New Jersey Attorney Law Review Blog

(November 2009) Levinson Axelrod, a prominent New Jersey personal injury law firm, has filed suit against its former disgruntled associate, Edward Heyburn, who in September 2009 registered and published a website domain using Levinson Axelrod's name for the purpose of airing his grievances against them. The firm filed suit in the Superior Court of New Jersey on an emergent basis, seeking to shut down the website, www.levinsonaxelrod.net, alleging, among other claims, that the content posted on the site is defaming the firm's reputation, the site is diverting traffic from the firm's legitimate website, www.levinsonaxelrod.com, and the use of the firm's name in the domain registration constitutes cybersquatting and trademark infringement. However, Heyburn quickly removed the lawsuit to the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey because Levinson Axelrod’s complaint provides a federal question basis for removal by claiming violations of the federal Anti...

In a published decision issued on June 26, 2009 in an employment litigation case, a New Jersey appeals court held that the attorney-client privilege applies to e-mails that the employee sent to her attorney while accessing the company's computer to send the e-mails through her private Yahoo! e-mail account. ( Stengart v. Loving Care Agency Inc. , A.-35-6-08T1). With all due respect to the trial court, in my March 9, 2009 post discussing this case I expressed my opinion that the trial judge's decision was incorrect and predicted that an interlocutory appeal would be forthcoming because of the far-reaching effects of the trial court's decision. Both predictions turned out to be accurate. For the convenience of our readers, although I extensively commented on the facts of this case in my March 9, 2009 post, the brief facts of the case are as follows: The plaintiff was the executive director of nursing at Loving Care Inc. ("Loving Care"). During her employment, Lo...

Before Maria Stengart quit her job, she was already making plans to sue her employer. She e-mailed her lawyer during business hours from her company-issued laptop, though she was circumspect enough to use her personal Web-based Yahoo e-mail account. It was not until discovery in the ensuing hostile-workplace, constructive-discharge case that she learned company lawyers had a copy of the message, which was automatically saved on the laptop's hard drive as a temporary file. Now a Bergen County judge, Estella De La Cruz, has held the e-mail isn't protected as an attorney-client communication, finding Stengart waived the privilege by using the company computer and network even though she sent the e-mail from her personal e-mail account with Yahoo!. The ruling, in Stengart v. Loving Care Agency , BER-L-858-08, is a first for a New Jersey state court and one of only a few across the country to deal with the factual scenario presented. The other cases cited by De La Cruz turned on whe...

A Superior Court judge in Bergen County New Jersey dismissed a defamation case against a number of defendants based on the claims of two women who sued over photographs taken of them clubbing at a Clifton, NJ bar which were included in a book titled, "Hot Chicks With Douchebags," published by a Simon & Schuster division. In a 9-page written opinion granting summary judgment, the trial judge dismissed the complaint finding there was no actionable defamation claim because the photographs and accompanying text are used for humorous social commentary and the book is protected by the First Amendment. The photos showed the women with one or more men described as "douchebags", which the book's author describes as men with "Greasy foreheads, spiked frosted hair, oiled up faces dripping with Tag Shot spray", dressed in "Armani Exchange T-shirts and rank cologne wafting off their backs like fetid pollen clouds as they pump their fists and attempt to gri...