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Practices  /  Litigation

Litigation

Practice group · Twelve lawyers · Chair, Miriam Sokol

Harwell Brandt’s Litigation Group is handed business disputes that could not be settled across a table: owners who have turned on each other, a contract one side stopped performing, an employee who left with something that belonged to the company, and the appeal that follows a trial. Twelve lawyers try those cases in the Commerce Program of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas, in the federal courts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and before arbitration panels. Most of the group’s clients are privately held companies and the people who own and run them.

What the group is handed

  1. Disputes among owners. Claims between shareholders, partners and LLC members: breach of fiduciary duty, freeze-outs, demands to inspect the books, deadlock, and the valuation fight that decides a buyout. In Philadelphia most of these cases belong in the Commerce Program of the Court of Common Pleas, which hears business disputes on its own docket.

  2. Contracts one side stopped performing. Supply, distribution, licensing and services agreements; earn-out and working-capital disputes after an acquisition; fraud claims pleaded beside the contract claim. Pennsylvania’s gist-of-the-action doctrine often decides early whether a fraud claim stands on its own or folds into the contract, so the group tests that question before it files.

  3. Departing employees and the information they take. Trade secret claims under the Pennsylvania Uniform Trade Secrets Act and the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act, and the enforcement or defense of non-competition and non-solicitation covenants. Pennsylvania courts enforce a covenant that is reasonably limited in time and territory and protects a legitimate business interest, and a covenant signed after the job began needs new consideration to stand. These cases are measured in days: a motion for a temporary restraining order, expedited discovery, a preliminary injunction hearing.

  4. Appeals. Appeals to the Superior Court, the Commonwealth Court and the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, and to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The lawyer who tried the case argues its appeal. The group also takes on appeals from cases other firms tried.

  5. Disputes that grow out of the firm’s other work. A delay claim headed for a jury, a wrongful termination case set for trial, a False Claims Act case unsealed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. The Litigation Group tries those cases alongside the lawyers in the Construction, Employment and Health Care Regulatory groups who know the underlying work.

How the group works

  1. One partner from intake to appeal. Every matter has a responsible partner and an associate, with counsel added where the matter calls for it. The client knows from the first call who will stand up in court.

  2. A written assessment in the first month. The client receives a letter stating what the case is likely worth, what it will cost to take through trial, and what would have to change for a settlement to make sense. The assessment is revised when the pleadings close and again when discovery ends.

  3. The trial outline before discovery. The trial team drafts the outline of its trial presentation before it serves discovery, and uses the outline to decide which depositions are worth taking.

  4. Arbitration read from the clause. The group handles arbitrations under the rules of the American Arbitration Association and JAMS. When a contract calls for arbitration, the group reads the clause for its scope, its seat and the qualifications it sets for arbitrators before advising on a first move.

A lawyer in this group

Miriam Sokol

Partner · Chair, Litigation Group

Miriam Sokol is brought in when a business relationship has broken down and the dispute is headed for a courtroom: a co-owner who has shut the others out of the books, a buyer who will not close, a sales director who resigned on Friday and called the company’s largest customer on Monday.

Read the full biography

The lawyers

  • Miriam SokolPartner · Chair
  • Edward LansingPartner
  • Priya NatarajanPartner
  • Kevin RourkePartner
  • Adaeze NwosuPartner
  • Martin HalloranPartner
  • Sarah LindqvistCounsel
  • Owen CastellanoAssociate
  • Julia WeintraubAssociate
  • Marcus BellAssociate
  • Hannah ChoAssociate
  • Diego FerreiraAssociate