Columns & Departments
Decisions of Interest
Analysis of recent important rulings.
Features
Windsor Leads to Multiple Benefits for Same-Sex Married Couples Nationwide
It makes very little difference what a couple's home state says: The federal government apparently intends to recognize their marriages, even if their state will not.
Features
Communications @ Risk
A text message or e-mail may be misinterpreted or be seen by unintended eyes, thus expanding a physician's potential legal liability.
Features
Relearning the Learned Intermediary Doctrine
Courts in nearly every state have embraced some form of the "learned intermediary doctrine," which provides that a prescription drug manufacturer satisfies its duty to warn so long as it provides an adequate warning of the drug's potential risks to the plaintiff's prescribing doctor.
Features
Transformative Use Musings
The California Supreme Court has accepted "transformative use" as a First Amendment defense to a right-of-publicity claim for more than a decade. The issue recently came up before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in the class action suit by former college athletes who claim Electronic Arts (EA) violated their rights of publicity with the NCAA Football video game.
Features
Maddeningly Mismated Matches
In paired opinions rendered the same day by the same judge, the Ninth Circuit reached seemingly directly contrary conclusions in virtually identical cases concerning the balancing of intellectual property rights and First Amendment interests.
Features
Forensic and e-Discovery Tools to Help Win Your Case
Winning or losing your client's case often rests on your ability to prove facts that support your client's position. Subject-matter expert witnesses play a prominent role in interpreting the facts available to them and helping the trier of fact reach a conclusion on the meaning of such information. Forensic and e-discovery experts are no different than any other experts in that their opinions can only be as solid as the information they can find and analyze.
Features
High Stakes for Television Networks in Failure To Unseat Dish Customers Recording Device
The "Hopper," the recording and commercial-skipping technology developed by Dish Network, first survived a preliminary injunction motion brought by Fox Broadcasting Co. in 2012, then prevailed on appeal this summer in a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.
Columns & Departments
Counsel Concerns
Atlanta Attorney Sued over Funding of Phony Lil Wayne Concerts
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- 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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- Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar InvestigationsThis article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.Read More ›
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