Customer lists are common topics of trade secrets litigation. A typical fact pattern: Company A sues Ex-employee B who joined or started a competitor and is contacting company A’s clients. Company A argues that its customer list is secret and only known by Ex-employee B through his prior association with Company A. Whether such a …
Category Archives: Business Torts
Filing Lawsuit Doesn’t Meet Conversion Suit ‘Demand for Possession’ Requirement – 7th Cir. (applying IL law)
Conversion, or civil theft, requires a plaintiff to make a demand for possession of the converted property before suing for its return. This pre-suit demand’s purpose is to give a defendant the opportunity to return plaintiff’s property and avoid unnecessary litigation. What constitutes a demand though? The easiest case is where a plaintiff serves a …
Indy Skyline Photo Spat At Heart Of 7th Circuit’s Gloss on Affirmative Defenses, Res Judicata and Fed. Pleading Amendments – Bell v. Taylor (Part I)
Litigation over pictures of the Indianapolis skyline form the backdrop for the Seventh Circuit’s recent examination of the elements of a proper affirmative defense under Federal pleading rules and the concept of ‘finality’ for res judicata purposes in Bell v. Taylor. There, several small businesses infringed plaintiff’s copyrights in two photographs of downtown Indianapolis: one …