Commercial Law

Features

What businessperson hasn't complained about how lawyers ruin deals? The simple handshake and bar-napkin agreement too often turns into hundreds of pages of fine print, with hourly billing to match. Yet neither party really knows whether it all actually states the deal as each understood it over handshakes. Sometimes the fallout begins because the contracts are unintelligible to the layman ' not good. Other times, the lawyer may have taken far longer than the deal allowed to write a contract, or simply blew the budget ' also not good. Whatever the cause, these problems lead many businesspeople to wonder whether their lawyers are for them, or against them.

Features

Why and how a "confidential e-mail" might not be so confidential--and what can ensue when it leaks.

Features

Someone is stealing electronic data from you ' right now. A person your firm or company has trusted for years is doing things that are making you suspect he or she is stealing. You don't know how or with whom, but you know something is wrong. What do you do? Where do you turn? How do you find out for sure?

Features

Last month, the author discussed the controversial proposal to replace New York's current maintenance scheme with "Post-Marital Income Guidelines." What follows is a critique of the proposed legislation, based in large measure on a report of the Legislative Committee of the Family Law Section of the New York State Bar Association.

Features

An increasing number of properties have been and continue to be classified as having some kind of recognized environmental condition. The REC classification arises from the EPA crackdown over the past few decades to ensure that property owners and the parties who are responsible for causing the contamination actually share in the cost and burden of the remediation process.

Features

Domestic violence is now recognized to be coercive control, whether that control is exercised by physical violence, psychological abuse, or some other type of coercive act. Herein is the conclusion of this discussion.

Features

The authors relate an experience in a case involving a not affirmative experimental treatment, but a human research study regarding modes of diagnosis.

Features

Pain is the most common cause of long-term disability, and it is the leading reason patients seek medical attention. But physicians seeking to manage their patients' pain with narcotics must be mindful of both the potential liability involved and the potential for scrutiny by their medical boards.