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Part One of this article discussed, inter alia, what the duty to preserve documents entails, when it begins, how a document retention policy can help protect against spoliation claims, and the consequences of failure to preserve documents. This installment addresses repetitive product liability litigation and what counsel should do when notified of a lawsuit.
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In <i>MedImmune v. Genentech</i>, decided Jan. 9, 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court swept away over a decade of Federal Circuit precedent to find that a licensee need not breach a patent license in order to file a declaratory judgment action for patent invalidity or unenforceability. The decision shifted substantial power from licensors to licensees: previously, a licensee had to choose the lesser of two evils. On one hand, the licensee could comply with the terms of a license agreement and forego any challenge to a patent, even if it felt the patent was not infringed, invalid, or unenforceable. On the other hand, the licensee could breach the license and challenge infringement, validity, and enforceability; in doing so, however, it exposed itself to potentially trebled damages and attorney's fees under 35 U.S.C. '' 284 & 285 and an injunction against future sales under 35 U.S.C. ' 283 if its challenge failed.
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The Privacy Rights Clearinghouse estimates that over 100 million records containing sensitive personal information have been involved in security breaches. This non-profit consumer organization has tracked these breaches on its website (www.privacyrights.org) beginning with the significant and well-publicized ChoicePoint breach in February 2005. As a result, over two-thirds of states enacted security breach notification laws governing the notification that a company must make in the event of a security breach. This article outlines the requirements for providing notification of a security breach under state security breach notification law by any company and the factors that a public company needs to take into account regarding whether to disclose a security breach under federal securities law.
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When the dust settles from the current round of discussions on increasing the federal minimum wage, the lowest paid of the country's non-exempt employees may or may not be earning an additional dollar or two per hour. Either way, the debate will have drawn the country's ' and the plaintiffs' bars' ' attention toward the lowest paid of our country's workers, and the climate will be right for those attorneys to begin focusing not only on how much non-exempt employees are being paid per hour, but also on whether these workers are being paid in a manner that is consistent with every intricate (and often contrary-to-common-sense) twist and turn of federal and state law.
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National news items you need to know.
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Recent rulings of importance to you and your practice.
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As counsel in a hotly contested case, you suspect that the presiding federal judge has engaged in judicial misconduct. What are your options? Should you overlook the alleged misconduct for fear of incurring the judge's wrath and perhaps prejudicing your case? Is there a formal procedure for filing a complaint of judicial misconduct? Many in-house counsel and practitioners alike are unfamiliar with the provisions of 28 U.S.C. ' 351 et seq., and the Rules Governing Complaints of Judicial Misconduct and Disability adopted by each of the federal circuits, which govern the handling of complaints of judicial misconduct or disability.
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In <i>Arthur Andersen LLP v. United States</i>, 125 S. Ct. 2129, 235 (2005), the Supreme Court acknowledged the importance of records management policies that provide for the routine destruction of unneeded records under ordinary circumstances. It is, however, common knowledge that such policies should ordinarily be suspended once an investigation or litigation is reasonably anticipated. This is normally accomplished through the imposition of a 'litigation hold,' the process of notifying employees of their obligations to preserve all potentially relevant records while continuing the routine destruction of non-relevant active and archived data. This may be a company's first line of defense against claims of spoliation or obstruction. The failure to suspend routine purges of records in the face of litigation has contributed to the imposition of sanctions as high as $1.45 billion on companies.
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Historically, when a health care company had a compliance failure, counsel could help it remain in business by negotiating with the relevant agency. If the problem involved sales, marketing or pricing, the company could seek a Corporate Integrity Agreement (CIA) with the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at Health and Human Services (HHS). If the problems related to manufacturing, counsel could obtain a consent decree of permanent injunction ('consent decree') with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the Food Drug and Cosmetic Act (FDCA). Consent decrees and CIAs each had their particular burdens and benefits, which health care practitioners had learned to navigate. Now this tidy distinction has become blurred as the FDA has borrowed features from HHS's CIAs.
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The intent of the new amendments is for cases to run smoother and focus on the merits rather than on the electronic discovery process. With the new elements in the 'meet and confer' conference requirement, counsel is now expected to understand its client's information infrastructure in order to negotiate what material will be disclosed, how it will be produced and in what timeframe. <br>Most alarming is that all of this discussion and a good part of this activity, under FRCP Rule 26(f), must take place and be presented to the court within 120 days of lawsuits being served in federal court.