Isaacson and Parikh Secure Pre-Answer Dismissal of Action Against Attorney Client

Debbie Isaacson and Ana Parikh successfully moved to dismiss a third-party action in Superior Court of New Jersey, Somerset County, against the firm’s client, a civil litigation attorney.

The firm’s client represents various plaintiff insurance companies in a consumer fraud action, where the defendants, a remediation company and its owner, allegedly failed to complete numerous residential remediation projects for plaintiffs’ insureds after accepting full payment from plaintiffs. Plaintiffs asserted claims for consumer fraud and common law fraud against defendants, and alleged that the defendant owner orchestrated a scheme to collect pre-payment for the projects but not complete them. In response to those allegations, the defendant owner filed a third-party action against the firm’s client, asserting claims for intentional interference with prospective economic relationships, civil conspiracy, defamation and malicious abuse of process.

Debbie and Ana argued that the defendant/third-party plaintiff lacked standing to bring most of his claims, as they belong to the defendant remediation company; the defamation claim was not pled with the required specificity; and that the claim for malicious prosecution was premature. Isaacson and Parikh also successfully argued that the absolute litigation privilege applied to any alleged statements made by the firm’s client, which would prevent the third-party plaintiff from not only bringing his claim for defamation, but also from bringing his remaining tort-related claims.

The Court agreed and granted our motion to dismiss the third-party action in its entirety.