LJN Newsletters

The future of DNA evidence in civil cases is now upon us. DNA evidence is the most powerful forensic tool available to litigants today. During this decade and beyond, gene expression data developed in connection with the mapping of the human genome will provide causation proof in toxic tort cases and workers' compensation claims that epidemiology studies cannot match. Corporations and their insurance carriers are beginning to reap the financial benefits of toxicogenomic science, which tells them at an early stage whether a toxic exposure has caused an injury to a claimant.

Congress just passed the Honest Leadership and Open Government Act of 2007. Congress's stated hope in passing this sweeping legislation is that it will increase public confidence in the honesty of the political process. This article explains what the Act means.

Earlier this year, Delaware's Governor Ruth Ann Minner (D) signed into law bills amending three of Delaware's four statutes that govern 'alternative entities' formed in the state. Alternative entities are not corporations, but, rather general partnerships, limited liability partnerships, limited partnerships, limited liability companies, and statutory trusts.

This article examines the conflicts that surround the so-called 'tripartite relationship' among policyholder, insurance company, and defense counsel hired by the insurance company, as well as techniques to preserve defense counsel's un-conflicted duty to its client, the policyholder. Insurance conflicts counsel is one such technique.

As experienced Chapter 11 bankruptcy practitioners know, when a company suffers severe financial distress and faces the prospect of imminent bankruptcy, its record-keeping procedures can break down, even if they were previously adequate. To prevent future litigation difficulties from arising in connection with the prosecution of avoidance actions, it is important for a practitioner advising a company heading into or newly in bankruptcy to begin to preserve all electronic data immediately.

The face of bankruptcies in corporate America has changed multiple times since the reforms of 1978. And it's going to change once more ' probably radically ' over the coming months. This article explains.

It began a little over four years ago, in late September 2003, with a simple but urgent telephone call from pioneering ephedra plaintiffs' attorney Anne Andrews (of Orange County, CA-based Andrews & Thornton) to one of the authors. The caller asked about the impact of the then-recently filed bankruptcy of TwinLab, an ephedra weight-loss product manufacturer and a significant player in the food and vitamin supplement industry, on that company's products liability insurance policies. Four major ephedra manufacturer bankruptcies later, the situation ended on Sept. 25, 2007, when the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California entered an order in the ephedra-related Chapter 11 bankruptcy case of Metabolife International ...

The federal Sentencing Guidelines can lead to 'patently absurd' punishments in white-collar cases. United States v. Adelson, 441 F. Supp. 2d 506, 515 (S.D.N.Y. 2006) (Rakoff, J.). But judicial discretion in sentencing, strongly reaffirmed by the Supreme Court in Kimbrough v. United States, No. 06-6330 (Dec. 10, 2007), and Gall v. United States, No. 06-7949 (Dec. 10, 2007), has opened an important avenue for advocacy in business crime cases.