Franchise, Dealer & Antitrust Decisions in One Sentence

Federal Court ruled in favor of franchisor GNC in setting aside a default entered against it where the franchisor asserted that the failure to timely respond fell short of constituting culpability because it was attributable to a mere miscommunication between GNC’s litigation counsel and GNC’s in-house legal department, and where GNC further contended that the existence of meritorious defenses to Plaintiffs’ claims and corresponding lack of prejudice to Plaintiffs warranted setting aside the clerk’s entry of default; and where Plaintiffs opposed GNC’s Motion on the basis that GNC’s explanation for its untimely participation in this matter evinced a deliberate, strategic choice rather than a negligent oversight.

Kyllonen v. GNC Franchising, LLC, No. 2:18-cv-01526-GMN-BNW, 2019 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 99822 (D. Nev. June 13, 2019)

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In a distribution case, a bone cement recipe owner’s action against a manufacturer of bone cement for the owner’s competitor, alleging theft of a trade secret, misappropriations that were discovered or by the exercise of reasonable diligence should have been discovered more than three years before the suit was filed were time-barred under the Pennsylvania Misappropriations Act (PUTSA), but the owner of the trade secret was permitted to sue for misappropriations that occurred within the three-year period before filing of the Complaint because Pennsylvania applied the rule of separate accrual to trade secret misappropriations of a continuing nature based on the text of the PUTSA and Pennsylvania’s common law rule of separate accrual of the cause of action.

Heraeus Med. GmbH v. Esschem, Inc., No. 18-1368, 2019 U.S. App. LEXIS 18636 (3d Cir. June 21, 2019)

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