Business & Commercial Litigation

The Rose Group represented a company in the business of leasing heavy duty rail cars to end users, in a federal court action where they were being sued by a California private equity firm. The Plaintiff alleged that the company had engaged in fraud and unfair business practices, by concealing frauds committed by a co-defendant. The Rose Group took a flexible, non-cookie cutter (word choice, innovative? Inventive?) approach to this litigation to leverage the Plaintiff into a resolution. Specifically, The Rose Group Litigation Team used depositions early on to uncover issues with the Plaintiff’s case and determined that the Plaintiff’s complaints were not based in law, but were actually based on unhappiness with the Defendant outcompeting the Plaintiff in the marketplace. Ultimately, it was the non-conventional deposition tactics of the Plaintiff’s officers and pressure for the deposition of a silent investor of the Plaintiff, who refused to be deposed (nearly resulting in sanctions), that cracked the case. The Rose Group was relentless in its pursuit to get their clients out of this litigation, and the use of aggressive discovery methods allowed counsel to avoid motion practice and resolve the case in a cost-effective manner.

The Rose Group represented a defendant company accused of infringement of several design patents and common law trade dress. Through research, it was discovered that the Plaintiff was attempting to corner the market on the subject consumer product by filing various design patents and trade dress applications for components of the product design despite the fact that those designs had been used in the industry for decades. The Rose Group used a multi-faceted approach to this defense by not only seeking invalidation of the patents in the litigation, but also opposing the Plaintiff’s trade dress applications before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. By seeking to narrow the scope of the plaintiff’s patents through claims construction and asserting leverage through opposition proceedings, The Rose Group was able to bring a plaintiff, that was previously unwilling to even discuss settlement, to the table and obtain a settlement for our client.

The Rose Group represented a defendant company, and individual officers, accused of violating the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) and Wisconsin Wage Laws. The plaintiff was seeking to certify a class of the company’s employees and former employees to obtain unpaid wages, exemplary damages, and attorney’s fees. The Rose Group worked expeditiously to determine the total exposure the client was facing and approached settlement with the plaintiff’s counsel before plaintiff began racking up attorney’s fees with class certification motions. Ultimately, counsel was able to achieve a pre-class certification settlement for our client with payment of minimal fees to plaintiff’s counsel. Further, handling the litigation in this manner allowed the employer to get ahead of backlash issues with current employees, which allowed the business to continue functioning well, through the litigation.