Case Law Summaries

Grinspec, Inc. v. Lance

EMPLOYMENT; NON-COMPETITION—When an employee is fired shortly after executing a non-compete amendment to an existing employment agreement, the amendment may lack sufficient consideration to be enforceable or if it works a hardship on the employment, it may not be enforceable.

• Opinion Date: August 13, 2003
• Business Law

All Phase Employment, Inc. v. Public Service Electric and Gas Company

EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE; RESTRICTIVE COVENANTS—Where an employment contract unreasonably restricts an employee from obtaining future employment, it is unenforceable, such as when a temporary employment agency tries to bar former employees from signing up with a competing agency.

• Opinion Date: March 6, 2003
• Business Law

Silvestri v. Optus Software, Inc.

EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE; DISSATISFACTION—Unless an employment contract provides for an objective standard, dissatisfaction clauses are judged on a subjective standard and a court cannot substitute its judgment for that of the employer.

• Opinion Date: January 23, 2003
• Business Law

RIA International, LLC v. Siegel

EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE; CONFIDENTIALITY—New Jersey law provides protection to the customer lists of service businesses as trade secrets, but for other businesses a former employee’s use of mere knowledge of those customers with whom the employee dealt may not rise to the level of use of confidential information.

• Opinion Date: February 21, 2003
• Business Law

Phoenix Life Insurance Company v. Narduzzi

EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE; ARBITRATION—Where an employer requires its employees to sign a quasi-employment agreement with an affiliated, but unrelated company, and that agreement contains a mandatory arbitration provision, the employer will be bound to arbitrate disputes arising out of its own employment agreement with those same employees.

• Opinion Date: September 18, 2003
• Business Law

Carino v. Allstate Financial Services, LLC

EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE; ARBITRATION—If a job applicant submits, as part of the job application, a form that calls for arbitration of all disputes for which the employer is obligated to arbitrate, the applicant is bound to the arbitration agreement even if never hired.

• Opinion Date: December 30, 2003
• Business Law

Chrin v. Cambridge Hydrodynamics, Inc.

EMPLOYER-EMPLOYEE—Absent a contract or other promise, an employee is not entitled to be compensated for unused vacation time upon termination.

• Opinion Date: December 30, 2003
• Business Law

Hutt & Schimanowitz, P.C. v. Tanzman

DOCTRINE OF NECESSITIES—A person who provides credit to one spouse in a business context cannot assume that the financial resources of the other spouse are available for payment of the debt.

• Opinion Date: June 26, 2003
• Business Law

Morganroth & Morganroth v. Norris, McLaughlin & Marcus, P.C.

DEBTOR-CREDITOR; FRAUD—Although the tort of “creditor fraud” is not yet recognized in New Jersey, it is not necessary to show a classic case of legal fraud when it is otherwise demonstrated that actions have been taken for the purpose of defrauding a creditor.

• Opinion Date: May 30, 2003
• Business Law

Direct Merchants Credit Card Bank v. Hussein

CREDIT CARDS—If a cardholder can’t show that a particular brochure is applicable to the cardholder’s account, then the arbitration provision set forth in the brochure will not trump a litigation provision in the cardholder agreement itself.

• Opinion Date: April 28, 2003
• Business Law