In re Allied Chemical Corp.: 'Cause' for Celebration By Defendants?
The Texas Supreme Court has made it clear that it considers the disclosure of the identities of medical or other causation experts willing to link plaintiffs' injuries to defendants' products or behavior as 'basic information' without which defendants cannot mount an appropriate defense. At least in the case of mass tort claims, trial courts are barred from setting trial dates or otherwise moving cases forward without providing defendants with a real opportunity to obtain basic causation information from plaintiffs' counsel.
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e-Commerce Docket Sheet
Recent cases in e-commerce law and in the e-commerce industry.
Practice Tip: The Earning Capacity of Business Owners
The owner of a business can claim as lost earning capacity in a personal-injury action only the working time lost due to injuries and harm to future earning capacity, not the business' alleged profits in perpetuity.
Germany: More on The Enforceability Of GPL Provisions
Once again, a German court has ruled on the GNU (programs of all-free software) General Public License ('GPL') and confirmed its enforceability in Germany. The judgment was handed down on July 24 (Landgericht Mnchen I, decision of 24th July 2007 - 7 O 5245/07 - not final); still, it is noteworthy that the GPL provisions so far have received positive evaluation by German courts.
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Dealing with the Surprise Government Interview
When conducting criminal investigations about possible corporate wrongdoing, in alleged defective-products matters and other cases, government agents often seek to interview company executives and other employees ' of old-line bricks-and-mortar and e-commerce companies ' 'by ambush' outside the office, to minimize the likelihood that a supervisor or a company lawyer might intervene to thwart the interview. There is nothing improper in using this investigative technique; nevertheless, employees should know their legal rights and understand the risks they take when they submit to such surprise interrogations.
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The China Syndrome: Will the U.S. Legal System Deal with Tainted Chinese Imports or Meltdown?
The 'classic' product liability lawsuit against the Chinese manufacturer raises many issues, including, but not limited to, jurisdiction, forum non conveniens, and the uncertainty as to whether traditional U.S. product liability or tort defenses apply. Probably the most important issue, enforcement of any judgment in China, is also either unchartered or risky territory for a claimant.
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e-Telephone Privacy
At low cost and widening availability, VoIP is common in business, and might be used at a greater volume and frequency among tech and e-commerce companies, thus making it a technology and a commodity to watch. Unfortunately, for consumer and businessperson alike, a concealed cost of VoIP service might be a user's privacy. That's because traditional telephone privacy is strictly sheltered by existing case law and statute, while VoIP, it could be argued, is unprotected in many instances.
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Bluecasting or Bluespamming?
Bluetooth, the moniker of the popular wireless technology, is named after a 'Viking' king famous for having united several Scandinavian countries, at least temporarily. Bluetooth, however, was not a Viking in the popular sense ' he used cunning more often than violence to achieve his objectives. It is perhaps appropriate, then, and certainly no surprise that marketers ' e-commerce firms and their marketing reps and agents among them ' have begun using Bluetooth technologies to do some 'Viking' of their own. Bluetooth Marketing ' also called Bluespamming ' uses Bluetooth technology to reach nearby potential consumers and offer them coupons, downloads, and other product or service information.
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Selling Your e-Commerce Company For Private Equity Money
Entrepreneurs have traditionally dreamed of creating family businesses that would last for generations. Certainly, everyone has seen the stickers and other marketing testifying to a firm's and its founding family's decades of service, and their stability and track record. But in today's constantly changing e-commerce world, a business often must reinvent itself several times in one generation, much less plan to last for several.
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Movers & Shakers
News about lawyers and law firms in the commercial leasing industry.
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MOST POPULAR STORIES
- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith 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.Read More ›
- 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 ›
- Meet the Lawyer Working on Inclusion Rider LanguageAt 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.Read More ›
- 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 ›
- The DOJ Goes Phishing: The Rise of False Claims Act Cybersecurity LitigationWhile 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.Read More ›