Features
Sugarland Suit Offers Look at Dynamics of Litigating Intra-Band Disputes
Fresh off their November 2010 win for Vocal Duo of the Year at the Country Music Awards in Nashville, Sugarland faced a far different contest in a federal courtroom in Atlanta, GA, in a fight stemming from a 2005 split with the band's founder and former member, Kristen Hall. The trial, if held following more than two years of litigation, could easily have been billed as the anatomy of a band breakup. Though fact-specific to Sugarland, Hall's suit raises issues that are relevant to all-too-common litigations over intra-band disputes.
Features
Mediate Your Clients' Employment Claims
While growing in popularity, mediation still remains underutilized in employment disputes. From the employee's perspective, mediation should be a "no-brainer."
Features
Acquisition of Company Assets
With a little knowledge and planning, a purchasing company may be able to avert the expensive surprise of acquiring thousands of dollars in hidden unclaimed property that it must subsequently report and remit to multiple states.
Features
Honest-Services Fraud in the Wake of Skillings
The Supreme Court has tried again to restrict application of the honest-services fraud statute (18 U.S.C. ' 1346), which has been zealously used by prosecutors to target a wide swath of allegedly unethical behavior by public officials and private employees alike.
Features
FAA Updates Its Procedures for Registration of Aircraft
This article discusses a new FAA rule designed to improve the accuracy of aircraft registration records, and its effect on aircraft financiers.
Features
Can a Victim of Domestic Abuse Get Out of a Lease?
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.
Features
Child Pornography on Workplace Computers
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?
Features
The Courts: Active Players in White-Collar Cases
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.
Features
No RICO Violation Seen in Alleged Use of TV Show Idea
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.
Features
When the Virtual Storefront Is the Home Front
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.
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