Features
Diane Barrasso
&
Richard P. Rollo
Faced with ever-increasing litigation costs, in-house lawyers are searching for effective and legally defensible means of limiting the costs of electronic discovery. Legal teams can effectively incorporate search techniques into their best practices by considering critical issues before they review a single page. Doing so will only eliminate a major nightmare: excessive costs associated with over-collection and technical challenges that will require teams of project specialists to resolve.
Ken Alexander
Even sophisticated companies expose themselves needlessly to contract disputes. The author says that from representing them in litigation, that might have been avoided or shortened if only they had inserted one of his "top ten prophylactics" for avoiding "contractually transmitted disease.
Features
ALM Staff
&
Law Journal Newsletters
In 2007, Mergermarket was commissioned by Nixon Peabody LLP to conduct 'IPO Executive Insights 2007,' a survey of senior corporate executives (CEOs and CFOs) of 100 companies that had undertaken an IPO in the past three years (the 'Survey'). The Survey was designed to provide insights into key IPO market trends and issues related to the process of going public in the current regulatory environment that emerged after the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 ('SOX').
Peter J. Roberts
Bankruptcy offers an attractive platform for the sale of assets because it is injected with a statutory prerogative allowing for the clearance of third- party interests. Specifically, ' 363(f) of the Bankruptcy Code permits the sale of bankruptcy estate property 'free and clear of any interest [of any other entity] in such property' provided that certain conditions are satisfied. Notwithstanding that grant of authority, however, the Bankruptcy Code does not specifically define the phrase 'any interest in such property' or otherwise specify the scope of interests that the phrase is intended to cover.
Features
Jeff J. Friedman
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Merritt A. Pardini
The use of bankruptcy to protect an individual's home from foreclosure is sufficiently commonplace that practitioners would be well advised to understand the foreclosure process in their state and, in particular, when that process will be deemed completed for purposes of section 1322. This article explains why.
Features
Mark S. Lichtenstein
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Matthew W. Cheney
Troubled businesses also may have turned to the distressed debt market instead of filing for bankruptcy protection due to recent changes to the Bankruptcy Code, which made bankruptcy a more complicated, expensive and uncertain alternative. As a result, when the next wave of Chapter 11 filings comes, hedge funds and other distressed debt investors will act to protect their unique interests and strategies, which will bring new dynamics to bankruptcy cases.
Features
ALM Staff
&
Law Journal Newsletters
News about lawyers and law firms in the franchising industry.
Features
Cynthia M. Klaus
&
Sejal Desai Winkelman
Highlights of the most recent franchising cases from around the country.
Features
Rupert M. Barkoff
In a disappointing announcement released on Aug. 6, 2007, Dale Cantone, chairman of the Franchise and Business Opportunity Project Group of the North American Securities Administrators Association, informed the franchise bar that the state authorities that participate in the coordinated review program ('Coordinated Review') have suspended the program until further notice. The announcement also stated the franchise administrators would re-evaluate whether to reintroduce the program after July 1, 2008.
Features
William L. Killion
By now, everyone seriously involved in the practice of franchise law is aware of <i>Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc.</i>, 2007 WL 1835892 (S. Ct. June 28, 2007). The Supreme Court in <i>Leegin</i> held that vertical resale price maintenance is no longer unlawful in and of itself. Although hailing the decision as overruling a nearly 100-year prohibition on minimum price fixing, the pundits writing in the wake of <i>Leegin</i> have nevertheless hedged their bets on just how revolutionary the decision is. Their constant mantra is this: <i>Leegin</i> does not open the door to unrestrained resale price maintenance, but rather changes the rules under which courts will evaluate sales agreements setting minimum prices. No longer will courts treat them as unlawful <i>per se</i>; they will now evaluate their legality under something called 'the rule of reason.' If a court (or jury) concludes that an agreement establishing a minimum price is an 'unreasonable restraint of trade,' then the supplier has violated the antitrust laws. If the threat of treble damages from such a finding isn't sobering enough, writers warn us that courts may interpret state 'baby Sherman Acts' as still making resale price maintenance unlawful <i>per se</i>, regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court says.
