State, Federal, and Appellate Courts

• Michigan Supreme Court to Reconsider Scarsella v Pollak

  January 3, 2022

  Continuing a recent trend of granting leave in medical malpractice cases, the Michigan Supreme Court recently granted the plaintiff’s application for leave in Ottgen v Katranji to address whether its 2000 opinion in Scarsella v Pollak, 461 Mich 547 (2000) was “correctly decided.”  In Scarsella, the Michigan Supreme Court held that a timely complaint filed […]

• A Rare Occurrence: A Jury Trial in Ottawa County

  January 4, 2018

  The civil jury trial is a fundamental part of our democracy and has been a part of our country since its inception. Yet, many people do not realize that, in present-day America, civil jury trials are exceedingly rare. Statistics from Ottawa County prove this point. From 2012 to 2016, 2,082 civil cases were resolved through […]

• Unauthorized Stock Sale

  March 12, 2016

  Without our client’s authorization, Unclaimed Property Recovery & Reporting, LLC and UPRR Securities, LLC (“UPRR”) exchanged 247,000 shares of our client’s stock in a company called JDS Uniphase, Corp., for 30,850 new shares. They also, again without the client’s authorization, sold 5,326 of those new shares for $64,391.34, pocketing $55,991.81 of the proceeds and purchasing […]

• Sales Commission Dispute Victory

  March 6, 2016

  Our client, a West Michigan business, hired the plaintiff as its sales manager and orally agreed to pay him commissions on sales to customers he “went out and got” for the company. After his hiring, numerous customers called into the company to do business with them, and plaintiff, as the sales manager, assisted those customers. […]

• 

  Reversing the Burden of Proof

  March 3, 2016

  We represented the plaintiff, who was hired to grow the defendant company.  In exchange, he was paid a salary plus 20% of the company’s profits.  The problem was that the owner of the company depressed the company profits by improperly expensing items for various other companies and also for personal expenses, which cheated plaintiff out […]

• Client awarded judgment of $500,000

  December 22, 2015

  Mr. Jackson provided his retirement funds to the defendants for purposes of purchasing and rehabilitating specific properties in Grand Rapids. Through a series of complicated transactions, however, Mr. Spencer transferred the money to his solely owned side company and thereafter spent Mr. Jackson’s money on himself. Six months after the lawsuit was filed, Mr. Spencer […]