Tag: corporate law

Contractual Indemnity Clause May Apply to Direct Action in Bond Offering Snafu; No Joint-Work Copyright Protection for PPM – IL ND

The Plaintiff in UIRC-GSA Holdings, Inc. v. William Blair & Company, 2017 WL 3706625 (N.D.Ill. 2017), sued its investment banker for copyright infringement and professional negligence claiming the banker used the plaintiff’s protected intellectual property – private placement memoranda – to get business from other clients.  The parties previously executed an engagement agreement (“Agreement”) which required the banker to facilitate plaintiff’s purchase of real estate through bond issues.

The banker denied infringing plaintiff’s copyrights and counterclaimed for breach of contract, contractual indemnity and tortious interference with contract.  Plaintiff moved to dismiss all counterclaims.

In partially granting and denying the (12(b)(6)) motion to dismiss the counterclaims, the Northern District examined the pleading elements for joint-author copyright infringement and tortious interference claims and considered the reach of contractual indemnification provisions.

The counterclaiming banker first asserted that it was a joint owner of the private placement documents and sought an accounting of the plaintiff’s profits generated through use of the materials.  Rejecting this argument, the Court stated the Copyright’s definition of a ‘joint work’: “a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that the authors’ work be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole.” 17 U.S.C. 101.

To establish co-authorship, the copyright plaintiff must establish (1) an intent to create a joint work, and (2) independently copyrightable contributions to the material.  The intent prong simply means the two (or more) parties intended to work together to create a single product; not that they specifically agreed to be legal co-copyright holders.

To meet the independently copyrightable element (the test’s second prong), the Court noted that “ideas, refinements, and suggestions” are not copyrightable.  Instead, the contributed work must possess a modicum of creativity vital to a work’s end product and commercial viability.

Here, while the counter-plaintiff alleged an intent to create a joint work, it failed to allege any specific contributions to the subject private placement documents.  Without specifying any copyrightable contributions to the documents, the investment firm failed to satisfy the pleading standards for a joint ownership copyright claim.

The court next considered the banker’s indemnification claim – premised on indemnity (one party promises to compensate another for any loss) language in the Agreement. The provision broadly applied to all claims against the counter-plaintiff arising from or relating to the Agreement.  The plaintiff argued that by definition, the indemnity language didn’t apply to direct actions between the parties and only covered third-party claims (claims brought by someone other than plaintiff or defendant).

The Court rejected this argument and found the indemnity language ambiguous.  The discrepancy between the Agreement’s expansive indemnification language in one section and other Agreement sections that spoke to notice requirements and duties to defend made it equally plausible the indemnity clause covered both third-party and first-party/direct actions.  Because of this textual conflict, the Court held it was premature to dismiss the claim without discovery on the parties’ intent.

The court also sustained the banker’s tortious interference counterclaim against plaintiff’s motion to dismiss.  The counter-plaintiff alleged the plaintiff sued and threatened to continue suing one of the counter-plaintiff’s clients (and a competitor of the plaintiff’s) to stop the client from competing with the plaintiff in the bond market.  While the act of filing a lawsuit normally won’t support a tortious interference claim, where a defendant threatens litigation to dissuade someone from doing business with a plaintiff can state a tortious interference claim.

Take-aways:

Contractual indemnity provisions are construed like any other contract.  If the text is clear, it will be enforced as written.  In drafting indemnity clauses, the parties should take pains to clarify whether it applies only to third-party claims or if it also covers direct actions between the parties.  Otherwise, the parties risk having to pay the opposing litigant’s defense fees.

Filing a lawsuit alone, isn’t enough for a tortious interference claim.  However, the threat of litigation to dissuade someone from doing business with another can be sufficient business interference to support such a claim.

Joint ownership in copyrighted materials requires both an intent for joint authorship and copyrightable contributions from each author to merit legal protection.

 

Secretary of State’s LLC File Detail Report Is Public Record – IL Court (A Deep Cut)

R&J Construction v. Javaras, 2011 WL 10069461, an unpublished and dated opinion, still holds practical value for its discussion of the judicial notice rule, breach of contract pleading requirements and a limited liability company member’s insulation from liability for corporate debts.

The plaintiff sold about $70K worth of construction materials to a concrete company associated with the individual defendant.  The concrete company’s legal name was WS Concrete, LLC, an Illinois limited liability company doing business under the assumed name, West Suburban Concrete.  Defendant was a member of the LLC and point-person who ordered supplies from the plaintiff.

The plaintiff sued the individual and did not name the LLC as a party defendant.

The trial court dismissed the complaint because the plaintiff failed to attach the written contract and there was no evidence the defendant assumed personal responsibility for the contract obligations.  The plaintiff appealed.

Result: Affirmed.

Reasons:

The Court first found the trial court correctly dismissed plaintiff’s suit for failure to attach the operative contract.

Code Section 2-606 requires a plaintiff to attach a written instrument (like a contract) to its pleading where the pleading is based on that instrument.  The exception is where the pleader can’t locate the instrument in which case it must file an affidavit stating the instrument is inaccessible.

Here, the plaintiff alleged a written contract but only attached a summary of various purchase orders and invoices to the complaint.  Since it failed to attach the contract, the appeals court found the complaint deficient and falling short of Section 2-606’s attached-instrument requirement.

The court next addressed whether the LLC File Detail Report (see above image), culled from the Illinois Secretary of State “cyberdrive” site was admissible on Defendant’s motion to dismiss.  In ruling the Report was admissible, the Court cited to case precedent finding that Secretary of State records are public records subject to judicial notice.  (Judicial notice applies to facts that are readily verifiable and not subject to reasonable dispute.)

Since the LLC Report plainly demonstrated the proper defendant was the LLC (as opposed to its member), and there was no evidence the individual defendant took on personal liability for plaintiff’s invoices, the trial court correctly dismissed the defendant.

Added support for the defendant’s dismissal came via the Illinois Limited Liability Company Act, 805 ILCS 180/1 et seq.  Section 10-10 of the LLC Act provides that an LLC’s contractual obligations belong solely to the LLC and that a member cannot be personally responsible for LLC contracts unless (1) the articles of organization provide for personal liability and (2) the member consents in writing.

The Court next addressed plaintiff’s agent of a disclosed principal argument.  The plaintiff asserted that since the individual defendant is the person who ordered plaintiff’s construction materials and it was unclear who the defendant represented, the defendant was responsible for plaintiff’s unpaid invoices.

The court rejected this argument.  It noted that under Illinois law, where an agent signs a contract by signing his own name and providing his own personal contact information (address, phone number, SS #, etc.) and fails to note his corporate affiliation, he (the agent) can be personally liable on a contract.  In this case, however, there was no documentation showing defendant ordering supplies in his own name.  All invoices attached to the plaintiff’s response brief (to the motion to dismiss) reflected the LLC’s assumed name – “West Suburban Concrete” – as the purchasing entity.

Afterwords:

(1) the case provides a useful analysis of common evidentiary issues that crop up in commercial litigation where a corporate agent enters into an agreement and the corporation is later dissolved;

(2) Both the LLC Act and agency law can insulate an individual LLC member from personal liability for corporate debts;

(3) Secretary of State corporate filings are public records subject to judicial notice.  This is good news for trial practitioners since it alleviates the logistical headache of having a Secretary of State agent give live or affidavit testimony on corporate records at trial.

 

 

Veil Piercing Money Judgment Survives Res Judicata Defense – Mich. Court

Piercing the corporate veil, as metaphorical phrase and very real remedy, applies when a shareholder abuses the corporate form to shield himself from liability to corporate creditors. A prototypical piercing scenario is where a sole shareholder so controls his company that it blurs the separation between shareholder and company and is unfair to protect the shareholder from personal liability for company debts.  In such a case, the law views the company and shareholder as inseparable “alter egos” and a court will bypass the liability protection normally afforded a corporate shareholder.

Green v. Ziegelman, 310 Mich.App. 436 (2015) chronicles a piercing defendant’s efforts to avoid personal liability for a breach of contract debt by asserting the res judicata defense. After a 2006 breach of contract money judgment against an architectural firm went unsatisfied, the plaintiff sued the firm’s sole shareholder in 2012 to hold him responsible for the prior judgment.

The defendant – the sole shareholder of an architectural firm – moved for summary judgment that the claim against him was barred by res judicata.  He argued that the plaintiff could have sought to pierce the architecture firm’s corporate veil in the 2006 action but failed to do so.  Now, according to the defendant, it was too late.

The trial court disagreed and denied the shareholder’s summary judgment motion.  After the trial court entered judgment for the plaintiff after trial, the defendant appealed.

Result: Trial court judgment upheld.

Reasons: Michigan law applies a three-part res judicata test: if (1) there is a final judgment on the merits, (2) the second lawsuit’s issue could have been resolved in the first lawsuit, and (3) both actions (the first and second lawsuit) involve the same parties, a second claim will be barred by res judicata.

Res judicata extends not only to claims that were actually litigated but to claims that could have been raised.  The res judicata doctrine is applied to promote fairness; it balances a plaintiff’s right to have his day in court versus a defendant’s competing right to have litigation closure along with the court’s interest in case finality and conserving court resources.

To prevail on a piercing claim in Michigan, a plaintiff doesn’t have to prove a corporate shareholder committed intentional fraud.  It is enough if the shareholder acts “in such a manner as to defraud and wrong the [plaintiff]” or in such circumstances that a court “would aid in the consummation of a wrong” if it validated a company’s separate existence from its shareholder.

To determine whether the plaintiff could have (and should have) sought to pierce the architectural firm’s corporate veil in the 2006 case, the Court noted that under Michigan law, corporate officers are expected to respect a corporation’s separate existence from its individual members.  Because of this, absent evidence that the shareholder defendant abused the corporate form, a piercing claim would not have been well-founded when plaintiff sued in the 2006 case.

The appeals court found that since there was no evidence to signal misuse of the corporate form, there was no reason for the plaintiff to try to pierce the architect company’s corporate veil in the earlier lawsuit.  As a result, the 2012 piercing case did not stem from the same underlying transaction as the 2006 breach of contract case.

Upholding the piercing judgment, the appeals court held that the shareholder completely dominated the architectural firm such that the firm and shareholder were the same person.  Other important factors that led the court to approve the piercing judgment included evidence that the shareholder commingled personal assets with company assets, that the company failed to follow basic corporate formalities, and that 10 days after judgment, the shareholder dissolved the architectural firm and started a new one.

Take-aways:

1/ The res judicata defense won’t bar a piercing the corporate veil claim unless there was clear evidence of fraud or an alter-ego relationship between company and shareholder at the time a prior lawsuit against the corporation was filed;

2/ A plaintiff in a piercing suit under Michigan law isn’t required to show specific fraudulent conduct by the dominant shareholder.  It’s enough that there is an overall “feel” of unfairness based on a multitude of factors including failure to follow formalities, undercapitalization and commingling of personal vs. company assets.