Features
Reconsidering the Special Facts Exception
Special facts is a court-created equitable doctrine that allows a land use applicant to avoid the impact of a change of zone enacted while the application is pending, by showing significant governmental delay of the application together with proof that but for the delay, the landowner would have been able to vest in its use before the zoning was changed. In November 2013, the Court of Appeals decided <i>Rocky Point</i>, a case that the plaintiff (represented by the author) hoped would not only allow it to prevail, but would also clarify the special facts doctrine.
Legal Spending Trends
Recently, the LexisNexis CounselLink division published a study of the spending patterns of corporate legal departments. The study unveiled macro-economic trends about the shifting spending habits from the largest category of law firms to those that are "Large Enough." The basis of the analysis was two million invoices, covering 300,000 matters, which were valued at more than $10 billion in legal fees.
Features
Are You Blawging, Or Flawging?
Lots of attorneys are being told that they need to start blogging (or "blawging", as many attorneys refer to it). From a marketing perspective, this advice makes a lot of sense. There's an old advertising adage, credited to David Ogilvy from the pre-"Mad Man" days of advertising, that when it comes to big-ticket purchases, "long copy sells."
Features
Another Look at Rule 10b5-1 Trading Plans
By establishing a prearranged plan to trade their companies' stock in compliance with SEC Rule 10b5-1, corporate executives avail themselves of the only formally codified affirmative defense against a charge of insider trading. However, statistical evidence demonstrating that executives in trading plans outperform their peers by 6% to 10% have twice brought trading plans under academic and journalistic scrutiny.
Columns & Departments
Drug & Device News
New Plan in Mesh Litigation <br>Change Would Let Generic Drug Companies Make Not-Yet Approved Label Changes<br>Trial over Billion-Dollar Molecules Yields $400,000 Verdict
Features
Business of Branding: Avoiding Bad Investments in Your Marketing
Like your finances, your firm's marketing efforts should be reviewed on a regular basis to ensure that your short- and long-term plans are in order.
Features
With Virtual Currency, Does Virtually Anything Go?
In late 2013, a Subway sandwich franchise in Pennsylvania was making the news for being one of the first small American businesses to accept bitcoin as payment for purchases. According to press reports, that franchise generated a lot of interest among hungry bitcoin enthusiasts, who went out of their way to visit the store. Should this be dismissed as a mere publicity stunt, or is the use of bitcoin something that deserves some thought?
Columns & Departments
Bit Parts
Nashville Federal Court Finds Plausible Copyright Infringement Claim over "Remind Me" Phrase<br>Puerto Rico District Court Rules There Were Implied Licenses for Music Festival Artworks, But Were the Licenses Irrevocable?<br>Songwriting Income and Record Production Activity Don't Support Long-Arm Jurisdiction
Accounting for Obamacare
The Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare, created the Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP), a part of each state's Health Insurance Marketplace, where small businesses with under 50 full-time equivalent employees can purchase group health plans. The small business owner is continually being placed in an untenable position without the ability to do any planning.
Features
A Dangerous Undertaking
Oliver Wendell Holmes once wrote that "it would be a dangerous undertaking for persons trained only to the law to constitute themselves final judges of the worth of pictorial illustrations." If Holmes didn't think he could do it, which of us thinks we're up to the task? Nonetheless, this was just the challenge taken up by Judge Block of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York in <i>Cohen v. G&M Realty L.P.</i>
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MOST POPULAR STORIES
- Protecting Innovation in the Cyber World from Patent TrollsWith trillions of dollars to keep watch over, the last thing we need is the distraction of costly litigation brought on by patent assertion entities (PAEs or "patent trolls"), companies that don't make any products but instead seek royalties by asserting their patents against those who do make products.Read More ›
- Private Equity Valuation: A Significant DecisionInsiders (and others) in the private equity business are accustomed to seeing a good deal of discussion ' academic and trade ' on the question of the appropriate methods of valuing private equity positions and securities which are otherwise illiquid. An interesting recent decision in the Southern District has been brought to our attention. The case is <i>In Re Allied Capital Corp.</i>, CCH Fed. SEC L. Rep. 92411 (US DC, S.D.N.Y., Apr. 25, 2003). Judge Lynch's decision is well written, the Judge reviewing a motion to dismiss by a business development company, Allied Capital, against a strike suit claiming that Allied's method of valuing its portfolio failed adequately to account for i) conditions at the companies themselves and ii) market conditions. The complaint appears to be, as is often the case, slap dash, content to point out that Allied revalued some of its positions, marking them down for a variety of reasons, and the stock price went down - all this, in the view of plaintiff's counsel, amounting to violations of Rule 10b-5.Read More ›
- Meet the Lawyer Working on Inclusion Rider LanguageAt the Oscars in March, Best Actress winner Frances McDormand made “inclusion rider” go viral. But Kalpana Kotagal, a partner at Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll had already worked for months to write the language for such provisions. Kotagal was developing legal language for contract provisions that Hollywood's elite could use to require studios and other partners to employ diverse workers on set.Read More ›
- Use of Deferred Prosecution Agreements In White Collar InvestigationsThis article discusses the practical and policy reasons for the use of DPAs and NPAs in white-collar criminal investigations, and considers the NDAA's new reporting provision and its relationship with other efforts to enhance transparency in DOJ decision-making.Read More ›
- The DOJ Goes Phishing: The Rise of False Claims Act Cybersecurity LitigationWhile the DOJ Civil Cyber-Fraud Initiative is still in its early stages and cybersecurity regulations are evolving, whistleblower plaintiffs have already begun leveraging the FCA to pursue alleged noncompliance with government cybersecurity requirements.Read More ›