Client Successes

Creative Solutions to Real Problems Business Litigation Represented a U.S. multinational corporation in the appeal of a suit its client initiated against another U.S. multinational scheming to infringe on protected intellectual property through, in part, hiring former employees of the client’s Indian affiliate. The district court dismissed the case for failure to join the Indian employees and for forum non conveniens, thereby sending the case to India. We successfully appealed this decision when the Third Circuit Court of Appeals vacated the district court’s order and remanded the matter for complete reconsideration. Defended a NYSE-listed international retailer in an injunction action brought by a landlord seeking to require the multimillion dollar build-out and operation of a leased retail location. After removing the landlord’s state court injunction action to federal court, the district court denied the landlord’s motion for special and preliminary injunctive relief and disallowed the landlord’s equitable claims. Represented a group of developers and its guarantor principals with multiple real estate projects in various states of completion. The principals of the developers had guaranteed the construction loans for each of the projects. We worked with the various creditor financial institutions for the orderly turnover of the properties in return for releasing the personal guarantees of each of the principals. Represented a developer with a multi-unit residential condominium in a dispute with a creditor. We negotiated a resolution to the dispute with the creditor financial institution, resulting in a lower interest rate and the provision of end-user residential mortgages by the lender, which allowed the condominium project to be sold out. Challenged the application of a RICO statute to a firm client, a secured lender who took possession of the assets of a borrower upon borrower’s default on its loan from the client. One of the assets of the borrower was stock in a wholly owned subsidiary. Former shareholders of the subsidiary sued the client for fraud and civil RICO violations based on the client’s receipt of the subsidiary’s stock. Represented a privately held company, a leader in international software and services, in its enforcement of contractual confidentiality and restrictive covenants against a former account executive employee and the competitor that hired the former employee. We acted quickly to file suit and move for an injunction, leading to a negotiated global settlement. The competitor agreed to terminate the employment of the former employee and not to use any information it received regarding the client’s operations   Defended the owner of a building situated on leased land from landowner’s lease termination claim, and secured multimillion dollar settlement Recovered one million shares of a company’s stock from a European fund in Luxemburg, which stock had been wrongfully delivered to the European fund by an escrow agent in violation of the agent’s undertaking. Challenged wrongful expenses charged by a landlord on a corporate lease A Landowner had an access easement over his neighbor’s land. The neighbor was partially obstructing the access easement with shrubs and fences. We obtained an injunction prohibiting the neighbor from partially obstructing the access easement. The injunction was upheld on appeal. Negotiated and forced a corporate divorce of a subsidiary from a parent corporation that did not want to divest the profitable subsidiary. We represented the former owners of the subsidiary, who had merged with the parent and were unhappy with the new post-merger relationship. Identified a large fraud being perpetrated on many banks, and because of the early detection of the fraudulent activity was able to obtain collateral—and ultimately payment—when other banks took large losses Appellate Advocacy In a case receiving national attention, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on behalf of our client, vacating a district court dismissal order and instructing the court on remand to reconsider and carefully evaluate the defendant competitor’s motion to dismiss on Rule 19 failure to join indispensible parties and on forum non conveniens grounds. The case involved an intellectual property and trade secrets dispute between two competitor contractors to the pharmaceutical industry. Each litigant had its own Indian subsidiary that were adversaries in a lawsuit pending in India at the time the U.S. district court case was filed. In its decision, the Third Circuit ordered the district court to reconsider its ruling that India, not the U.S., is the correct forum for the lawsuit, expressly determining that the court’s short analysis of the factual and legal issues was insufficient to support dismissal on the grounds asserted. The Pennsylvania Superior Court upheld a trial court’s mandatory preliminary injunction in our client’s favor requiring the removal of all obstructions placed by an adjacent landowner in an express easement. In this case, two adjacent landowner estates, a private homeowner (the dominant estate) and golf course (the servient estate) disputed what, if any, obstructions could be placed in an express easement appurtenant to the servient estate. Among the obstructions that the golf course was ordered to remove were: 1) a fence with a gate across the homeowner’s driveway; 2) large boulders placed near the entrance to the driveway; 3) a sign advertising a restaurant in the golf course pro-shop; and 4) certain landscaping located within the easement. The golf course unsuccessfully argued that although the obstructions were within the easement, the homeowner’s ingress and egress to his property was not substantially obstructed, and the homeowner had alternative means of access to his property. In its decision, the Pennsylvania Superior Court determined that the impediments actually obstructed portions of the easement and that alternative access to the homeowner’s property was immaterial.