Monthly Archives: October 2012

Law360 reports on a panel event held by the Association of Corporate Counsel on Tuesday to discuss the perils of allowing employees to use their own mobile devices for work purposes.  Soren Burkhart of McGladrey LLP argued that “Bring Your Own Device” policies, which I have written about here, here, and here, should be called “Bring Your Own Disaster”… More

Once a lawsuit over trade secrets or a noncompete begins, “discovery” is usually the next step in the case.  This is the phase of a lawsuit where each party asks for documents and conducts depositions to obtain relevant information from the other side.  As any employment litigator can tell you, discovery usually involves tricky issues regarding what information is relevant to the lawsuit (and thus should be disclosed) and what is the personal information of an employee or other person that has little to do with the case.… More

A choice-of-law clause is a provision in a contract (e.g., a noncompete) that states what state’s law will apply to the contract, regardless of where the lawsuit to enforce it is filed.  Donald C. Dowling Jr. recently published an article that explains the drawback of such provisions for employers.  Although he focuses mostly on international law, his observations apply with equal force to U.S. law.  He writes that “[l]aws that enforce restrictive covenants [i.e.,… More

The Boston Business Litigation newsletter from Yurko, Salvesen & Remz recently brought to our attention an interesting new lawsuit involving a claim by a dental practice that a dentist violated non-competition and non-solicitation covenants he entered into when he sold his practice.  The noncompete restriction at issue prohibited the dentist from “practicing dentistry” for three years within a 15 mile radius of the plaintiff’s South Weymouth office. So far,… More

Margaret A. Keane has written an interesting article on the growing use of “Bring Your Own Device” (BYOD) policies by employers whose employees use mobile devices for work purposes.  These policies trade support for employee mobile devices from the employer’s IT organization for, among other things, regulation of “the use of mobile devices in ways that may implicate . . . workplace policies, such as data privacy and security,… More

As reported by Law360, a Philadelphia-based law firm, Swartz Campbell LLC, recently sued a competing Philadelphia firm, The Chartwell Law Offices LLP, alleging that Chartwell essentially stole one of Swartz’s offices located in Fort Myers, Florida, including a partner and two employees.  Swartz contends that the partner is subject to a partnership agreement that requires a four-month notice before he can leave the firm, but the partner provided notice and left Swartz in July. … More