The Virginia Business Litigation Blog

October 29, 2019

Waiving the Statute of Limitations: Harder than You Might Think

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.

April 21, 2019

To Dispute Enforceability of Noncompete, File Plea in Bar

by Lee E. Berlik

When the Virginia Supreme Court decided Assurance Data v. Malyevac a few years ago, most employment lawyers speculated that although Virginia law no longer permitted most non-compete cases to be disposed of summarily on demurrer, a procedural mechanism known as the “plea in bar” could still be used by defendants intent on challenging the enforceability of their noncompete agreements. Assurance Data held that “restraints on competition are neither enforceable nor unenforceable in a factual vacuum” and that evidence is ordinarily required to perform the analysis. Unlike demurrers, pleas in bar allow for the presentation of evidence, so it would seem that the plea in bar would be an appropriate way to dispute a noncompete. A new decision from the Circuit Court of Fairfax County agrees with this approach.

March 15, 2019

Under SCA, Cloud-Based Emails Remain in “Electronic Storage” Even After They’ve Been Read

by Lee E. Berlik

The Stored Communications Act (“SCA”) establishes a criminal offense for whoever “intentionally accesses without authorization a facility through which an electronic communication service is provided” or “intentionally exceeds an authorization to access that facility,” and by doing so “obtains, alters, or prevents authorized access to a wire or electronic communication while it is in electronic storage in such system.” 18 U.S.C. § 2701(a). The SCA also creates a civil cause of action, in which the plaintiff may obtain damages plus reasonable attorneys’ fees and other costs. 18 U.S.C. § 2707(b).

Federal district courts around the country have reached inconsistent conclusions when grappling with the issue of whether a particular communication is in “electronic storage” at the time it is accessed. The SCA defines electronic storage as “(A) any temporary, intermediate storage of a wire or electronic communication incidental to the electronic transmission thereof; and (B) any storage of such communication by an electronic communication service for purposes of backup protection of such communication.” 18 U.S.C. § 2510(17). Some courts have interpreted subsection (A) as applying only to “unopened” communications, reasoning that the “temporary, intermediate” language contemplates the interception of a communication before it reaches its intended recipient. Others, like Hoofnagle v. Smyth-Wythe Airport Comm’n, No. 1:15CV00008 (W.D. Va. May 24, 2016), found no reason to draw a distinction between “opened” and “unopened” communications for purposes of evaluating SCA liability. Similar disagreement exists with respect to subsection (B), where courts reached different conclusions about the relevance of whether it is the Internet Service Provider or user for whose benefit a backup copy of an email is made. Earlier this month, the Fourth Circuit weighed in on both issues for the first time.

February 20, 2019

So You Think You’re Going to Recover Attorneys’ Fees?

by Lee E. Berlik

Virginia courts are not fond of awarding attorneys’ fees in litigation, even to the prevailing party. The general rule in this country is that litigants are responsible for their own attorneys’ fees unless a contract or statute says otherwise. Even if you win a case, you still have to pay your lawyer and can’t force the losing party to reimburse you. Even if a statute authorizes recovery of legal fees, the judge will have discretion to determine the amount. Most statutes that allow recovery of legal fees only allow recovery of a “reasonable” amount, so if the judge feels that no amount of fees would be reasonable to assess against the other side, then no fees will be awarded. Let’s check out a recent case from Fairfax County.

Robert M. Swahn, Jr. v. Nouman Hussain was a dispute between neighbors. Before addressing the issue of whether one of the parties could recover legal fees as the “prevailing party” in the litigation, the court characterized the case (in the very first sentence of the opinion) as one in which “everyone loses.” You know you’re not getting an award of attorneys’ fees when the judge calls you a loser.

January 13, 2019

Non-Compete Clause Satisfies Janitor Test, Held Enforceable

by Lee E. Berlik

The best way to predict whether a particular noncompete clause will be deemed enforceable in a Virginia court is to read about how similar clauses have been treated by those same courts. No two cases are exactly alike, but non-compete agreements tend to incorporate similar language (mostly for the reason that lawyers don’t like to re-invent the wheel and do a lot of cutting and pasting from prior agreements when drafting such contracts for their clients). Back in November 2017, I wrote about O’Sullivan Films v. Neaves, in which the court held that it would be premature to rule on the enforceability of a noncompete clause without hearing evidence. Since then, the parties presented evidence to the court and the court reached a decision, so I thought it would be a good time to revisit the case here on the blog.

In its latest opinion, the court (the Western District of Virginia, Harrisonburg Division) doesn’t make any new law, but its ruling can serve as a guide to how courts are likely to interpret and apply in the future noncompetes using language similar to the language at issue in the O’Sullivan Films case. Here’s what the noncompete in that case said:

Continue reading

The VirginiaBusiness Litigation Blog