The Virginia Business Litigation Blog

February 17, 2020

Non-Compete Agreements Between Businesses More Likely to Be Held Enforceable

Noncompete agreements are typically found in employment agreements between employers and their employees. But that’s not the only place these clauses are found. Sometimes you’ll have two sophisticated companies of roughly equal bargaining power who, for whatever reason, wish to enter into a binding agreement placing restrictions on the one of the entity’s ability to compete with the other. Perhaps one company has acquired or merged with another and needs to ensure that the target company’s former officers and directors don’t immediately form a competing business and take their old clients with them. Or perhaps, as was the case recently in the dispute between wood-flooring contractors Lumber Liquidators and Cabinets To Go, two businesses with overlapping ownership simply seek to reach an agreement to reduce competition and minimize the sharing of confidential information. The important thing to note is that most of the reasons Virginia courts disfavor noncompete agreements have to do with fairness to the employee and do not apply when the two contracting parties are both businesses. Therefore, courts are much more likely to enforce noncompete agreements found in a business-to-business context than in an employment setting.

The basic facts of Lumber Liquidators v. Cabinets To Go are as follows. About 10 years ago, hardwood flooring retailer Lumber Liquidators learned that its Chairman and largest shareholder, Thomas D. Sullivan, was also involved in the ownership and operation of Cabinets To Go, which sold kitchen and bath fixtures and building supplies. Concerned that Sullivan might divert business opportunities or confidential business information over to Cabinets To Go, Lumber Liquidators entered into a number of agreements with Cabinets To Go. Among the agreements formed between the companies was a pair of “reciprocal restrictive covenants” in which Cabinets To Go agreed not to engage in the sale of hardwood flooring anywhere in the world during the term of the agreement and a period of two years thereafter. Lumber Liquidators similarly agreed not to sell kitchen cabinets.

January 16, 2020

Can Your Business Prove its Noncompete Agreements Are Reasonable?

by Lee E. Berlik

Once upon a time, courts would routinely dismiss non-compete lawsuits brought by businesses against their former employees if the agreements at issue appeared to impose an unreasonable burden on the employee’s ability to earn a living. The rules of the game changed a bit back in 2013 when the Virginia Supreme Court decided Assurance Data v. Malyevac, where it held that in most cases, even if the agreement appears overly broad on its face, the employer should be given an opportunity to prove that for its particular business model, it has a legitimate business interest in restricting a particular employee’s ability to compete with it for the length of time and in the geographic area specified in the agreement. Proving reasonableness is often easier said than done.

For a noncompete to be enforceable in Virginia, it has to be worded so that its restrictions (a) are no greater than necessary to protect the employer’s legitimate business interests, (b) are not unduly harsh or oppressive in limiting the employee’s ability to earn a living, and (c) are reasonable considering sound public policy. It’s up to the employer to produce evidence sufficient to demonstrate each of these elements. As reasoned by the Assurance Data court, “restraints on competition are neither enforceable nor unenforceable in a factual vacuum.” A recent decision out of Fairfax County Circuit Court demonstrates how this can play out in the real world.

December 19, 2019

Fraudulent Inducement Claims Not Covered by Source-of-Duty Rule

by Lee E. Berlik

Many lawyers pursuing business litigation on behalf of their clients will file a whole panoply of claims rather than content themselves with a single count for breach of contract. As the law generally permits a wider range of remedies (and higher damages awards) for tort claims like fraud and tortious interference, plaintiffs seeking to enforce contract rights in court will often sue for various tort claims in addition to breach of contract. Sometimes this works and sometimes it doesn’t. Courts are guided by various principles to help them weed out contract-based claims disguised as tort claims. One such principle is known as the “source of duty” rule.

When a plaintiff alleges that the defendant violated some duty owed to him, the court will examine the source of the duty allegedly violated. If the source of the duty is a contract entered into by the parties, as opposed to common law or some provision of the Virginia or United States Code, the court will treat the claim as one for breach of contract and limit remedies accordingly. Of course, there are circumstances in which a defendant can both breach a contract and commit a tort by violating a common-law duty. It is up to the court, however, to dismiss any tort claims based on the alleged violation of a duty that exists solely by virtue of a contractual agreement. (See Preferred Sys. Sols., Inc. v. GP Consulting, LLC, 284 Va. 382, 408 (2012)).

November 27, 2019

Kevin Hart Did Not Breach Fiduciary Duty, Says Virginia Court

by Lee E. Berlik

A couple of years ago, comedian Kevin Hart teamed up with a Virginia mobile-game developer called Stand Up Digital, Inc., to develop and release a video game called “Gold Ambush” that would feature Hart and his family members as playable characters. Hart licensed his likeness to Stand Up and was granted a 20% stake in the company as well as a seat on the board of directors in exchange. The game was launched in September 2017 but did not perform as well as the developer had hoped and is no longer available for download. Stand Up attributes the poor performance of the game to Hart’s decision to issue an emotional apology on Instagram–just days prior to the game’s launch–following rumors of infidelity. In the recording , Hart apologized to his wife and kids for having done “something wrong” and said that he would not permit “another person to have financial gain off his mistakes.” The video has been viewed several million times.

Stand Up sued Hart for breach of fiduciary duty (amid other claims), arguing that Hart’s failure to warn it of his plans to “go public” about the alleged affair before posting his Instagram apology damaged the success of Gold Ambush. The court allowed the case to proceed through the discovery phase but ultimately entered summary judgment in Hart’s favor on the fiduciary-duty claim, finding that there was no evidence he breached such a duty.

October 29, 2019

Waiving the Statute of Limitations: Harder than You Might Think

by Lee E. Berlik

As a general rule, legal rights may be waived by contractual agreement. The protection afforded by statutes of limitations may be waived like other rights, but only in very narrow circumstances, due to a Virginia law that few know about. The General Assembly decided to make it a bit more difficult to waive a statute of limitations than some other rights, and enacted Virginia Code § 8.01-232, which states in pertinent part as follows:

Whenever the failure to enforce a promise, written or unwritten, not to plead the statute of limitations would operate as a fraud on the promisee, the promisor shall be estopped to plead the statute. In all other cases, an unwritten promise not to plead the statute shall be void, and a written promise not to plead such statute shall be valid when (i) it is made to avoid or defer litigation pending settlement of any case, (ii) it is not made contemporaneously with any other contract, and (iii) it is made for an additional term not longer than the applicable limitations period.

Now that’s a pile of nearly incomprehensible legalese. One of the purposes of this blog, however, is to help people understand stuff like this, so let me try to decode it for you.

October 11, 2019

The Independent Personal Stake Exception to Intra-Corporate Immunity

by Lee E. Berlik

A conspiracy to harm another’s business may be actionable under Virginia’s business-conspiracy statute, which provides for a cause of action where two or more people “combine, associate, agree, mutually undertake or concert together for the purpose of…willfully and maliciously injuring another in his reputation, trade, business or profession by any means whatever.” (See Va. Code §§ 18.2-499, 18.2-500). To prevail in a lawsuit for business conspiracy in Virginia, a plaintiff must prove (1) a combination of two or more people or entities for the purpose of willfully and maliciously injuring the plaintiff in his business; and (2) damage that resulted from the combination. A combination exists where there is concerted action designed to “effect a preconceived plan and unity of design and purpose.” (Schlegel v. Bank of America, 505 F. Supp. 2d 321, 326 (W.D. Va. 2007)). When the people being sued for conspiracy work for the same company, a question arises as to whether the first element–the requirement of “two of more people”–can be satisfied. The intra-corporate immunity doctrine holds that employees working for the same company are generally immune from conspiracy claims when acting on behalf of their employer. This is because a corporation acts through its employees, so the the employees’ actions are really the corporation’s actions and a corporation cannot conspire with itself. In other words, a business-conspiracy claim requires concerted action of at least two legally distinct persons or entities. A corporation can’t conspire with its employees, and its employees can’t conspire with each other if they are acting within the scope of their employment. As with most areas of the law, however, there are exceptions.

Some courts recognize an exception to the intracorporate immunity doctrine where the employee has an “independent personal stake” in achieving the goals of the conspiracy. Although the Virginia Supreme Court has not recognized any such exception, federal courts sitting in Virginia and applying Virginia law have applied it on several occasions. (See, for example, Greenville Publishing Company v. Daily Reflector, Inc., 496 F.2d 391 (4th Cir. 1974) (observing that an exception to the intracorporate immunity doctrine “may be justified when the officer has an independent personal stake in achieving the corporation’s illegal objective.”); Cvent, Inc. v. Eventbrite, Inc., 739 F. Supp. 2d 927 (E.D. Va. 2010)). Even if you’re in a court that does recognize a personal-stake exception, it will apply only to those cases in which the conspirator gained an independent personal benefit from the conspiracy. This benefit must be separate and distinct from the corporate benefit enjoyed by the employer.

September 27, 2019

Tortious Interference with Anticipated Future Contract

by Lee E. Berlik

Virginia does recognize a legal cause of action for improper interference with an anticipated business contract. The tort is known as “tortious interference with business expectancy,” “tortious interference with future economic benefit,” “tortious interference with prospective economic advantage,” or some variant of that phrase. It’s what you sue for when your business is about to close on a big deal but then the whole thing is called off as the result of some form of meddling by a third party. You’re not suing for breach of contract at this point because there is no contract. Instead, you’re suing for the loss of an anticipated future economic benefit. For the claim to be valid, however, there must be reason to believe that you would have closed on the deal were in not for the defendant’s unlawful conduct. There is no claim for interference with a contract you merely hoped to enter into, or for interference with a mere possibility of some economic benefit.

Tortious interference with business expectancy requires proof of the following elements: (1) the existence of a business relationship or expectancy, with a probability (not just possibility) of future economic benefit to the plaintiff; (2) the defendant’s knowledge of the relationship or expectancy; (3) a reasonable certainty that absent defendant’s intentional misconduct, plaintiff would have continued in the relationship or realized the expectancy; and (4) damages to the plaintiff.

August 10, 2019

Tell the Jury About Your Plea in Bar Now, or Later

by Lee E. Berlik

If you get sued in Virginia on a claim your lawyer tells you is likely barred by the statute of limitations, you can raise the defense by way of a so-called “plea in bar.” A plea in bar is a pleading that presents a single set of facts that, if proven true, would bar the plaintiff’s claim from going forward. For example, if you can prove that the plaintiff’s claim arose earlier than the maximum amount of time permitted under the applicable statute of limitations, you may choose to file a plea in bar at the outset of the case to ask the court to dismiss it for that reason. Are you required to make this request at the outset of the case? No. If for some strategic reason you’d rather keep the defense in your back pocket to tell the jury about at trial, you can do that.

The issue came up recently in Ferguson Enterprises, Inc. v. F.H. Furr Plumbing, Heating and Air Conditioning, Inc., or as I like to refer to it, “Furr v. Ferguson.” Furr sued Ferguson in Prince William County on claims arising out of an alleged fraudulent-pricing scheme. Ferguson, a distributor of Trane-branded HVAC systems, had negotiated a pricing structure with Trane that allowed it to charge customers like Furr a discounted price and then receive a rebate or “claim back” from Trane. Furr entered into a contract with Ferguson back in 1995, but eventually came to believe that Ferguson was charging Furr a price above the discounted rate authorized by Trane. Furr sued in 2013 for fraud, unjust enrichment, breach of contract, and other claims.

July 9, 2019

Business Conspiracy Claims Survive Under Third-Party Rule

by Lee E. Berlik

Not long ago, Serco, Inc., won summary judgment on various claims asserted against it by L-3 Communications Corp. and L-3 Applied Technologies, Inc., including claims for statutory business conspiracy, common law conspiracy, and tortious interference with business expectancy. On appeal to the Fourth Circuit, however, the court found that the district court erred in granting summary judgment on the conspiracy claims and sent the case back to the Eastern District of Virginia for further proceedings.

The dispute centered around rights to a lucrative government contract. In 2004, the Air Force awarded a prime contract to Serco that called for testing and upgrading services to protect certain Air Force sites from “high altitude electromagnetic pulse” (“HEMP“) events. The Air Force would periodically issue work orders for various projects, and if Serco could not complete the work itself, it could issue a request for proposals (“RFP”) to invite subcontractors to bid on the work.

May 18, 2019

When Preemption Leads to Unanticipated Removal

by Lee E. Berlik

When you sue someone, you sometimes have a choice between filing in state court or federal court, and courts will generally defer to your preferred forum. In appropriate circumstances, however, a defendant can remove the case from state court to federal court. Under the current removal statute, 28 U.S.C. § 1441, removal is permitted by the defendant in any civil action brought in a state court of which the district courts of the United States have original jurisdiction. For those wishing to keep their cases in state court, care must be taken to ensure there are no grounds for federal-court jurisdiction. Some cases get removed to federal court before the plaintiff ever sees it coming.

The preemption doctrine can lead to such a result. Under this doctrine, a defendant may remove a cause of action that otherwise appears to lack federal question jurisdiction by asserting that federal law preempts the state law claim. This is because, under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, when state law and federal law conflict, federal law displaces (or preempts) state law.

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