Commercial Law

In our day-to-day practice as family law practitioners, we help clients negotiate their way through the maze that is divorce. Besides the usual parenting and financial issues, some clients experience abuse at the hands of their spouse, a significant other or another household member. If this happens, the victim can obtain a Protective Order. However, as is too often seen in the newspapers, the Protective Order is merely a piece of paper and does not guarantee safety.

What are the implications of having child pornography on the premises? In businesses, child pornography generally is discovered by IT personnel. Or, if a corporation undergoes an unrelated internal investigation in which all computers, hard drives, e-mail servers, etc. are frozen and searched for responsive material, such a search can to lead to the discovery of child pornography stored on the corporation's server or on an individual's hard drive. What can/must/should be done as a result?

In June, the Supreme Court unanimously held that Enron's former CEO Jeffrey Skilling did not commit "honest services" fraud, ruling that the statute under which he was convicted must be limited to bribery and kickback schemes to avoid constitutional concerns over vagueness. The decision should curtail prosecution of a variety of conduct that the government would otherwise seek to criminalize through the statute. In contrast, the courts are expanding the reach of other criminal statutes to encompass conduct previously regarded as outside their scope.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York dismissed a federal RICO claim that alleged the defendants took the basis for their TV program The Great American Road Trip from a TV show idea created by the plaintiffs.

One of the virtues of e-commerce has always been its low barrier to entry. For little investment of time or money, anyone can set up shop online, whether selling advice or widgets. But can something so easily accomplished really be a business? Will an entrepreneur run something out of her spare bedroom the same way as if she had venture capitalists peering over her shoulders, demanding a business plan, financial statements, budgets, marketing plans and everything that a bricks-and-mortar retailer has (except the expense of leasing space)? If not, she may treat it as just another hobby, something to handle in her free time.

Despite huge technological advancements in the 25 years since passage of the SCA, and the ever-increasing prominence of electronic communication in our society, Congress has not amended the SCA to keep pace with changing technology. Rather, courts have had to lead the charge in applying the decades-old statute to modern Internet technology and electronic communication disclosure issues.

The regulatory frenzy swirling about health care and employer plan accounting, coupled with our aging population and demographic shifts has created a perfect storm. We are besieged with commentary that Medicare is bankrupt, and the new accounting standards for employers require transparency to market and present value calculations of long-term liabilities, which creates havoc for employers for tax-planning and compliance purposes.

This article briefly summarizes tax provisions of the Small Business Jobs and Credit Act of 2010 that the author believes will be of most interest to law firms.