Over the past several months, the DOJ has begun investigating several leading technology companies for possible violations of the antitrust laws. One focus of the multi-faceted investigation is whether certain companies have violated antitrust laws by agreeing among themselves not to recruit one another's employees.
This edition of the Quarterly State Compliance Review looks at some legislation of interest to corporate lawyers that went into effect from Aug. 1 through Oct. 1, including amendments to Delaware's corporation and LLC laws. It also looks at two recent decisions of interest from the Delaware Chancery Court.
Our Incisive Media affiliate, New Jersey Law Journal, published the following commentary on the New Jersey legislature's attempt to react to the "sexting" issue by making Web site operators liable for what users write.
Complex and systemic, the current financial crisis is nearly certain to yield extensive legislation regulating everything from the financial markets to mortgage brokers to ratings agencies. Any such legislation may raise interpretive issues similar to those that have arisen in recent Federal Court decisions interpreting section 304 and section 1514A(a)(1) of the sweeping Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 ("SOX").
On May 20, 2009, the SEC proposed amendments to the existing proxy rules that would, among other things, allow shareholders to nominate directors in a company's proxy materials. Chairman Mary Schapiro strongly encourages interested parties to participate in the Commission's comment process that will end on Aug. 17, 2009.
The absolute priority rule is supposed to provide some measure of order and certainty in the world of Chapter 11. But bankruptcy practitioners know that the mere inclusion of the word "absolute" in the rule's name does not make it so.
The DOL issued its first major overhaul of the FMLA in November. These final regulations, which became effective Jan. 16, 2009, include provisions addressing military leave entitlements created in early 2008 by the National Defense Authorization Act ("NDAA"). The new regulations also update and clarify employer and employee rights and responsibilities under the FMLA. The following are the key changes and suggested steps employers should take to comply.
On June 4, the FTC announced a proposed consent agreement with Sears Holdings Management Corporation. The government makes note that the settlement is not final and does not include any finding of wrongdoing by SHMC, but that the working settlement sends a strong signal that the FTC will subject online tracking of consumer behavior to a stringent standard of disclosure.
Unlike an employer's internal e-mail system, which is generally understood to be under the ownership and control of the employer, personal Web-based accounts accessed at work raise new and unsettled questions about an employee's expectations of privacy.
Today's information-rich organizations must be prepared to quickly find and produce ESI that may be relevant to a given litigation matter or request for information. The trouble is, many organizations do not have a well-thought out response plan in place, which makes the timely production of relevant information difficult, time-consuming and potentially very costly.
