The Two Billion Dollar Zhu Zhu Pet, Sold for $5k: Puffing in Trade Secret Misappropriation Pleadings May be Perilous

Zealous advocacy, copious use of Latin, and literary devices advantageously applied to attack our adversaries’ arguments.  These are the cornerstones of American legal representation. 

These tools are part of the modus operandi of every lawyer.  This article may use dead language and assonance as running themes, but some lawyers take zealous advocacy ad infinitum.  Such attorneys are rarely even admonished by the courts, much less sanctioned.  That said, the Ninth Circuit has approved sanctions against an attorney for “misrepresentations” made in the complaint of a trade secret lawsuit.  

Wait a minute…the COMPLAINT?  The boiler-plate statement “upon information and belief” was somehow omitted?  After the trial is over and the bad, bad defendant is found to be not so bad after all, is not all that bluster and bravado in the complaint long forgotten? 

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