The Route to Federal Court Clarified
While the Jurisdiction and Venue Clarification Act of 2011 does not change the jurisdictional requirements for removal, and the basic removal procedures are left largely unchanged, the Act does in-house and outside counsel a service by settling removal issues that often varied by circuit, including the first-or-last-served defendant rule, the standard for measuring the amount in controversy, and the permissibility of exceptions to the one-year bar.
Features
A New Philosophy for Managing Partners
An astute lawyer-manager must achieve the appropriate balance of building consensus among the partners versus managing as an autocrat.
Features
Managing Employee Leave under the ADAAA and FMLA
Managing employee leave has become a persistent and growing challenge at many companies. Here's why...
Four Rules for Tax-Exempt Organizations with Volunteers
As discussed last month, the use of volunteers and interns by nonprofit corporations comes with legal risks, particularly from potentially applicable wage and hour laws and from harms caused by or happened upon the volunteers and interns.
Features
The Supreme Court Finds Religion
The U.S. Supreme Court recently held in that the First Amendment's religion clauses provide for a "ministerial exception." In doing so, the Court promoted religious autonomy at the expense of ministers' rights and society's interest in eradicating discrimination.
When Sympathy Trumps Contractual Rights
Is "equity" more powerful than enforcing the terms of a renewal lease option in a lease between two sophisticated business entities? In <i>135 East 57th Street LLC v. Daffy's Inc.</i>, the Appellate Division, First Department, signaled that it is.
Features
Vicarious Liability
When is a franchisor's control over a franchisee so great that the franchisor risks being held vicariously liable for the actions of its franchisees?
Features
In the Spotlight: Lease Restructures
Although landlords do not want excess space to lease in a down market, there may be benefits to the landlord of a steady long-term income stream that offsets the impact of additional vacancy. In sum, for each side an early lease restructure may make sense.
Features
Drafting Better Commercial General Liability Insurance Requirements
A landlord generally does not want to impose obsolete or otherwise nonsensical requirements on its tenant, and a tenant generally does not want to promise to do things that are impossible. But both can regularly be found in lease insurance provisions.
Prepping for the 2010 Amendments to Article 9 of the UCC
In 2008, the Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute set to work on evaluating and improving Article 9. A set of amendments which were completed in May 2010 by the ULC and the ALI reflecting these efforts is ready for consideration by state legislatures. This article discusses some of the troublesome issues that prompted the work of these commercial law grandees and the solutions contemplated by the 2010 amendments.
Need Help?
- Prefer an IP authenticated environment? Request a transition or call 800-756-8993.
- Need other assistance? email Customer Service or call 1-877-256-2472.
MOST POPULAR STORIES
- Bankruptcy Sales: Finding a Diamond In the RoughThere is no efficient market for the sale of bankruptcy assets. Inefficient markets yield a transactional drag, potentially dampening the ability of debtors and trustees to maximize value for creditors. This article identifies ways in which investors may more easily discover bankruptcy asset sales.Read More ›
- Judge Rules Shaquille O'Neal Will Face Securities Lawsuit for Promotion, Sale of NFTsA federal district court in Miami, FL, has ruled that former National Basketball Association star Shaquille O'Neal will have to face a lawsuit over his promotion of unregistered securities in the form of cryptocurrency tokens and that he was a "seller" of these unregistered securities.Read More ›
- Compliance Officers and Law Enforcement: Friends or Foes?<b><i>Part Two of a Two-Part Article</b></i><p>As we saw in Part One, regulators have recently shown a tendency to focus on compliance officers who they deem to have failed to ensure that the compliance and anti-money laundering (AML) programs that they oversee adequately prevented corporate wrongdoing, and there are several indications that regulators will continue to target compliance officers in 2018 in actions focused on Bank Secrecy Act/AML compliance.Read More ›
- Structuring Strategies for Off-Balance-Sheet Treatment of Real Property LeasesThe Financial Accounting Standards Board released a new set of lease accounting standards, ASC 842, which went into effect earlier this year. Most significantly, publicly traded companies are now obligated to list all leases of 12 months or longer on their balance sheets as both assets and liabilities. Large private companies will follow suit in 2020.Read More ›
- Artist Challenges Copyright Office Refusal to Register Award-Winning AI-Assisted WorkCopyright law has long struggled to keep pace with advances in technology, and the debate around the copyrightability of AI-assisted works is no exception. At issue is the human authorship requirement: the principle that a work must have a human author to be eligible for copyright protection. While the Copyright Office has previously cited this "bedrock requirement of copyright" to reject registrations, recent decisions have focused on the role of human authorship in the context of AI.Read More ›