Having a hard time collecting money from one of your customers? Don’t want to subject yourself to a long, complicated and sometimes expensive lawsuit?
Depending on the situation, you may have an interesting, little-known option: Force your customer into involuntary bankruptcy and collect when the assets of your customer are liquidated. READ MORE
A salesperson quits, goes to a competing firm with your customer list and begins soliciting your customers. A competitor falsely advertises that your product causes injury to children. Must you sit back and wait months for your day in court while your company suffers irreparable harm? The answer to that question is a resounding “no.” Injunctive relief is sometimes the only way to prevent irreparable injury to your business. READ MORE
When companies, or their employees, become entangled in litigation, all e-mails become evidence.
How have e-mails become potential sources of litigation for companies?
Every e-mail message has the potential to become evidence in a lawsuit because it documents a communication between people. This is especially important because people are often careless about what they put in e-mail messages. READ MORE
Spoliation is the intentional or negligent withholding, hiding or destruction of relevant evidence in a legal proceeding.
What types of evidence are most susceptible to spoliation claims?
Spoliation occurs when a company has lost or destroyed evidence that it knew — or should have known — to preserve for a lawsuit. Awareness of potential litigation imposes a duty on the manager or the corporate officers to preserve evidence that may relate to that lawsuit. READ MORE
Perhaps the only thing worse than a customer whose payments are 60 days overdue is one who notifies you that it is declaring bankruptcy. What you do in the days after a debtor declares bankruptcy has a major effect on what, if anything, you collect.
If I hear that a client is declaring bankruptcy, what should I do first?
The safest thing is to confirm that filing by contacting the debtor and obtaining a case number and/or name and telephone number of the debtor’s attorney. Alternatively, most attorneys can confirm the filing through the bankruptcy court’s online filing system, PACER. READ MORE
They say no one ever reads the “fine print.” But when it comes to boilerplate, attention is necessary.
What is boilerplate?
Boilerplate is the colloquial term for all of those miscellaneous provisions that typically appear at the end of most contracts or other written agreements. Common examples include: notice provisions, governing law, severability, assignment and counterparts. READ MORE
What is successor liability?
Successor liability generally describes the result of a court’s application of various legal theories to an acquisition transaction to hold the buyer responsible for liabilities the buyer did not explicitly agree to assume. Two of the significant theories of successor liability include the de facto merger doctrine and the continuity of enterprise doctrine. READ MORE