Meddling between competitors - Part one: Civil Conspiracy
I recently covered the issue of business torts in the context of customers, but now we’re going to take a peek at torts between competitors. Most business lawsuits focus on the main legal tool of american business: contracts. However, there are torts out there designed for application to interactions between businesses, mostly in the absence of a contract.
The three primary areas of competitor-focused torts are:
Civil conspiracy,
Tortious interference with a contract, and
“unfair competition” and its various subsets
Civil Conspiracy
Civil conspiracy is a really odd tort. Most folks, including myself, think of conspiracy in terms of criminal matters (or Fox Mulder), but there is a tort under Wisconsin law (§ 134.01) that makes it illegal for two or more persons to act together to maliciously injure another person’s reputation, trade, business, or profession, with a key focus on the maliciousness of the individuals’ actions. What’s more, this tort also appears to be a crime, too! Again, rather unusual.
The elements of the tort are fairly basic after a “civil conspiracy” is defined: a combo of two ore more persons by concerted action to accomplish an unlawful purpose or to accomplish by unlawful means a purpose not in itself unlawful (in other words, not a crime). The elements are: (1) the formation and operation of a civil conspiracy; (2) the wrongful act or acts done pursuant thereto; and (3) damage resulting from such acts.
Chris Moander is an Attorney handling business law matters, business litigation, and collections matters throughout Wisconsin.
