For celebrities, image is everything. For the entertainment lawyers who represent their interests, that means confronting ever more complex efforts to profit from (or poison) a client's fame. Among the talent-side lawyers, there's a small club of firms doing the lion's share of the image work for the big stars.
Concert Tours/Deal Breakdown; Right of Publicity/Web Photo Display; TV Interviews/Anti-SLAPP Law.
The Appellate Court of Conn-ecticut affirmed that the rap group Fort Knox failed to establish that a member's brother tortiously interfered with the group's business expectancy of entering into a recording contract with rap mogul Master P.
The Writers Guild of America has been negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers for a new collective bargaining agreement. The current agreement expires on Oct. 31, 2007. The current agreements of the Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild of America end on June 30, 2008. This article summarizes some of the key conflicts that may trigger threatened guild strikes. Most of these issues relate to the income base and calculation of residuals. This article suggests a simple and fair alternative method for calculating residuals that eliminates all the contentious issues, not just in the pending negotiations of the guild agreements, but also in practice.
Changes in accounting rules, spiraling health-care costs, increased competition and changing demographics converge to make it economically infeasible for some employers to continue providing such benefits at the generous levels of years past. Consequently, many companies have been compelled to modify their retiree health plans in ways that reduce or eliminate some benefits or that require retirees to pay more out of pocket. These changes have resulted in an avalanche of litigation.
For employers that have, to date, managed to avoid battles over e-discovery, time is short. Every hour spent preparing for the inevitable discovery dispute before litigation commences will save incalculable angst once litigation starts, and can make the difference between winning or losing important legal battles. This article discusses these emerging realities in light of the Federal Rules' new e-discovery provisions and provides guidance to in-house counsel on how to prepare employers better for their obligations under the rules.
The government giveth and the government taketh away. Two weeks after announcing that most of the employment-based immigrant visa categories would be current on July 1, 2007, the Department of State ('DOS') reversed its announcement by stating that effective July 2, no visa numbers were available for employment-based immigrant visa categories, and further, would not become available until Oct. 1, 2007 (under fiscal year 2008 numbers).
This past year has seen a flurry of activity under Executive Order 11246 ('EO 11246'), the law that governs the administration of affirmative action programs of employers that have certain government contracts or subcontracts. In the wake of these new changes, this article offers suggestions of best practices relating to one of the most noteworthy developments for EO 11246 compliance: the 'Internet Applicant' rule, which became effective on Feb. 6, 2006.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act ('USERRA' or the 'Act') tends to be the employment-related statute most frequently placed on the back burner. Of course, this quickly changes when an employee seeks its protection or privileges. When that happens, managers and human resource professionals are often caught behind the eight ball trying to navigate requirements and entitlements of the law.
The author believes that the best e-discovery-review best practices should be characterized as the application of real-life lessons. He believes they are not complicated, and that focusing on a few of these learned lessons with a thoughtful, deliberate approach will achieve a truly effective electronic discovery review.
