natarajan llp

Attorney General’s Report to the Legislature on the New Jersey False Claims Act (NJFCA)

Natarajan LLP — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 18:39:11 +0000

The reports are in and represent an upward trend in recoveries by the State of New Jersey through actions filed under the New Jersey False Claims Act. In 2011, the State of New Jersey recovered about $3 million in damages and penalties under the NJFCA. Not bad considering the Act was has only been around for about three years.

The 2010 and 2011 reports are available here.

A little bit of history:

On January 17, 2010, then-New Jersey Governor John Corzine signed S-2534 into law as P.L. 2009, c.265, amending sections of the New Jersey False Claims Act and adding new sections, including, N.J.S.A. 2A: 32C-18 which states:

On the 30th day after the effective date of P.L.2009, c. 265 (C.2A:32C-18 et al.) and annually on the anniversary of the effective date of P.L.2009, c. 265 (C.2A:32C-18 et al.), the Attorney General, pursuant to section 2 of P.L.1991, c. 164 (C.52:14-19.1), shall submit to the Legislature, a report containing the following information:

a. The number of cases the Attorney General filed during the previous calendar year under the “New Jersey False Claims Act,”P.L.2007, c. 265 (C.2A:32C-1 et seq.);

b. The number of cases private individuals filed under the “New Jersey False Claims Act,” P.L.2007, c. 265 (C.2A:32C-1 et seq.) during the previous calendar year, including those cases that remain under seal, and specifying for those cases no longer under seal:

(1) the State or federal courts in which those cases were filed and the number in each court;

(2) the State program or agency that is involved in each case; and

(3) where the information is available, the number of cases filed by private individuals who previously had filed an action based on the same or similar transactions or allegations under the federal False Claims Act or the False Claims Act of another state;

c. The amount that was recovered by the State under the “New Jersey False Claims Act,” P.L.2007, c. 265 (C.2A:32C-1 et seq.) in settlement, in damages, penalties, and litigation costs, if known, and specifying for each the following:

(1) the case number and parties for each case in which there was a recovery;

(2) the separate amounts of any funds recovered for damages, penalties, and litigation costs; and

(3) the percentage of the recovery and the amount awarded to any private person who brought the action.

Business Lawyer Anand Natarajan Chosen As 2012 Leadership New Jersey (LNJ) Fellow

Natarajan LLP — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:32:37 +0000

Commercial litigation lawyer Anand Natarajan was recently selected as a Fellow for the 2012 Leadership New Jersey program. As a fellow, Mr. Natarajan, who represents New Jersey business owners in a range of business law issues, will meet with a variety of New Jersey citizens, lobbyists, legislators and law enforcement officials to discuss and help find solutions to various social, economic and political issues that confront the state. “As a New Jersey lawyer, lifelong New Jersey resident and local business owner, I am thrilled to get the opportunity to participate in LNJ and meet with people that are equally concerned about this state’s future.” Mr. Natarajan said. “It is a great honor to participate in a program that has graduated innovative and influential leaders and I look forward to working with the other fellows in 2012.”

The 2012 LNJ program will kick off leadership retreat on January 19th 2012.

Natarajan LLP advises on sale of 35,000 square foot Class A commercial building

Natarajan LLP — Fri, 19 Nov 2010 00:31:33 +0000

Sagar Shah, a partner at Natarajan LLP, advised the principals of Perrine Professional Group (PPG) in the successful condominium conversion and sale of a new construction Class A medical and office building located at 300 Perrine Road in Old Bridge, NJ. Natarajan LLP will also advise the purchasers of the building on the subsequent sale and lease of individual condominium units. The firm plans on advising the principals of PPG on future commercial real estate ventures in the Central New Jersey area. “Central New Jersey provides a unique opportunity for both residential and commercial real estate, and I am excited to be working with Natarajan LLP to both vet and develop new real estate deals in the area,” said Ajay Jain, member of PPG.

300 Perrine Road boasts state of the art construction, ample parking and ideal location at the intersection of Route 34 and Route 9 in Old Bridge and is also zoned for medical use. “300 Perrine presents the ideal real estate transaction,” Sagar Shah said. “Its construction was managed superbly, its financing was backed by a stable community bank and it was built in a really great location—it was a pleasure working with PPG to complete this transaction.”

Dr. Sunil Garg to speak at the New Jersey Environmental Law Section annual meeting

Natarajan LLP — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 22:18:15 +0000

Dr. Sunil Garg will speak on the implications of the Stengart case in a panel entitled “Electronic Media: Is Your Privilege Protected After “Loving Care?” at the New Jersey Environmental Law Section annual meeting held on June 27, 2010. In the Stengart case, the New Jersey Supreme Court held that an employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy in emails between the employee and her attorney. For more information about this case, visit The Rajan Report to read the full article.

New Jersey High Court Protects Employees’ Right to Personal Emails

Natarajan LLP — Thu, 29 Apr 2010 21:59:04 +0000

New Jersey employers: employees have a limited right to access and send personal emails to their attorney on company computers, and you have no authority to read them. This watershed rule was announced in Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, Inc.,¹ where the New Jersey Supreme Court unanimously held that an employee had a reasonable expectation of privacy in emails between the employee and her attorney which were sent and received through a web-based email account accessed on laptop provided by her employer.

During Marina Stengart’s tenure with the Loving Care Agency, Inc. she corresponded with her attorney through a web-based, Yahoo e-mail account accessed on a company laptop. Shortly after resigning, Stengart brought suit against Loving Care for discrimination. Preparing for litigation, Loving Care arranged for experts to analyze Stengart’s company laptop to retrieve temporary internet files. This search yielded several e-mails between Stengart and her attorney which Loving Care later referenced in response to interrogatories.

Asserting the attorney-client privilege, Stengart sought a court order preventing Loving Care’s attorneys from using the emails at trial. In response, Loving Care argued that Stengart had waived the attorney-client privilege because she had no reasonable expectation of privacy in her emails. They pointed to the company’s electronic communications policy (“policy”) which explicitly provided that emails authored on company computers were the property of the company and should not be considered private. The trial court agreed with Loving Care, finding that Stengart knew of the company policy and therefore waived the attorney-client privilege.² In a stern opinion, the Appellate Division reversed, holding that the attorney-client privilege attached to the emails, noting that “a breach of [the internet usage] policy . . . does not justify [Loving Care’s] claim of ownership to personal communications.”³ Loving Care appealed to the New Jersey Supreme Court.

Rejecting the 4^th Amendment “reasonable-expectation-of-privacy”⁴ jurisprudence advocated by the parties, the New Jersey Supreme Court instead applied a common law tort standard to decide whether Stengart’s expectation of privacy in the contents of her personal emails was subjectively and objectively reasonable. The Court determined that Stengart’s subjective expectation of privacy was justified because she used a “personal, password-protected e-mail account instead of her company e-mail address, and did not save the account’s password on her computer.”⁵ The Court further found that Stengart’s expectation of privacy was objectively reasonable, explaining that Loving Care’s policy explicitly approved limited personal emails; the emails were between a lawyer and his client; and finally that the emails bore the attorney’s boilerplate warning which informed the reader that the information was subject to the attorney-client privilege. Thus, because Stengart’s expectation of privacy was reasonable, she could not have waived her attorney-client privilege.

In dicta, the Court went on to explain that employers have every right to monitor and punish personal internet usage where a well-drafted employee policy reasonably prohibits personal internet usage. Nevertheless, given the “policy concerns underlying the attorney-client privilege,” an employer cannot completely prohibit an employee’s use of a personal email account to access attorney-client messages. Further, the Court expressed disfavor for any company policy that enforced a “zero-tolerance” policy for personal email usage. Therefore, New Jersey employers should take heed, a complete ban on legitimate,⁶ personal email messages sent by your employees may be unenforceable.

Dr. Sunil Garg of Natarajan LLP will speak on the implications of the Stengart case in a panel entitled “Electronic Media: Is Your Privilege Protected After “Loving Care?” at the New Jersey Environmental Law Section annual meeting held on June 27, 2010.

1. No. A-16-09, 2010 WL 1189458 at *2 (N.J. Mar. 30, 2010).

2. Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, Inc., No. BER-L-858-08, 2009 WL 798044 at *5 (N.J. Super. L. Div. Feb. 5, 2009). The attorney-client privilege is waived if a person, “without coercion and with knowledge of [his] right or privilege, made disclosure of any part of the privileged matter or consented to such a disclosure made by anyone.” N.J.R.E. 530.

3. Stengart v. Loving Care Agency, Inc., 408 N.J. Super. 54, 70 (App. Div. 2009).

4. Stengart, 2010 WL 1189458 at *7.

5. Id. at *11.

6. Obviously, employers have every right to completely ban email messages of a criminal nature, and courts will not hesitate to enforce a policy such as this. See, e.g., Doe v. XYC Corp., 382 N.J. Super. 122 (App. Div. 2005) (holding that where an employee used company computer to access illegal pornography, the employee had no legitimate expectation of privacy).

Dr. Sunil Garg joins Natarajan LLP as Special Counsel

Natarajan LLP — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:30:25 +0000

Natarajan LLP is pleased to announce the addition of Dr. Sunil Garg to the firm’s commerical law practice. Dr. Garg possesses over 25 years of experience in several areas of law and has made a name for himself as an astute environmental, intellectual property and commercial litigator. Dr. Garg is a Registered Patent Attorney and holds a Masters in Chemistry and a Ph.D in Physical Chemistry. He has previously been associated with Stroock & Stroock and Lavan LLP, Hannoch Weisman P.C. and Lowenstein Sandler P.C. He has represented multi-national insurance companies, manufacturing companies and other blue-chip entities in a variety of transactional and litigation matters as an attorney, scientist, expert witness and consultant.

Condominiums vs. Cooperatives: A Basic Primer

Anand Natarajan — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 22:47:44 +0000

A real estate purchaser in an urban area needs to understand the difference between cooperative buildings and condominium buildings before they begin their property search.

Cooperatives

Cooperatives are mainly found in Manhattan and offer purchasers “shares” of a company rather than title to an apartment itself. In a cooperative, a non-profit corporation owns the building and all the units inside of it. Purchasers buy into the corporation by purchasing shares, which in turn carry with them the right to occupy a specific unit in the building. Purchase of coop shares is very similar to purchasing shares in a for-profit corporation, in that if the underlying coop corporation encounters financial difficulty, shareholders might experience depreciation in their investment, or, in the worst case scenario, lose their entire investment. Thus, coop owners are not only exposed to dips in the real estate market in general, but also must shoulder the risk of malfeasance and incompetence by the coop corporation’s management.

Financing a cooperative purchase

Interest payments on cooperative loans are usually not tax deductible. Many banks will not lend to cooperative purchasers or charge a higher interest compared to condo purchasers because of this underlying risk as well as the fact that the loan is not backed by real property. That is, if you default on your loan, it is somewhat complicated for a bank to “foreclose” on your interest in the building.

Cooperative management

Since coop purchasers are legally shareholders rather than real property holders, they are subject to rather pervasive control by the “management” of the coop corporation—the coop board. Board approval is required for almost all material decisions concerning a shareholder’s assigned space. After all, the company owns the building, and shareholders essentially are “leasing” their space pursuant to a shareholder agreement. Renovation, leasing of the unit to non-shareholders and outright sale of shares all are decisions that are usually subject to approval by the board. Purchase of a coop unit also involves a stringent application and interview process.

Carrying costs

Carrying costs such as property tax and building maintenance fees are relatively similar to condominium buildings in that such expenses are apportioned to each shareholder based on the size of their assigned space. However, each shareholder does not receive a separate tax bill from the city or town; instead, the corporation receives a tax bill for the entire building and the building administration drafts individual bills for each shareholder. In a coop, shareholders usually foot a portion of the interest paid on any underlying mortgages that the corporation took out to purchase the building.

Special assessments for large projects are usually financed through loans applied for by the corporation rather than the individual shareholders. This is advantageous to shareholders, because the loan payments can be rolled into building maintenance charges that are paid down over time rather than all at once.

Cooperative sales are not reported to the town or city

Cooperative share sales are not a matter of public record and are not recorded by any centralized entity, making it difficult to compare the asking price of shares currently for sale against shares that have sold in the past. This lack of “comparables” means it’s sometimes difficult to assess market value of the unit you are looking at and thus, paying the asking price for the unit/shares means taking a bit of a leap of faith. It would be wise to ask the cooperative board to disclose the price shares in the past have sold at or compare the value of the coop unit to comparable condominium units in other buildings before taking the plunge.

One benefit to coop sales not being recorded is that the assessed tax value of the building stays low. Remember, property taxes are based on the assessed value of the property, which is in turn based on the market value of the property. In a cooperative, the only time space in the building is “sold” is when the cooperative his first set up and the non-profit corporation buys the building. After that, the space itself is never sold again–only shares that carry with them the right to occupy the space are sold. In a town that doesn’t reassess property values very often and instead relies on solely on the sale price of a property to calculate property taxes, coop owners often pay disproportionately lower property taxes than condo owners.

In sum…

When purchasing a coop, you need to approach the purchase as you would when purchasing a share of a business. You need to determine whether the building is generating adequate cash flow to cover mortgages, property taxes, utilities, maintenance, capital improves and insurance payments. You need to determine whether your partners—the other coop members—are meeting their obligations pursuant to the shareholder agreements. Finally, you need to determine whether the coop has adequate management and more importantly, that you are on the same page as management with regard to your rights as a shareholder.

Condominiums

Condominiums resemble single-family homes (e.g. stand-alone houses and townhomes) in that a prospective purchase of one entitles the buyer to ownership of real property. A condo owner has legal title to their unit and owns an undivided percentage of the common space within the building.

Condo management

Condo boards are much less restrictive than coop boards; a condo owner usually is free to transfer his property through lease and outright sale. Furthermore, the condo owner usually has free reign to perform renovation within the walls of his unit, provided that the proposed modifications do not become a nuisance to other condo owners.

Financing a condo purchase

However, condos are generally more expensive to purchase with regard to the actual sale price and closing costs. Although financing is more widely available for condo purchases, transaction costs usually are fairly significant and can set the purchaser back several thousands of dollars. However, while these upfront costs might seem excessive, a condo owner’s ability to make federal tax deductions on mortgage interest payments usually allows the prospective buyer to recoup the closing costs fairly quickly. However, depending on your income, these deductions may not be as large as you think—it would be wise to consult an accountant regarding these tax issues rather than take your realtor’s word.

Things to look out for…

Since a condo building is more loosely managed, a prospective buyer should take special care to determine the overall health of the building before committing to a purchase. Things to examine include:

Reserve Fund: As mentioned before, a reserve fund is essential to providing the building with on-hand funds for capital improvements and emergencies. In addition to finding out what the current balance of the reserve fund is, you should ask to see records indicating what portion of monthly maintenance dues go towards the fund. Many smaller buildings often collect just enough maintenance fees to cover monthly costs, with very little money going towards the reserve. In buildings with little or no reserve, condo management immediately passes on the cost of improvements to owners in the form of lump sum payment demands; in these cases, improvements will not be made until the majority of the owners have chipped in their share.

Building Management: Smaller buildings usually are managed by a group of owners. A fair amount of small buildings also use outside management companies who are often more effective at things like collecting maintenance dues, securing the best contractors for building maintenance and ensuring upkeep of the building’s common areas. Larger buildings are almost exclusively run by real estate management companies, as these buildings have demands that cannot be met by part-time management. A prospective buyer should talk to other owners in the building to find out if management is responsive to owners’ needs and if repairs and improvements on a relatively consistent basis.

Occupancy: Some questions you should asking regarding occupancy include:

1. How many of the units in the building are vacant?

2. Are there a significant amount of owners that are in default of their mortgages?

3. Are the other owners paying their maintenance fees?

When units in a condo building are unoccupied or in default, the maintenance fees associated with these units are accounted for by increased maintenance for the rest of the owners. Accordingly, it is wise to examine the prospective building’s occupancy rate when making the decision to purchase a condo.

In sum…

The purchase of a condominium or cooperative share can be a financially and personally rewarding experience. To ensure you are getting maximum value and minimum heartache, consult with your chosen real estate professional and attorney prior to committing to a purchase.

Anand Natarajan recognized for pro bono work in Union County

Natarajan LLP — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:10:33 +0000

The Union County Bar Association recently recognized Anand Natarajan for his dedicated service to low income residents of Union County. Mr. Natarajan was thrilled to receive the recognition and looks to continue his excellent record of service to low-income clients throughout New Jersey in 2010.

Natarajan LLP introduces OneRate billing

Natarajan LLP — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:50:56 +0000

After receiving feedback from clients and examining new industry trends in legal billing, Natarajan LLP now offers fixed rate billing for a variety of matters, including transactional work and motion practice. Our OneRate pricing allows our clients to see exactly how much our representation will cost from start to finish, before any work is started. Traditional billable hour plans will also be offered by the firm, allowing clients the flexibility of multiple pricing plans for various legal projects.

Natarajan LLP selected as a preferred buyer’s attorney

Natarajan LLP — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:50:15 +0000

As a result of Natarajan LLP’s uncompromised integrity and commitment to real estate purchasers at Renaissance Properties’ Crine West development in Marlboro, NJ, the firm has been granted preferred status by the Old Bridge, NJ-based developer.