Litigation

Breach-of-Contract Claim Can Continue Over Refusal to Exercise Option to Retain Anti-Vaccination Actress California Court Rules on Intersection Between Anti-SLAPP Law and Movie Trailer

Traditionally, the bankruptcy risk for D&Os has been fairly low. Several recent developments have, however, shifted the landscape somewhat and altered the risk profile.

On Jan. 30, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit reversed a bankruptcy judge's decision, concluding that Johnson & Johnson subsidiary LTL Management was not in financial distress at the time it filed its Chapter 11 case in 2021.

The Ninth Circuit held in VIP Prods. LLC v. Jack Daniel's Properties that VIP's "Bad Spaniels" dog toy mimicking the appearance of a Jack Daniels whisky bottle was protected expression under the First Amendment. The Supreme Court granted cert in November 2022 to consider the principal question whether humorous use of another's mark on a commercial product should be assessed under Rogers or the traditional multipart test of likelihood of confusion.

The Housing Stability and Tenant Protection Act amended the Rent Stabilization Law and, among other draconian changes, severely curtailed landlords' incentives to modernize and otherwise improve rent regulated apartments by limiting the ability to recover the costs of individual apartment improvements (IAIs) to vacant apartments.

There are several issues and terms to consider related to the development process that differentiate build to suit leases from a standard commercial lease that are important for the tenant to understand to effectively manage costs and effectively protect itself from delays in the development schedule.

Cases interpreting Chapter 15 of the Bankruptcy Code after it was enacted in 2005 often addressed basic issues, such as whether a foreign debtor must have property in the U.S to file a case there. But even when there's no property in the U.S., there's an easy remedy: the foreign administrator can deposit a retainer payment with its U.S. law firm.

Section 365 of the Bankruptcy Code, which governs the disposition of executory contracts, has specific provisions regarding the disposition of commercial real estate leases in bankruptcy, including the rights of a tenant to remain in possession of the leased premises when the landlord files a bankruptcy case and rejects the lease. But what rights does a tenant have with regard to the security deposit delivered by the tenant to the landlord?