California Employment Lawyer

In Insyst Ltd. v. Applied Materials, Inc., 2010 WL 2892712 (Cal. Ct. App. Jul. 22, 2010) (unpublished), the California Sixth District Court of Appeal reversed the trial court’s grant of summary adjudication of plaintiff’s misappropriation of trade secrets cause of action. The trial court granted summary adjudication based on the lapse of the statute of limitations. The Court of Appeal reversed on equitable estoppel grounds. Defendant “effectively concedes that in its motion it presented no evidence of plaintiff’s conduct after December 2002 apart from the filing of the complaint on July 30, 2004. Instead, in its reply defendant simply challenged plaintiff to present evidence of its diligence, arguing that plaintiff made no showing of diligence. This is not how a party should be able to obtain a summary adjudication.”
By CHARLES H. JUNG