I hope you, your family, and colleagues are doing well after what has been a particularly rough winter in many parts of the country, which makes spring even more welcome than usual this year. In keeping with tradition, I would like to share with you some recent interesting matters we’ve been involved with.
In my ongoing case for a Chinese company which obtained an arbitration award against a Massachusetts corporation, and for which we later obtained a verdict personally against its owner, you may recall that when the smoke cleared following trial, we had a jury verdict and judgment against the individual owner for over $2.6 Million, including prejudgment interest and our client’s attorneys’ fees awarded by the Court. The owner of the company filed an appeal from the judgment. That was argued before the United States First Circuit Court of Appeals on February 6 of this year. The Court of Appeals issued its decision on February 22, affirming the District Court’s judgment in my client’s favor.
During the course of the case against the owner, we were eventually able to obtain extensive bank records from which we learned that he had transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars from his company to his wife as well. Since it was too late to amend the original action to include her, we brought a separate action against the wife, which was tried in early April. This second case was tried before the same judge who presided over the first case, but without a jury, sometimes referred to a “jury-waived” or “bench” trial. The judge has already announced a partial decision in our client’s favor in this second case and has taken other issues under advisement. We also expect to follow up with our efforts to require the husband to repatriate over $2 Million he sent to an “offshore” trust while our action against him was still pending. I’ll keep you advised as this legal case continues.
We were recently involved in an “Anti-SLAPP” suit, representing an individual who was supportive of a group of neighbors who sued the management group of their cooperative apartment building. Although my client was not one of the plaintiffs - neighbors who brought the court case against the managers – he was nevertheless brought into the case and sued by the defendants. I brought two motions to dismiss against the managers: one, a “special motion” under the Massachusetts Anti-SLAPP statute, and a second, to dismiss for failure to state a viable claim for relief on their allegations against my client.
For those not familiar with “Anti-SLAPP”, the way that law came about was that large corporations, such as real estate developers, when confronted with objections or lawsuits from neighbors and community activists, began suing the neighbors opposing the developers’ projects, allegedly for defamation or on other grounds inorder to back off the opposition. As a result, the free speech rights of the objecting individuals were being “chilled” out of fears of being sued just for expressing their opinion in public forums like zoning boards, town councils and the courts. In Massachusetts, as well as in other states, the legislatures undertook to protect the protesting parties and their rights to free expression.
Thus emerged the Anti-SLAPP statute, to prevent developers and other large corporations from instituting “Strategic Litigation Against Public Participation.” There have been numerous cases containing what became very complex reviews of the facts in each case. Some appellate decisions parsed the protections between those actions by the neighbors who express their opinions in filings or hearings at governmental boards, councils and courts, as opposed to those persons who voiced their views and objections against the projects in the media. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has issued a number of decisions over the years attempting to interpret the statute and the legislature’s intention. Two decisions were issued by the Court over the past couple of months. Our client’s motions to dismiss are presently under advisement in the Superior Court.
I recently represented an employee-investor in an LLC who decided to leave in order to pursue a promising opportunity at another company. A dispute arose as to the value of his interest in the LLC for purposes of the buyout of his share. This involved review and interpretation of the lengthy LLC Agreement as well as valuation worksheets. During negotiations with the majority owner of the LLC, we eventually came to an agreement as to the buyout sum that allowed both sides to pursue their own best interests.
As always, we continue to practice in a wide range of legal areas, including corporate, commercial and business law, trials and appeals, real estate issues, employment, discrimination, divorce, international and university law. If you have any questions about our areas of practice or about any legal matters where we can be of assistance to you or someone you know, please do not hesitate to call on me.