
An award of damages for breach of a noncompete agreement, like any other damages award, requires evidentiary support. In a judgment issued yesterday after a bench trial, the Business Court awarded the plaintiffs nominal damages absent such evidence.
In HILB Rogal & Hobbs Co. v. Sellars, the Court faced a common factual scenario: a former vice president
Both the North Carolina Uniform Arbitration Act and the Federal Arbitration Act are stacked in favor of the enforcement of arbitration provisions. That does not mean that a defendant’s motion to compel arbitration is a foregone conclusion, as a Business Court decision from Tuesday reminded us.
In Capps v. Blondeau, the Plaintiff inherited a significant