Joanna Piorek

Following a five-day, in-person bench trial in New Jersey Superior Court – Chancery Division, Florham Park, NJ, partners Tom Quinn and Joanna Piorek received an Order of Final Judgment and a dismissal with prejudice in favor of Wilson Elser’s client, an academic publisher who reverted rights to a three-volume work resulting from the untoward conduct of the plaintiff author who was found by a Title IX panel to have sexually harassed a graduate student.

The plaintiff sued for specific performance and demanded his three-volume work be published in full. In the absence of a morals clause within the publishing agreement, while Tom and Joanna presented a number of affirmative defenses on the issue of breach, their defense strategy focused on attacking plaintiff’s sought-after specific performance remedy of publication. Their arguments informed the Court as to workings of the academic publishing world and the multitude of detailed steps involved in publishing a work – particularly one intended as a textbook, with the ancillary issue of “adoption.” After consideration of the evidence presented at trial as to the publishing process, the Court found that it could not order specific performance, thus relieving our client from printing the plaintiff’s three-volume work.