Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani New York Partner Joseph Salvo and Senior Counsel Thomas Fanizzi secured a decisive victory in a three-day AAA arbitration concerning a technology errors-and-omissions claim, representing the firm’s managed services provider (MSP) client.
The dispute arose from a Managed Services Agreement (MSA) between GRSM’s MSP client, an IT managed service provider, and a revenue-based financing provider. The financing provider alleged that the MSP client violated the parties’ MSA by failing to deliver on its contractual obligation to provide MSP services. The financing provider also alleged that after the parties’ relationship ended, the MSP client withheld certain network credentials and data, which served as the basis for a theory of liability based on conversion.
Throughout the yearlong pre-arbitration litigation, the GRSM team managed extensive ESI discovery and worked tirelessly to obtain crucial discovery that had been withheld by the financing provider. The GRSM team distilled the ESI discovery to the salient material, which they presented during the arbitration proceeding to completely undermine the financing provider’s claims. Moreover, the GRSM team successfully moved to disqualify the financing provider’s economic damages expert, which severed any causal nexus between the alleged wrongdoing and the damages alleged.
During the proceeding, compelling evidence was presented, and testimony was elicited, demonstrating that the MSP client did not breach the MSA or convert any of the financing provider’s credentials or data. Moreover, even if the MSP client could have been found liable under any of the alleged theories of liability, the GRSM team highlighted that the MSA contained a limitation of liability provision that significantly constrained the types of claims that could be pursued and the damages that could be recovered.
The AAA arbitrator agreed with all of GRSM’s arguments in the pre- and post-arbitration briefs and summarily dismissed the financing provider’s counter-claims. The MSP client was awarded the full breadth of the damages sought on its direct claims against the financing provider.
GRSM’s Commercial Litigation practice combines strategic insight and a strong track record in discovery management and effective representation, successfully handling complex technology errors-and-omissions arbitration cases and securing favorable outcomes for clients.