The Virginia Business Litigation Blog

November 8, 2016

How to Win Millions of Dollars in Court

If you or your business needs to bring a lawsuit, it’s natural to wonder whether you may be entitled to recover millions of dollars. You read about celebrities winning $115 million against magazines who published unauthorized photos, or you hear about women winning millions of dollars against fast-food chains after spilling hot coffee into their laps. Litigation sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? Short of winning the lottery, how else can someone obtain so much money is so short a time with such a small amount of effort? Well, the people you hear about who have won enormous monetary awards in court (at least those that have been upheld on appeal) generally have one thing in common: they suffered an enormous amount of harm as a result of something truly devastating that was done to them, causing them severe pain, extreme emotional distress, or vast economic hardship. In other words, those winning huge jury verdicts tend to be those who have suffered the most pain. You don’t necessarily want to be that person.

The legal term we use when referring to financial awards obtained in court is “damages,” of which there are essentially two types, compensatory and punitive. Compensatory damages are those designed to compensate a plaintiff for the loss or injury actually suffered as a result of the defendant’s conduct. It includes things like damage to property, personal injuries, physical pain, lost economic expectations, and emotional suffering. Compensatory damages are not supposed to give the plaintiff a windfall, make him rich, or punish the defendant. Rather, they are designed simply to make the plaintiff “whole,” to the extent that can be accomplished. They are designed to put the plaintiff roughly in the same position he was in before the wrong was committed.

October 10, 2016

Noncompete Restriction Against Owning Stock Not Necessarily Unenforceable

by Lee E. Berlik

When the Virginia Supreme Court decided Home Paramount Pest Control Companies v. Justin Shaffer five years ago, it stressed the importance of the “function” consideration in analyzing the enforceability of non-compete agreements. To be enforceable, the court held, a noncompete agreement should not purport to restrict the employee from engaging in activities having nothing to do with the tasks performed for the former employer. The court found particularly troublesome the fact that the noncompete at issue in the Home Paramount case barred the former employee from “engaging even indirectly…in the pest control business, even as a passive stockholder of a publicly traded international conglomerate with a pest control subsidiary.” What legitimate business interest would an employer have in preventing its former employees from owning stock in its competitors if the employee was not actually engaging in competitive activities? The court couldn’t identity any, so it held the noncompete was overly broad and therefore unenforceable. Since Home Paramount was decided, noncompete agreements containing restrictions against owning stock are being scrutinized more carefully. But a case decided by the Eastern District of Virginia a few weeks ago shows that such noncompete agreements will not necessarily be declared unenforceable.

The case was between Hair Club for Men, LLC, and its former employee, Lailuma Ehson, and her new company, Illusion Day Spa, LLC. Hair Club is in the business of hair replacement and hair therapies. Ehson worked at its Tysons Corner location from 2011 until 2015. When she took the job, she signed a “Confidentiality, Non-Solicitation and Non-Compete Agreement.” The noncompete clause prevented Ehson from engaging in the business of hair replacement or becoming interested in such business, directly or indirectly, “as an individual, partner, stockholder, director, officer, clerk, principal, agent, employee, or in any other relation or capacity whatsoever…”

September 11, 2016

How Some Independent Contractors May Be Able to Escape Their Noncompete Restrictions

by Lee E. Berlik

In Virginia, independent contractors can be held to noncompete agreements to the same extent as regular employees. But beware. A Fairfax County Circuit Court judge decided last month that all bets are off if the “independent contractor” should really have been classified as an employee. Although the Virginia Supreme Court has not yet spoken on the subject, Judge John M. Tran crafted a lengthy, well-reasoned opinion in Reading and Language Learning Center v. Sturgill holding that misclassifying employees as independent contractors violates Virginia public policy and is grounds for voiding the contract–including its noncompete and nonsolicitation provisions–even if the misclassification is unintentional. In other words, reasoned Judge Tran, independent contractors will only be bound by noncompete agreements if they have been properly classified as independent contractors.

Reading and Language Learning Center (“RLLC”) is a speech therapy practice that provides services to people with speech, language, or reading disorders. In 2014, Charlotte Sturgill was a recent graduate of a master’s program in speech-language pathology. To obtain her license and certification, Sturgill was required to complete a supervised clinical fellowship, which she arranged to do with RLLC. RLLC hired her with an agreement titled “Agreement between Private Practitioner and Independent Practitioner” which classified Sturgill as an independent contractor and contained the following non-compete clause:

RLLC and the Consultant agree not to employ any contracted employee or contract with any current client of the Other for a period of two (2) years after the expiration of the contract between RLLC and the Consultant.

August 9, 2016

Fairfax Circuit Court Procedure for Motions Day

by Lee E. Berlik

Suppose you find yourself involved in litigation in Fairfax County, Virginia, and you want the court to take some kind of action. Perhaps you want the judge to order the plaintiff to attach a copy of the contract to the complaint. Maybe it’s a libel case and you want to ask to court to dismiss the case for failing to plead the requisite elements of defamation. Or maybe the statute of limitations has passed and you want the court to dismiss the case for that reason. If you want the court to do something, you need to file a motion. And the procedures for bringing that motion to the attention of the court differ from county to county.

This article deals with the local rules in Fairfax County only. (Technically, they’re not “rules,” but “guidelines.”) Procedures in neighboring jurisdictions like Loudoun County, Prince William County, and Alexandria differ slightly but share most of the basic framework. If there is sufficient interest among the subscribers to this blog, I may cover those jurisdictions in future posts. This is also not a tutorial about how to draft persuasive motions. Rather, it is intended as a guide to the procedural considerations in bringing your motion before the court. Of course, if you are an out-of-state attorney representing a client with a pending case in Fairfax County, your best best is to retain and work with local counsel.

July 14, 2016

Not All Contractual Interference Is Tortious Interference

by Lee E. Berlik

Legal claims are made up of elements. To sue somebody and win, you need to allege and eventually prove each element that makes up the legal theory on which you’re suing. And oftentimes, those elements have distinct legal meanings that differ from their dictionary definitions. Failure to pay close attention to the requirements of each separate element can result in dismissal of the case before it even gets started. Last month, a Virginia court summarily dismissed an IT consulting company’s claims for tortious interference for failing to allege the facts necessary to support such claims.

The case–Forsythe Global, LLC v. QStride, Inc.–was decided under Michigan law. Michigan, like Virginia, recognizes separate torts for tortious interference with contract, and tortious interference with prospective business relationships or expectancies. Under both the law of Michigan and the law of Virginia, tortious interference requires more than mere “involvement in the activities and concerns of other people when your involvement is not wanted.” (See Merriam-Webster’s definition of interference). There’s no law that requires people to mind their own business. To prevail in court, the interference must approach a specific threshold–meddling in other people’s affairs won’t satisfy the claim if the interference does not reach this level.

July 2, 2016

Employers Cannot Access Their Employees’ Private Email Accounts Without Permission

by Lee E. Berlik

The Stored Communications Act (“SCA”), found at 18 U.S.C. §§ 2701-2712, establishes both a criminal offense and a civil cause of action against anyone who “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.” Successful plaintiffs may obtain damages, equitable or declaratory relief, and reasonable attorney’s fees. (See 18 U.S.C. § 2707(b)). In the employment context, the SCA is often understood to place restrictions on those situations in which an employer can access its employees’ private email accounts (i.e., accounts maintained by third-party email service providers like Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo). A few weeks ago, the Western District of Virginia decided Hoofnagle v. Smyth-Wythe Airport Commission, in which it rejected various justifications offered by an employer for accessing a former employee’s private Yahoo! email account.

Charles H. Hoofnagle was a government employee who worked as the Operations Manager for Mountain Empire Airport in Rural Retreat, Virginia. He reported to the Smyth-Wythe Airport Commission and his duties included answering phone calls and responding to emails from the public and customers. The Commission, however, did not have in place an official policy regarding use of computers or email. The airport did not even provide employees with an email address, so Hoofnagle created a Yahoo! Mail address, charliemkj@yahoo.com, which he used for both personal and business purposes. (MKJ is the airport’s FAA idendifier code). It was this Yahoo! address that was held out to the public as an official contact for the airport and provided to nearly all vendors and customers.

May 9, 2016

Teaming Agreements No More Enforceable than Letters of Intent

by Lee E. Berlik

A “teaming agreement” is an agreement between two or more contractors to “team up” by combining their resources to bid on a major government contract, thereby increasing the likelihood of securing the work. Often, they will be drafted to require that the prime contractor use the subcontractor specified in the teaming agreement if the bid is accepted, but this is not always the case. Teaming agreements can be very appealing to smaller subcontractors, or subcontractors who don’t qualify to bid on a particular government contract, because they allow opportunities to work in tandem with larger or more qualified firms to gain access to lucrative government-contract work they would otherwise be excluded from. But are such agreements enforceable? Not always.

A “letter of intent,” like a teaming agreement, is a document signed by the parties that contemplates the formation of a formal contract to be executed at some point in the future. Virginia courts treat such agreements as “agreements to agree,” which basically means that the parties are agreeing to attempt in good faith to negotiate the terms of a formal agreement with respect to a particular subject matter. Letters of intent are typically short and devoid of material terms that would be necessary to make the agreement binding in court. There’s nothing preventing two parties from entering into an actual contract, intending to be bound, and calling it a “letter of intent,” but absent evidence of such an intention to be bound, such agreements will not be enforceable.

March 27, 2016

Remedies in Breach of Fiduciary Duty Cases

by Lee E. Berlik

Earlier this month I wrote about the case of a dentist who had sued a consultant for breach of fiduciary duty and failed. The court in that case found that the allegations were insufficient to establish the existence of an agency relationship, and without such a relationship, the consultant owed no fiduciary duty to the dentist. In a similar case between a medical doctor and a consultant, Bocek v. JGA Associates, the trial court reached the same conclusion, but was reversed on appeal, the Fourth Circuit holding that the doctor had proved as a matter of law that the defendants were agents of the doctor and had breached fiduciary obligations by misappropriating a business opportunity for themselves. When the case went back to the trial court, the only issue was to determine the appropriate remedies for the consultants’ breach of fiduciary duty. The latest opinion offers a helpful guide as to the potential remedies available in breach-of-fiduciary-duty cases. What follows is a brief summary of the various forms of relief discussed in the opinion.

March 5, 2016

Agents Owe Fiduciary Duties to their Principals

by Lee E. Berlik

To state a plausible breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim in Virginia, a plaintiff must allege enough facts to prove (1) the existence of a fiduciary duty, (2) the breach of that duty, and (3) resulting damages. The first element—existence of a fiduciary duty—is often the most difficult to prove. Fiduciary duties can arise in a number of different contexts, including between employee and employer, between corporate officer and corporation, and between principal and agent. The Western District of Virginia recently dealt with a case, Broadhead v. Watterson, in which agency was alleged as the basis for a breach-of-fiduciary-duty claim. The court reviewed the allegations and found them insufficient to state a valid claim.

The Virginia Supreme Court has defined agency as “a fiduciary relationship resulting from one person’s manifestation of consent to another person that the other shall act on his behalf and subject to his control, and the other person’s manifestation of consent so to act.” (See Reistroffer v. Person, 247 Va. 45, 48 (1994)). Such consent may be manifested expressly or may be inferred from the conduct of the parties and from the surrounding facts and circumstances. Independent contractors, as a rule, are not agents of any principal. The distinction between contractors and agents generally lies in the degree of control (or right to control) the methods or details of doing the work. There’s a presumption that a person acts on his own behalf and not as the agent of another, but this presumption can be rebutted with appropriate evidence.

March 3, 2016

No Tortious Interference if Contract Already Breached

by Lee E. Berlik

Everybody knows you can get in trouble for breaching a contract. But did you know that you can also get sued for inducing someone else to breach a contract that you’re not even a party to? Virginia, like many states, recognizes a cause of action for “tortious interference with contract.” The tort requires proof of four elements: (1) the existence of a valid contractual relationship or business expectancy; (2) knowledge of the relationship or expectancy on the part of the interferor; (3) intentional interference inducing or causing a breach or termination of the relationship or expectancy; and (4) resultant damage to the party whose relationship or expectancy has been disrupted. (See Chaves v. Johnson, 230 Va. 112, 120 (1985)).

Basically, this means that if your business partner breaches a contract with you and the cause of the breach is the meddlings of a third person, your legal remedy may involve not only a breach-of-contract action against the business partner, but a tortious-interference claim against the meddler. This is a recognition of the value the law places on contract rights. Interfere with them at your peril.

Still, there won’t always be a culprit. Sometimes, contracting parties are simply unable to meet their obligations and have no choice but to breach. Other times, a third person might have induced the breach, but for reasons that the law regards as understandable and reasonable (and therefore privileged). Breaching a contract on the advice of counsel, for example, is unlikely to result in a tortious interference claim against the lawyer. And once a contract has been breached without the involvement of any third parties, no tortious interference claim will lie against anyone who wanders into the situation after-the-fact.

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