Source: https://www.ammlaw.com/blog/bill-macminn.html
Timestamp: 2019-09-22 17:01:43
Document Index: 716818085

Matched Legal Cases: ['§1571', '§1573', '§4141', '§4141', '§411', '§ 5325', '§ 1702']

Website URL: http://www.ammlaw.com/attorney-profiles/william-t.-macminn.html
Reprinted with permission from the August 19, 2016 issue of The Legal Intelligencer. (c) 2016 ALM Media Properties. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.
The rights of shareholders to dissent to corporate actions are set forth in PA C.S.A. §1571 et seq., the Pennsylvania Business Corporation Law. Dissenters who comply with the formalities of the statute have the right to demand payment for the fair value of their stock interest at the time of the corporate action giving rise to the right to dissent – provided the corporate goes through with that action. Since a shareholder in a publicly traded company can simply sell his shares if he disagrees with a proposed corporate action, dissenters’ rights do not apply to such corporations.
What triggers dissenters’ rights?
The corporate actions giving rise to dissenter’s rights are specified in the BCL and generally involve fundamental changes to the entity, such as a merger or a change in voting rights. When the corporation proposes to undertake such a change, a specific procedure must be followed by the dissenting shareholder.
Dissenters need not necessarily assert their dissenters’ rights to all of their shares. They must, however, assert those rights as to “all the shares of the same class or series beneficially owned by any one person.” Beneficial owners of shares should have the written consent of the record holder of the shares. 15 PA C.S.A. §1573.
Dissenters must file their dissent with the corporation prior to the vote on the proposed corporate action. The dissent must be in writing and must include a demand for payment of the “fair value for his shares” if the corporation adopts the proposed action. Merely abstaining or voting against the change is not sufficient to invoke dissenters’ rights. Once invoked, to preserve dissenters’ rights, the shareholder cannot change the beneficial ownership of the shares while the vote is pending, nor can he vote in favor of the proposed action.
Employee Choice Doctrine
By William T. MacMinn, Esquire Reprinted with permission from the February 25, 2016 issue of The Legal Intelligencer. (c) 2016 ALM Media Properties. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.
Can organization attorneys represent their agents in an individual capacity? A recent Pennsylvania Superior Court decision said no.
The confidentiality of attorney-client communications is a long-standing privilege across the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court, in Swidler & Berlin v. United States, 524 U.S. 399, 403 (1998), reasoned that full and frank disclosure is a prerequisite that attorneys need in order to give their clients the best legal advice available. "It is the most revered of the common law privileges," according to Commonwealth v. Chmiel, 738 A.2d 406, 414 (Pa. 1999).
There are exceptions to lawyer-client communications. Lawyers cannot hide knowledge that a future crime is going to be committed. The right to assert the privilege can be voided if the communication to the lawyer was also made to nonlawyers. Of current interest is a third exception¬—the client's right to waive the privilege.
attorneyclient confidentiality
By Bill MacMinn
A client Googled the name of his own retail store. When he saw the results he was alarmed to learn that the result returned his store name with the name and telephone number of his biggest competitor, and a link to the competitor’s website, appeared in the top three search results and before the link to his own site. My client’s business name included a trademarked national brand. Surely, this must be unlawful?
Google searches return a natural or organic list of results produced by the keywords entered by the user. In addition, Google’s search engine also displays paid advertisements known as “Sponsored Links”. Google’s AdWords advertising platform permits a sponsor to purchase keywords that trigger the appearance of the sponsor’s advertisement and link when the keyword is entered as a search term. My client’s crafty competitor purchased the name of my client’s business as a “keyword” so that when a user searched on my client’s business name his competitor’s name was displayed as a “Sponsored Link” within the top three results and before the information and link to my client’s website. Google, which earns significant revenue from the AdWords platform, permits the use of trademarks as keywords.
There have been a multitude of lawsuits alleging trademark infringement over this practice. Few result in published decisions and of these; nearly all were losses for the trademark owner. Typical of these is 1–800 CONTACTS, INC. vs. LENS.COM, INC., a 2013 case from the Tenth Circuit, involving two internet sellers of contact lenses and related merchandise. At the time the case was filed, 1–800 Contacts, Inc. was the world’s leading retailer of replacement contact lenses, selling them by telephone, by mail order, and over the Internet. It was the owner of the service mark “1800CONTACTS”. Lens.com is one of 1–800’s competitors in the replacement-lens retail market, selling its products almost exclusively on line. Lens.com purchased the keyword 1800 CONTACTS which caused its “Sponsored Links” to appear when a Google user searched for that phrase. The Court ruled that Lens.com did not violate trademark laws. As with most such cases, the legal analysis turned on whether the alleged infringer’s use of the mark was likely to cause confusion to consumers. In ruling that such confusion was unlikely, the Court examined several factors, including the relatively few users who used the Lens.com link generated by the keyword “1800CONTACTS” to click through to the Lens.com site and the dissimilarity between the two companies websites which the Court concluded would minimize the likelihood of confusion. In other cases Courts have held that such factors as the sophistication of the Google users and the fact that the sponsored links generated by the keyword search appeared in boxes and were visually dissimilar from the organic links were sufficient to avoid user confusion.
Efforts to curtail this practice using state trademark common law and laws regulating unfair competition have also failed as these legal theories rely heavily on Federal trademark law requiring plaintiffs to meet the same likelihood of confusion requirement.
One commentator has observed that in many of the cases the sponsored links generated very few visits to the competitors’ site from users “clicking through” on keyword generated links. The economic value of those visits was small. For example, in the 1 800 Contacts case, the most optimistic estimate of damages was in the range of $40,000, much less than the cost of prosecuting the case.
Although the advice was counter-intuitive, I had to inform my client that any action based on his competitor’s use of his trademarked name as a keyword was not likely to succeed. The silver lining, if there is one, is that the strategy doesn’t appear to result in significant loss of revenue.
Wednesday, 29 July 2015 19:18
Pennsylvania Registration Key to Recovery for Foreign Corporations
By William T. MacMinn, Esquire Reprinted with permission from the July 27, 2015 issue of The Legal Intelligencer. (c) 2015 ALM Media Properties. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.
The Superior Court confirmed in the recent decision of Drake Manufacturing Company, Inc. v. Polyflow, Inc., 109 A.3d 250 (Pa. Super. 2015), that a foreign corporation doing business in Pennsylvania must be registered pursuant to 15 Pa.C.S.A. §4141(a) in order to maintain any litigation or recover any damages in the Commonwealth (15 Pa.C.S.A. §4141(a) is now enacted at 15 Pa.C.S.A. §411(a)). The Drake case is an instructive and cautionary tale because the Defendant in that case admitted contractual liability for non-payment, but defended the case solely on the lack of capacity issue. There was no doubt that the Plaintiff was a foreign corporation doing business in Pennsylvania and had not registered as required by Pennsylvania’s Business Corporation Law. Nevertheless, even after many years and several opportunities to obtain the Certificate of Registration, Plaintiff failed to do so until three weeks after winning a verdict in the case.
Defendant properly pled the lack of capacity defense in its Answer, renewed the argument in a motion for non-suit at the close of Plaintiff’s case, and filed post-trial motions requesting judgment n.o.v. Three and a half years passed from the time of Plaintiff’s complaint until verdict, during which time Plaintiff did not make any effort to obtain the required Certificate. Plaintiff presented no evidence on the capacity issue at trial, nor could it since it did not comply with the statute until three weeks later. Further, at the conclusion of the trial Plaintiff allowed the record to close instead of requesting that it be kept open to allow time to obtain and offer into evidence its Certificate of Registration. Plaintiff only submitted its registration as a part of its rebuttal to Defendant’s Motion for Judgment N.O.V. The trial court denied Defendant’s Motion finding that submitting the certificate during post-trial proceedings was permissible. It entered judgment against Defendant in the amount of nearly $300,000.00.
On appeal, the Superior Court reversed the lower court and remanded for entry of Judgment N.O.V. in favor of the Defendant. Holding that registration is an absolute pre-requisite for a foreign Plaintiff doing business in Pennsylvania to maintain a suit and recover damages, the Court further reasoned that the after-acquired certificate could not be accepted during post-trial proceedings, nor could the record be re-opened to accept it because it was evidence that could and should have been presented during trial. The Court further noted that the issue of lack of capacity to sue may be raised either by Preliminary Objection or, as was done here, by Answer and New Matter and cautioned that failure to do either waives the defense.
However, the question remains, is there an earlier time period at which waiver may attach? Notwithstanding Pa.R.C.P. 1028, there may be. In International Inventors Incorporated, East v. Berger, 363 A.2d 1262 (Pa. Super. 1976) the Plaintiff sought a preliminary injunction and damages. There the Defendant properly raised the issue of Plaintiff’s incapacity at the preliminary injunction hearing but the preliminary injunction was nevertheless granted. On appeal, the Superior Court held this was error. The Court explained that the trial court should have denied Plaintiff’s request for an injunction, but should also have stayed the proceedings to give Plaintiff an opportunity to register and thereby cure its lack of capacity. Instead, the Court granted the injunction and is so doing decided “an issue” (i.e. injunctive relief) in the case and thereby allowed Plaintiff to “maintain a suit” in violation of the statute. The Court reversed the grant of the injunction. Although Berger analyzed the issue of timeliness in the context of the Plaintiff’s compliance with registration requirements, the Court’s reasoning also supports the argument that a Defendant, who does not raise the capacity issue prior to preliminary injunctive relief being granted, similarly may have waived the issue for the life of the suit even though the time for responsive pleadings under the Rules of Civil Procedure had not expired. Thus, while the question of the Plaintiff’s capacity may not be at the forefront of case strategy analysis, Berger and Drake are a caution to counsel that the issue cannot be ignored.
Pennsyvania Corporations
Wednesday, 30 July 2014 19:00
Deciphering the Hague Convention: A Primer on Conducting Discovery Abroad
By William T. MacMinn, Esquire Reprinted with permission from the July 28, 2014 issue of The Legal Intelligencer. (c) 2014 ALM Media Properties. Further duplication without permission is prohibited.
As the world becomes increasingly globalized, lawyers are more than ever involved in litigating matters for or against people and organizations that are involved in disputes within the United States, but are located in foreign jurisdictions. In these circumstances, domestic practitioners likely will need to obtain evidence from sources located in foreign nations with which they have little prior professional experience. For those attorneys who seldom encounter an international issue, conducting discovery abroad can be both confusing and overwhelming, but a brief review of some of the sources governing the process can help alleviate any anxiety associated with pursuing an international claim.
Several methods exist to conduct discovery outside of the United States. In Pennsylvania the options include the following: 1) a deposition on notice before a person authorized to administer oaths in the place where a deposition is to be held either by local law or United States law (Pa.R.C.P. 4015(b)(1)); 2) a deposition before a person commissioned by the Pennsylvania Court to administer oaths (Pa.R.C.P. 4-15(b)(2)); or 3) a deposition after application to the Pennsylvania Court presiding over the litigation, pursuant to a letter rogatory under Pa.R.C.P. 4015(b)(3) and 42 Pa. C.S. § 5325, or a letter of request, in accordance with the Hague Convention on the Taking of Evidence Abroad in Civil or Commercial Matters. If a witness will appear voluntarily the simplest way to conduct discovery, and specifically to depose a witness who is located abroad, is the notice or commission procedure outlined above. Where a party or witness refuses to participate, however, an attorney will need to resort to either a letter rogatory, where the Pennsylvania Court in which a matter is pending makes a formal request to the foreign country’s judicial authority, or a “letter of request” under the Hague Convention. This article focuses on this latter method of international discovery, which liberalizes and streamlines the international discovery process.
Discovery Abroad
Monday, 12 May 2014 16:44
Full Tort v. Limited Tort Coverage: What is the real cost of limited tort?
Deciding on an auto insurance plan, particularly after the rush of purchasing a new car, can be a deflating experience. There are many confusing choices to sort through the most significant of which is the option to select either full-tort or limited-tort coverage. While it’s certainly tempting to purchase the least costly option, savings at the front end can end up costing substantially more if you’re ever in an accident and hoping to recover more than your out-of-pocket medical costs.
The Pennsylvania Motor Vehicle Financial Responsibility Law (“MVFRL”) is the statute that defines both full-tort and limited-tort coverage. Under the MVFRL, limited-tort coverage limits the rights of an insured to recover damages in a lawsuit. Unless a limited tort claimant suffers a “serious injury”, his or her recovery is quite limited and certainly not fully compensable for all of the consequences of an accident. “Serious injury” is as ambiguous as it sounds, and defined by the act as “death, serious impairment of bodily function, or permanent serious disfigurement.” 75 Pa.C.S. § 1702. While death and permanent serious disfigurement are relatively self-explanatory, whether the insured has suffered a “serious impairment of bodily function” is more often than not a question for the jury which is asked to evaluate the injuries suffered in terms of “the extent of the impairment, the length of time the impairment lasted, the treatment required to correct the impairment, and any other relevant factors.” Washington v. Baxter, 719 A.2d 733, 740 (Pa. 1988), Cadena v. Latch, 78 A.3d 636, 640 (Pa. Super. 2013). Unless the jury decides that the injuries sustained, using these criteria, are “a serious injury”, a limited tort claimant can only recover his or her unreimbursed out of pocket costs (referred to as “economic loss” in the statute). He or she will receive no compensation for pain and suffering, loss of life’s pleasures, or the “non-economic loss” which so often has the most significant impact on an accident victim.
Full Tort Auto Insurance
Limited Tort Auto Insurance