Litigation

An Atlantic County jury awarded $25.16 million to a Birmingham, AL, man after finding that Roche Laboratories Inc. knew or should have known that Accutane caused inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and failed to warn prescribing physicians.

In late January, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) sued Kelley Drye & Warren for its use of a compensation system that the agency claims discriminates against attorneys based on their age.

In ordinary economic times, the most common deficiency in applications for judgment by confession is the failure to include sufficient detail concerning the basis for a judgment. Recently, however, the pendulum has swung in the opposite direction. Instead of providing insufficient detail, attorneys have been filing exceedingly complex applications based on sophisticated and voluminous commercial transactions, many of which have been denied because, in short, they are too complicated.

Recent rulings around the states.

Important rulings of interest to you and your practice.

Because prosecutors have a responsibility not merely to win, but to ensure that the defendant has a fair and impartial trial, it is professional misconduct for a prosecutor to intimidate or improperly influence a defense witness to change his or her testimony or to refuse to testify for the defense.

In the first case ever to challenge the constitutionality of prosecuting teens for 'sexting,' a federal appeals court has upheld an injunction that barred a Pennsylvania prosecutor from bringing child pornography charges against girls who refused to attend a class he had designed to educate youths about the dangers of sexting.

An $18 million settlement of a copyright infringement suit between Internet publishers and freelance writers is back on track because of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on March 2.