Litigation

A Trend Is Emerging

The Central District of California recently joined the small growing list of courts that have held forensic reports created by outside security companies following a data breach are protected from disclosure in civil litigation in certain circumstances.

This article provides critical background on DOJ policy and practice, and highlights some of the steps corporate counsel can take during leniency or plea negotiations to secure non-prosecution protection for the company's employees as part of any antitrust corporate disposition.

The parameters set forth in the DOJ's memorandum have implications not only for the government's evaluation of compliance programs in the context of criminal charging decisions, but also for how defense counsel structure their conference-room advocacy seeking declinations or lesser sanctions in both criminal and civil investigations.

Litigation finance, or the practice of providing capital using legal claims as the underlying asset, is a growing industry. Its use by law firms alone grew four-fold between 2013 and 2016. To optimize its use, the legal and corporate industries should first collect the facts.

Did you know that certain employment practices could violate antitrust law? This is the message to be gleaned from joint guidance recently issued by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) Antitrust Division

While copyright registration normally constitutes prima facie evidence of copyright ownership, the court noted that the estate had registered the song copyright 31 years after it was originally published and only in response to the defendants' sampling of the song on Drake's album.

The Ninth Circuit recently announced in Mastan v. Salamon (In re Salamon) that a secured creditor with a nonrecourse mortgage cannot assert a claim for any deficiency if the underlying property is foreclosed on during the bankruptcy case. Here's an analysis of the decision.

Much has been written about the risk that a transaction denominated and documented as an equipment "lease" may be recharacterized a security interest. Equipment lessors seem to understand. Interestingly, equipment lessors commonly seem to not understand all of the rights and remedies they have in the absence of recharacterization. So, what's a true equipment lessor to do in the face of the Chapter 11 of its lessee?