Bill on Bankruptcy: Detroit Shows Need for Amending Bankruptcy Law
Eleventh Circuit Judicially Estops Claimant From Recovering Intentional Tort Judgment Under Errors and Omission Liability Policy - In a rarely seen application of the judicial estoppel doctrine in the third-party coverage...more
If your company is named in a new lawsuit or receives a EEOC charge, part of your review process should include checking to see if the filing complainant or plaintiff has a pending bankruptcy action. If so, the next step is...more
Some of the most complex and hotly-contested business divorce litigation arises from the dissolution of law firms. Perhaps law firm dissolutions are prone to litigation because many are organized as partnerships or LLPs, and...more
During a Markman hearing, a judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina denied a plaintiff’s request that the defendant be judicially estopped from arguing claim constructions that were different from positions the...more
Litigants arguing that their adversary should be judicially estopped from pursing a particular position in litigation face a relatively high burden to invoke the doctrine successfully. Two recent decisions from Justice...more
In an earlier post, we wrote about a fascinating law firm limited liability partnership dispute culminating in a thoughtful post-trial decision by Erie County Commercial Division Justice Timothy J. Walker. Capizzi v Brown...more
Your former employee sues you, but your employee-plaintiff filed for bankruptcy. You diligently research the bankruptcy filings and discover the employee did not disclose the lawsuit against you in those filings, which are...more
On October 5, 2020, United States District Judge I. Leo Glasser (E.D.N.Y.) denied plaintiff Alexsam, Inc.’s (“Alexsam”) motion for reconsideration of the court’s June 17, 2020 summary judgment ruling....more
A district court has ruled that the scope of IPR estoppel under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) did not apply to invalidity grounds that relied on physical products. The court also declined to apply judicial estoppel, notwithstanding...more
Deciding who invented patents can be “one of muddiest concepts in the muddy metaphysics of the patent law.” Mueller Brass Co. v. Reading Industries, Inc., 352 F. Supp. 1357, 1372 (E.D. Pa. 1972). But identifying who...more
The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit vacated a district court invalidity determination finding that judicial estoppel prevented a patent owner from relisting an inventor previously removed for strategic litigation...more
EGENERA, INC. v. CISCO SYSTEMS, INC. Before Prost, Stoll, and Reyna. Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Summary: A patentee that successfully petitioned to correct a patent’s...more
PATENT CASE OF THE WEEK - Baxalta Inc. v. Genentech, Inc., Appeal No. 2019-1527 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 27, 2020) - In this week’s Case of the Week, an appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Delaware,...more
Last week the summer was winding down and the Federal Circuit was gearing up for its September argument session. But the Court still found time to hand down a number of decisions—17 in total. Below we provide our usual weekly...more
Establishing the judicial estoppel defense against a bankrupt plaintiff will be harder in the Eleventh Circuit following Smith v. Haynes & Haynes P.C., 940 F.3d 635 (11th Cir. 2019). Judicial estoppel is a legal defense...more
This case arises out of plaintiff John B. Napoleone’s failure to repay a sign-on bonus of $100,000 to his former employer, defendant S2K Financial LLC, under the terms of his employment agreement. S2K commenced an arbitration...more
The Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) has rejected a patent owner’s argument that judicial estoppel should prevent a petitioner from making obviousness arguments in support of its petition for inter partes review (IPR)....more
When a litigant makes a statement to one court, and later makes a contradictory statement to another court, what must the other party show to prove the litigant intended to make a mockery of the judicial system? The Eleventh...more
In Vedernikov v. Atl. Credit & Fin., Inc., (Vedernikov I), the U.S. District Court of New Jersey granted the defendant Midland Funding's motion to dismiss, which successfully argued the plaintiff should be estopped from...more
Ogletree Deakins’ Traditional Labor Relations Practice Group is pleased to announce the publication of the summer 2019 issue of the Practical NLRB Advisor. This edition examines the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) new...more
The equitable doctrine of judicial estoppel prevents a party from asserting a claim in a legal proceeding that is inconsistent with a claim taken by that party in a previous proceeding. Generally, the doctrine is raised by a...more
You have been engaged in extensive motion practice in the Supreme Court of the State of New York. You learn that your adversary, it appears, has taken a position contrary to the one taken in a prior proceeding. These...more
Simply put, judicial estoppel is an equitable doctrine that is intended to prevent a party from deliberately taking inconsistent positions under oath in separate proceedings and thus making a mockery of the judicial system. ...more
In a case of twisting facts, a trial judge has denied a plaintiff’s motion to correct inventorship to add an inventor to a patent because that plaintiff previously asked the PTO to remove that same inventor from the patent...more
In order to qualify as an inventor on a U.S. patent, a person must contribute to the conception of the invention as embodied in one or more of the claims—merely building or implementing the already-conceived technology is not...more