Ronald Lee Hicks Jr.

I am a Pittsburgh-based civil trial and appellate lawyer who helps businesses, individuals and candidates, including members of the gay, lesbian and non-traditional family (GLBT) business community, resolve their problems and disputes. 

PRACTICE EXPERIENCE

For the past 27 years, I have handled a variety of business and civil disputes, including claims of misappropriation of trade secrets and intellectual property, breach of restrictive covenants, unfair competition, real estate and oil and gas disputes, bankruptcy and creditors’ rights, fraud and fraudulent transfers, estate and fiduciary liability, breach of contract, insurance coverage, and election and political campaign law.  

Also, together with my firm partners and colleagues, I counsel GLBT business owners on a full range of emerging business issues and disputes, such as entity formation and operation, business structuring and succession planning, business and partnership agreements and dissolutions including shareholder voting and dissenter’s rights, property ownership and partition, property and income tax valuation and assessment, and estate and tax planning, to name a few. 

I actively appear in state and Federal courts throughout the Atlantic coast and the Midwest, and I have pursued and defended claims brought before the American Arbitration Association in locales both in and outside of Pittsburgh. Also, I serve as an arbitrator, an early neutral evaluator and a special master for e-discovery disputes for the United States District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania.

NOTABLE ENGAGEMENTS

My most notable engagements include:

*Obtaining, after 30 days of trial in a New Jersey state court, a $12.8 million verdict against a client’s legacy insurance companies for environmental cleanup damages.

*Protecting a manufacturer’s customer information and other trade secrets by obtaining in federal court 1-year and 10-year injunctions to prevent their misuse by a former salesman and a terminated dealer.

*Enforcing an employee’s restrictive covenants by obtaining in federal court a preliminary injunction imposing a 12-month non-compete in the employee’s former territory, an 18-month non-solicitation of his former employer’s customers and employees, and an indefinite ban on disclosing or using in any manner the client’s confidential information or other property.

 *Winning and collecting multi-million dollar federal court judgments for siblings against their brother/uncle for breach of fiduciary duties, fraud, unjust enrichment and punitive damages, and against his wife for fraudulent transfers, unjust enrichment and punitive damages, and protecting those judgments by obtaining pre-verdict and post-judgment freeze orders, a declaratory judgment in Florida state court that a condominium was not protected from execution as homestead property, and a ruling in federal bankruptcy court that the judgments against the wife were not dischargeable.

*Obtaining a federal court TRO and a unanimous decision from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court declaring that third-party delivery of absentee ballots violates state law, resulting in the election of an appellate judge by 28 votes.

*Receiving a defense jury verdict in favor of a real estate developer who had been sued in an Indiana state court for breach of contract, unjust enrichment and fraud.

*Obtaining summary judgment in favor of funeral directors who had been sued by a memorial park for purported federal anti-trust violations.