In the first major test of the strength of Delaware's civil union legislation, a Delaware Superior Court judge approved an order retroactively applying spousal testimonial privilege to a same-sex couple.
The Federal Circuit recently addressed whether it is proper to join multiple defendants within a single action for no other reason than each defendant is accused of infringing the same patent.
Matrimonial attorneys are often confronted with equity in an S-corporation business that must be valued as a marital asset. Since S corporations and other pass-through corporate structures carry no tax obligations, should the appraiser tax affect or not?
Just as those responsible for the Titanic were lulled into a false sense of confidence in the vessel's impenetrability, many law firms today similarly steam along with a false sense of security that the cybercrime lurking in today's electronic channels of commerce does not pose a potentially critical threat. Taking a lesson from history, firms would be well-served by a blunt assessment of the cyber security risks that surround them and whether course corrections could avert a modern-day commercial disaster.
While foreign bribery and corruption cases are currently getting most of the attention, this is no reason for domestic concerns to get too relaxed. Here's why.
This era of instantaneous cross-border communication and commerce has brought with it a corresponding increase in the application of the white-collar criminal laws of various countries to companies' international operations.
With 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.
At the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.
This 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.
While the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.
Insiders (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.
