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Circa 1999, many law firms became accustomed to conducting much of their day-to-day work via e-mail. E-mail, however, has more than its share of shortcomings. For starters, it does not afford the security and confidentiality most clients want in their communications with attorneys and in the exchange of potentially sensitive files. Likewise, e-mail is ill-suited for document collaboration. Trying to track comments from different participants on a given document through a long string of e-mail dialogue while maintaining some notion of version control poses a significant challenge.
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Few things can be more annoying for a corporate client than "cybergriping," the practice of using an Internet "complaint name" ' typically the client's trademark followed by the phrase "sucks.com" ' that is devoted to criticism of the company. <I>The Taubman Co. v. Webfeats</I>, decided in February, is the first Court of Appeals decision to address cybergriping. It continues the trend of several district court opinions that have taken a tolerant approach to the practice, at least where it is not engaged in by competitors or for commercial purposes.
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A recent decision by a Manhattan appeals court could clear the way for a class action lawsuit against the Internet's second-largest domain-name registration company for its past advertising practices.
In a landmark decision issued on April 25, 2003, a federal district judge in Los Angeles rejected claims that two leading decentralized, peer-to-peer (P2P) networks were liable for copyright infringement. The court quashed the request of motion picture and recording industry associations, professional songwriters and music publishers to shut down the Grokster and StreamCast Networks, two companies that distribute free, P2P software allegedly used for the exchange of copyrighted music, movies and other digital media over the Internet.
Bulk, unsolicited, commercial e-mail ' spam ' is generally recognized as an undesirable, harmful nuisance and responses, including traditional litigation, have been less than effective. A spam class action against the U.S. government, Internet Service Providers and others who facilitate spam may be appropriate. By retarding Internet communication speed, spawning fraud, trespassing chattel and violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, spam causes or contributes to a wide variety of problems for network administrators, businesses, other organizations and individual users of the Internet.
Highlights of the latest product liability cases from around the country.
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As the article infra, page 1, discusses, attorneys who practice product liability law are not beyond the reach of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. For a complete description of the SEC's proposed rules regarding the standards of professional conduct for attorneys appearing before the SEC, go to <i>www.sec.gov/rules/proposed/31-8186</i>. The site summarizes the rules proposed pursuant to Section 307 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which requires the SEC (Commission) to prescribe minimum standards of professional conduct for attorneys appearing and practicing before the Commission in any way in the representation of issuers.
In the March 2003 Practice Tip, I discussed two of those individuals with whom the trial lawyer should meet within the 30 days prior to trial: the client and the physician. This month's tip discusses meeting with the engineer. For ease of reference, all individuals are deemed male. For purposes of the discussion, the case concerns injury caused by a defective machine. When the lawyer prepares the engineering expert, the plaintiff should be present. There are several issues about which he must be prepared to testify:
When The Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) or Department of Labor (DOL) or FBI Special Agent investigator knocks on a defense counsel's office door to conduct an interview relating to her client's alleged violation of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (the Act), she might recall skimming an article and concluding that it did not apply to her role as defense counsel in product liability cases. She should think again. In light of the recent financial debacles, including Enron and World Com, the SEC is fulfilling the Congressional mandate to require public companies to disclose and remediate material violations, breaches of fiduciary duties, and similar violations of the SEC regulations. This article discusses the SEC's definition of an "attorney" under 17 CFR Part 205 and its newly proposed alternative to an earlier draft "noisy withdrawal" ethics rule, attorney withdrawal and disaffirmance with client notification to the SEC of withdrawal. The following scenarios demonstrate when and how an attorney may have to respond under the Act.
<b>The Crisis</b> The following phrases have been used recently to define the current state of asbestos litigation in the United States — a "pit," an "endless saga," a "runaway job-eating blob," an "elephantine mass." For those who practice in this litigation, the phrases ring true. The "crisis," by which it has accurately become known, is multi-faceted. Dockets are clogged; the vast majority of claims are brought by unimpaired individuals who prematurely sue to avoid the bar of the statute of limitations; claims are brought against new "target" defendants that never manufactured asbestos-containing products; claims are forum-shopped to plaintiff-friendly jurisdictions where the claimants never lived or worked to maximize damage verdicts; and plaintiffs are consolidated with thousands of other claimants whose lawsuits are wholly unrelated in respect to occupation, method of exposure, or disease. These tactics create an unwieldy mass that often puts defendants in the untenable position of having to pay to buy their peace, even where there has been no discovery. Enough said. The system has run amuck.
