4 Key Takeaways | Trade Secret Update 2024 Legal Developments and Trends
On August 22, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington granted summary judgment in favor of a defendant mortgage servicer in a class action lawsuit challenging fees charged for expedited delivery of...more
Voice actors received a rare, if incomplete, victory against alleged AI infringers in a recent opinion from an SDNY judge in Lehrman v. Lovo, Inc. Voice actors Paul Lehrman and Linnea Sage filed an action against AI...more
In MONY Life Insurance Co. v. Perez, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals set aside a jury verdict in favor of MONY Life Insurance Co. on its unjust enrichment claim against policyholder Bernard Perez, holding that an...more
In President Donald Trump’s lawsuit against journalist Robert Woodward arising from Woodward’s publication of audio recordings of Woodward’s interviews of Trump in 2019 and 2020, district court dismisses Trump’s second...more
The takeaway from DDR Weinert, Limited et al v. Ovintiv USA Inc. is that equitable recoupment rescued a royalty payor from its mistaken payment of royalties. But first, The events. The Richters were mineral lessors...more
On March 10, 2025, a Minnesota state court judge granted in part and denied in part a credit union’s motion for summary judgment—and granted the defendants’ motion for leave to assert counterclaims against the credit union—in...more
In Perlaki v. J.B. Poindexter & Co., Inc., a data breach class action, Magistrate Judge Andrew M. Edison of the Southern District of Texas found that the plaintiff had standing to sue under Article III of the United States...more
Takeaway: Unjust enrichment is one of the most commonly asserted causes of action in class actions seeking compensatory damages. Equitable considerations form the foundation of unjust enrichment claims under the laws of...more
Examining the issue of trade secret misappropriation when parties have contractually limited their liability from breach, the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit reversed the district court’s dismissal of the case,...more
H&P, an investment bank, provided services allegedly worth USD 18 million to Randgold, who H&P had assumed was a client. However, terms of their engagement were never formalised or even written down. After the transaction,...more
On April 4, 2025, the Eleventh Circuit reversed the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama’s ruling dismissing Alabama Aircraft Industries’ (“AAI”) trade secret misappropriation claim against Boeing, thereby...more
A federal court in California recently granted a manufacturer’s motion to dismiss a distributor’s oral contract claims, but declined to dismiss claims for promissory estoppel and unjust enrichment. Cosmonova, LLC v. BioFilm,...more
The US District Court for the Eastern District of New York in Manalapan Surgery Ctr., et al. v. 1199 SEIU National Benefit Fund, No. 23-CV-03525 (EDNY March 12, 2025), recently granted a motion to dismiss a complaint filed by...more
A federal court recently rejected arguments by MultiPlan, Inc. and Cigna Health and Life Insurance Company that they had no obligation to ensure payments at the contractually negotiated, in-network rate to Anatomic and...more
Boren Descendants et al v. Fasken Oil and Ranch, LTD, offers something to talk about beyond interpretation of the fixed-or-floating NPRI question. At issue was this reservation, expressed as a double fraction, in a 1933...more
In 2021, LKQ Corporation (LKQ) filed suit against Robert Rutledge, its former plant manager, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. LKQ alleged that Rutledge’s working for a competitor within nine...more
Takeaway: A civil RICO claim – especially one framed as a putative class action – can be a powerful cause of action, given the civil remedies for RICO violations, which include treble damages and mandatory fee-shifting. ...more
The question of how much diligence buyers must demonstrate may be considered in a new authenticity case brought recently in the Miami-Dade County Circuit Court against a Miami gallery for selling $6 million in fake Andy...more
The distinction between unjust enrichment claims and quantum meruit claims have long bedeviled courts and practitioners. In Core Finance Team Affiliates v. Maine Medical Center, the Law Court provided important guidance...more
In Singh v. T-Mobile, 2024 N.Y. Slip Op. 05554 (2d Dept. Nov. 13, 2024) (here), the Appellate Division, Second Department affirmed the dismissal of an action for, among other things, breach of contract, breach of the covenant...more
This BLOG has frequently addressed issues related to a party’s standing, in many different contexts, to commence litigation. In prior BLOG articles we have explained that in order to prosecute a lawsuit, the plaintiff must...more
In Seitz v. Marcum LLP, 2024 N.Y. Slip Op. 51141(U) (Sup. Ct., N.Y. County Aug. 30, 2024) (here), Justice Robert R. Reed of the New York County Commercial Division addressed the doctrine of in pari delicto, which “bars a...more
In the lawsuit brought against them for using visual artists' work to teach their large language model, and producing near-identical copies in response to prompts, Stability AI, Midjourney, DeviantArt, and Runway AI moved to...more
A pivotal decision by a New York Appellate Division court holding that earnouts based on the future revenue of a dental practice violated the NY Fee Splitting Prohibition could substantially impact the structuring of health...more
By Jonathan H. Freiberger The Courts of New York will not aid in the enforcement of a contract when the subject matter is illegal. Cases standing for this seemingly unremarkable proposition are varied. For example, in...more