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Net News
Man Fired for Visiting Adult Chat Room Sues and Claims Addiction<br>RIAA Denounces New Fair Use Bill
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Computer Forensics for Your Firm
Along with e-discovery, the field of computer forensics is becoming evermore central to the discovery process. The need for computer forensics analysis is appearing frequently at the state and federal level, and the field's influence and demands are permeating civil and criminal cases, both large and small.
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Verdicts
Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.
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Senior Executive and Officer Litigation
In the old days, decisions made by executives and directors in the board room often were cloaked with a veil of legitimacy. Now, however, these decisions are under constant surveillance and scrutiny from outsiders and are even vulnerable to leaks from insiders. As executives and directors are thrust into the media and legal forefront, not only do they face potential personal liability for their decisions, but the corporations themselves face liability for their actions.
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Title VII Disparate Pay Claims
The U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a case of great importance to employers, <i>Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., Inc.</i> It will decide when the statute of limitations begins to run under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (as amended) ('Title VII') for certain types of disparate pay claims.
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Religious Rights of Divorcing Parents
Other than holding that courts cannot use race as a criterion for decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has not delved deeply into defining the constitutional rights of divorcing parents in the context of a custody dispute. In <i>Shepp v. Shepp</i>, 906 A.2d 1165 (Pa. 2006), however, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently held that a divorced parent had a constitutional right to advocate his sincere religious belief in polygamy to his 9-year-old child.
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Myth-Busting the New Amended Federal Rules
Wherever you turn these days, there seems to be a new CLE seminar being offered or white paper being written on the 'sweeping changes' to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as they relate to the discovery of electronically stored information.<br>And most of them are tied together by a common thread: an alarmist air of hype.
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In the Courts
Verdicts of interest to you and your practice.
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Can Disclosure Set You Free?
The misappropriation theory of insider trading, which was first recognized by the Supreme Court in <i>United States v. O'Hagan</i>, 521 U.S. 642 (1997), establishes liability for individuals who are not typical 'insiders' of companies and also appears to offer such defendants a specific defense to insider trading charges. The O'Hagan Court based the misappropriation theory on a duty owed by the defendant to the source of non-public material information, rather than to the shareholders of the company whose stock was being traded. Because a defendant prosecuted under the misappropriation theory had a duty only to his source, the Court explained that a defendant's disclosure to the source of information prior to trading or tipping could neutralize the acts of deception necessary for a securities fraud claim.
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Southern California's First Asbestos Bankruptcy
Litigation involving asbestos, which was used for decades as a fire retardant in many products, has littered the legal landscape for years. Several major companies have over the course of the last several years filed for bankruptcy as a result of the onslaught of this litigation. Since the 1980s, many asbestos manufacturers, including Johns Manville, declared bankruptcy under the weight of liability payouts. To date, an estimated 85 companies have filed for bankruptcy claiming asbestos liabilities as the cause. A Rand Institute for Civil Justice report indicates that more than 730,000 asbestos claims have been filed since the early 1970s. Roughly 200,000 claims are still pending in state and federal courts nationwide. Estimates predict that up to 2.4 million claims still may be filed before asbestos litigation finally runs its course.
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- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.Read More ›
- Private Equity Valuation: A Significant DecisionInsiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.Read More ›
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