Litigation

In divorce, it is sometimes necessary to value shares of a closely held corporation. But there are stocks in privately held companies throughout New York whose shares are not traded on the NYSE or NASDAQ. These companies often have only a handful of shareholders, many of whom are family members or close friends.

A roundup of recent developments.

On Feb. 2 of this year, the Supreme Court of New Jersey held that a foreign manufacturer of an industrial recycling machine is subject to New Jersey's long-arm jurisdiction under the stream-of-commerce theory. This has broad implications.

Last month, we discussed the fact that a defendant should be permitted to offer evidence that the plaintiff's injuries could have occurred in the absence of negligence. Conversely, the defendant should not be permitted to offer evidence that might lead a jury to improperly infer that the mere fact that a complication is a known risk of the procedure is evidence that the defendant was not negligent in causing that complication. The discussion concludes herein.

This edition of the Quarterly State Compliance Review looks at some legislation of interest to corporate lawyers that went into effect from May 1 through July 1, 2010. It also looks at recent decisions of interest from the courts of Delaware, New York and California.

Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.

BAPCPA has had a profound effect on retail reorganizations, particularly, the restriction on bankruptcy courts' broad discretion to extend debtors' time to assume or reject leases. This shortened time period, a maximum of 210 days, has been alleged to be responsible for the death of retail reorganizations.

The practice of project management in e-discovery has traditionally been loosely defined, with significant variation in the application of the fundamentals and the people performing these services. In some cases, the individual taking a project management role on a case is an attorney or paralegal, while in others it's the e-discovery services provider's account manager. Some project managers come from IT or document management roles. Within any given case, multiple "project managers" may work together, each applying their own set of practices and procedures.