2003 has by itself been an active year for litigation in the Mullaney Firm. In May of this year won a federal trial in the Southern District of New York against a corporation represented by a large, national law firm. In it, the plaintiff (and Firm client) had sought to restrain debt-payments due from the defendant, a company located in the mid-Atlantic, to an Italian company. The Italian company, plaintiff alleged, was the alter ego of another Italian company against which plaintiff had an unsatisfied multi-million dollar judgment. The defendant had continued making payments after receipt of the restraining notice, asserting that the notice was invalid, and that there was no reason to believe that the two Italian companies were alter egos. The Court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, holding the defendant liable in civil contempt of court for violating the restraining notice.
The amount of damages will depend on the outcome of a related litigation also pending in the Southern District of New York. There is a third related litigation in the same Court, against a defendant located in the United Kingdom, in which the parties each moved for summary judgment based on, in our case, the affirmative use of collateral estoppel. The resolution of those motions is pending.
Finally, a highly favorable disposition of a complex breach of contract claim was achieved in the early part of the year. In that case the Firm also represented the plaintiff, a foreign national who had claimed in Connecticut against his former partners located in the Midwest for breaching the agreement by which the plaintiff had sold them his interest in their company, as well as certain intellectual property rights. Those rights revolved around the novelty and ownership of highly specialized optical lens designs, the definition of which required the opinions and proposed testimony of two world-renowned experts in the field.
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