MVA Litigation Blog

As a matter of course, a prevailing party cannot recover its attorneys’ fees from an opposing party in North Carolina.  But, attorneys’ fees can be awarded if there is specific statutory authority.  At the conclusion of litigation, the last thing the prevailing party wants to face is the reversal of its award for attorneys’ fees.  The plaintiff in Brown's Builders Supply, Inc. v. Johnson et al., No. COA14-836 (N.C. Ct. App. Mar. 17, 2015), a home renovation-related contract dispute, found itself in this unfortunate position because the trial court’s order granting ...

The answer should be a resounding “no,” according to the United States and Commil USA, LLC, the recipient of a multi-million dollar jury award against Cisco Systems, Inc.  Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments in Commil USA, LLC v. Cisco Systems, Inc. (No. 13-896), which probes whether one who induces infringement of another’s patent can avoid liability under 35 U.S.C. § 271(b) of the Patent Act by claiming that they had a good-faith belief that the patent at issue was invalid.  Recall from our previous discussion, Commil won a jury verdict against Cisco for $74 million ...

With the recent release of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s “Arbitration Study: Report to Congress, pursuant to Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act § 1028(a)”, it is widely anticipated that the agency will seek to impose restrictions on the use of class waivers in consumer finance agreement arbitration clauses. What form those restrictions will take, however, remains to be seen.  Some level of regulatory restriction on class waivers has been expected since the release of the CFPB’s December 2013 Preliminary Study, and the agency ...

The practice of restricting plaintiff access to class procedures through binding arbitration agreements has garnered significant attention over the last five years on the heels of several U.S. Supreme Court decisions validating companies’ use of class waivers.  One of the open questions remains, “who has the authority to determine whether class arbitration is available when the arbitration clause is silent – courts or arbitrators?”  The U.S. Supreme Court has not addressed whether the availability of class arbitration is a substantive “gateway” issue for the ...

On Tuesday, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau ("CFPB") released its long-awaited "Arbitration Study: Report to Congress, pursuant to Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act § 1028(a)", which presents the results of the agency’s study of the use of arbitration agreements in the context of consumer finance agreements for credit cards, checking accounts, payday and other small dollar loans, general purpose reloadable prepaid cards, private student loans, auto purchase loans, and mobile wireless agreements.  The 728-page study is extensive, to ...

Patent litigation reform has been on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee agenda, with the recent reintroduction of legislation seeking to address patent litigation abuses and a hearing examining recent U.S. Supreme Court cases that have imposed some reforms that may, or may not, curtail the need for further legislative efforts.  In February, Chairman of the Judiciary Committee Rep. Rob Goodlatte reintroduced the bi-partisan Innovation Act, H.R. 9, which is the same in substance as the previous Innovation Act, H.R. 3309 that passed the House in December 2013, but ultimately ...

Most of the cases that come to mind when you think “class action” consist of a large group of plaintiffs (hundreds or multiple thousands) seeking authorization to proceed as a class in one lawsuit against one or a handful of defendants. It is the rare case in which a large group of defendants are certified as a class in order to facilitate resolution of one plaintiffs’ claims against them. Rare though it may be, Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23(a) does explicitly allow for the certification of defendant classes if the prerequisites for class certification (numerosity ...

In the wake of several favorable U.S. Supreme Court decisions, companies increasingly are using arbitration agreements to control their exposure to class action liability.  Although recent cases have reinforced the power of arbitration agreements, companies must tread carefully when crafting their arbitration contracts and related class waivers.  In conjunction with giving force to arbitration agreements, the Federal Arbitration Act (“FAA”) limits the federal courts’ ability to review and reverse arbitrator decisions construing those agreements.  The Supreme ...

The Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 (“CAFA”) has found its way to the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court several times in the last two years, as plaintiffs and defendants seek to define the parameters of the federal law enacted, in part, to rectify state and local court abuses of the class action process and demonstrated biases against out-of-state defendants.  CAFA provides that a defendant may remove a state class action to federal court if the matter in controversy exceeds $5,000,000, exclusive of interest and costs, and certain other criteria are met.  On December 15, the U.S ...

Imagine that you are fighting to enforce your valid patents and after winning two jury verdicts you feel vindicated by the $74 million award you have been granted for the defendant’s role in inducing the infringement…then the appellate court says “try again,” because the defendant believed in good-faith that the patent was invalid.  Today you may get to wake up from this daydream, but this is the real-world scenario from which Commil USA LLC is seeking relief in the U.S. Supreme Court.  On December 5th, the High Court agreed to hear Commil’s appeal challenging the Federal ...