LJN Newsletters

In August, a San Francisco Superior Court jury awarded $10.3 million in economic and non-economic damages in an asbestos case brought by a 60-year-old man allegedly suffering from mesothelioma. Barnes v. Thorpe Insulation Co., 446017. It may be one of California's 10 largest compensatory verdicts for asbestos cases in the last 15 years.

In the relatively newfangled sector of e-commerce, how often does an entrepreneur or attorney who represents e-commerce clients get to witness the birth of a new industry?
Well, there's a new player in the $173 billion legal services industry, and its initials are OLM ' a euphonic moniker for online legal matching.

In September 1995, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration ('FDA') approved Merck's compound alendronate for various uses, including the treatment of osteoporosis and Paget's Disease. Alendronate is marketed by Merck as Fosamax'. It is one of Merck's biggest sellers, with approximating $3.5 billion per year in sales.

Preparing for the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP) will require careful planning and preparation. Following are steps designed to help general counsel more effectively negotiate the scope of electronic discovery at an FRCP Rule 26(f) Meet & Confer conference.

Few technological advancements or social movements have impacted matrimonial law as profoundly as the computer/electronic age. Today, litigants have a virtual Pandora's box of incredibly vast yet retrievable information at their fingertips, which all too often remains underutilized or undiscovered. Currently, stored data can be retrieved from joint marital assets such as computers, cell phones or even facsimile devices with memory capabilities. The information stems from usage, whether explicitly 'saved' by the computer operator or not. It can later be deciphered or interpreted by a trained professional and can yield countless bits of information to assist in discovery.

For the first time in New York appellate history, an appeals court in Brooklyn declared unenforceable provisions of a prenuptial agreement that barred a spouse from seeking attorney fees. The decision is the first in which an appeals court had nullified part of a prenuptial agreement concerning attorney fees, rather than the whole agreement.

When spouses divorce, they may be surprised to discover that certain trust assets may not be protected from each others' reach. It is often difficult to find a bullet-proof trust, holding assets firmly and securely away from the divorcing spouse.

Negligent hiring cases typically turn on whether a background check that was forgone would have helped to reveal an employee's propensity to erupt in violence or commit fraud. But a new burden of proof may be on the horizon.