Whether a furniture manufacturer’s marketing of a line of trademarked furniture for its licensor had been "commercially reasonable" was decided by the Business Court yesterday in favor of the manufacturer, in Lexington Furniture Industries, Inc. v. Bob Timberlake Collection, Inc., 2009 NCBC 22 (September 9, 2009).
The parties had entered into a License Agreement
The written provisions of a franchise agreement — and its merger clause — resulted in summary judgment on a franchisee’s fraud and other claims against a franchisor. The case, decided last Friday by the Business Court, is L’Heureux Enterprises, Inc. v. Port City Java, Inc.
Conflicting Representations
Plaintiffs claimed they had premised their purchase of
I write sometimes about litigation involving Duke University’s sports teams. In fact, the most popular post ever on this blog was The Law And Duke Football: The Video, which has a video of Duke’s own lawyer telling a judge how bad Duke football is. That video, according to youtube, has been watched over 17,000
Six new cases were designated to the Business Court in August 2009, including a case seeking class certification over charges for medical records (Toney), and a shareholder dispute pitting a father against his son (Shallcross).
Moltzon v. King (Wake)(Tennille): minority shareholder dispute in which plaintiff alleges the defendants breached their fiduciary duties by
When an employee quits his or her job, unemployment benefits aren’t available unless there was "good cause" for leaving the job. Today, the North Carolina Supreme Court answered the question whether an employee who quits in the face of a downsizing, accepting a "voluntary" retirement package, can show the good cause necessary to receive unemployment
The Court of Appeals issued today a number of opinions worth a mention, running the gamut from two personal jurisdiction rulings to a significant legal malpractice decision.
Personal Jurisdiction
The opinion in Brown v. Meter contains a thorough discussion of personal jurisdiction based on product sales in the "stream of commerce," with a mention of
The Business Court granted summary judgment on Plaintiff’s trade secrets claim yesterday in Edgewater Services, Inc. v. Epic Logistics, Inc., 2009 NCBC 20 (N.C. Super. Ct. August 11, 2009). It also dismissed Plaintiff’s claim for punitive damages.
Plaintiff Edgewater and Defendant Epic are third party logistics companies, arranging for transportation of freight for their
If you’ve practiced in federal court in North Carolina for any period of time — or anywhere in the Fourth Circuit for that matter — you are familiar with the case of Blackwelder Furniture Co. of Statesville v. Seilig Manufacturing Co., 550 F.2d 189 (4th Cir. 1977), which set out the standard for the
July was a slow month for new Business Court cases. By my count, there were only eight. One involves a hurricane (Bodie Island), another involves children’s cartoon characters (Middleton), a third involves telephone poles (Town of Murphy), and the others raise the usual allegations of corporate malfeasance and misconduct.
I wouldn’t ordinarily write about the Fourth Circuit’s opinion yesterday in Walker v. Prince George’s County, Maryland., The Walker case doesn’t have anything at all to do with business litigation. But two things make the case remarkable.
The first is that the opinion was written by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, sitting by