Recent rulings of interest to you and your practice.

Key rulings in neighboring states.

Features

Calling New York's failure to institute no-fault divorce "inexcusable," a Manhattan judge has concluded that a husband should not be held liable for perjury for claiming he had not had sex with his wife for more than a year, during which time she gave birth.

Late last year, the Appellate Division, Second Department, was confronted with the question of whether the judicially created concept of "constructive abandonment" could be expanded beyond its historic definition of sexual abandonment to include a persistent unrelenting pattern of social abandonment of a spouse. The court declined to expand the concept.

Both custodial and non-custodial parents often worry that they are being bad-mouthed by their exes when the kids are in the other parent's care. When the question of parental alienation and its influence on custody matters becomes an issue for the courts, problems of proof may arise on both sides of the conflict.

What does this standard of proof mean, and how can we gain a better understanding of statistical analysis help to determine when the standard for proving medical causation has, and has not, been met?

Features

Over the past year, federal and state governmental agencies have signaled their intent to more seriously investigate the misclassification of employees as independent contractors. Penalties for misclassification are severe and can put a company out of business.

Electronic privacy in the workplace is already a tangled subject, with only a few sure footholds for employers. The Supreme Court's upcoming ruling in <i>Ontario v. Quon</i> will hopefully provide some unifying guidance in this developing area of the law.