Litigation

There are difficult depositions. Unproductive depositions. Ones where people cry or are rude or angry. And then, as the Delaware Supreme Court noted, there's Carole Shorenstein Hays. The 70-year-old Tony award-winning theater producer's behavior during her deposition prompted the Delaware Supreme Court to issue a 20-page addendum blasting her.

Mission Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology, LLC The question is whether a debtor's rejection of its agreement granting a license "terminates rights of the licensee that would survive the licensor's breach under applicable nonbankruptcy law."

Iancu v. Brunetti The Supreme Court held the bar against registration of immoral or scandalous marks "collided" with well-established free speech doctrine, namely, that laws disadvantaging speech based on the views expressed thereby violate the First Amendment.

Award of Contingent Attorney's Fees

With increasing frequency, Chapter 7 trustees are looking to insolvent parents as well as colleges and universities to avoid and recover for estate creditors payments made by insolvent debtors for the benefit of the debtors' dependents. These cases are premised on the theory that the tuition payments being made by insolvent parents for the benefit of their children are avoidable as constructively fraudulent transfers because the parents do not receive reasonably equivalent value in exchange for the payment of such tuition. Courts are divided as to whether the payment of a child's tuition provides reasonably equivalent value to the insolvent parents.

The U.S. Supreme Court issued its long-awaited decision in Mission Product Holdings, Inc. v. Tempnology , ruling that a trademark licensee can retain its rights under a trademark license agreement that is rejected by the licensor as an executory contract in bankruptcy.

In its recent opinion in Taggart v. Lorenzen, the Supreme Court decided that “[a] court may hold a creditor in civil contempt for violating a discharge order if there is no fair ground of doubt as to whether the order barred the creditor's conduct.” Although this standard appears to be new, it is more than a century old and “brings the old soil” from civil contempt with it.

This is the third in a series of articles exploring whether parties to a commercial lease can contractually waive a tenant's right to seek a Yellowstone injunction. In a recent ruling, the Court of Appeals, in 159 MP Corp. v Redbridge Bedford, LLC, left no doubt that a contractual waiver of a right to seek a declaratory judgment and/or a Yellowstone injunction in a commercial lease is enforceable.