Safeguarding Brands
September 29, 2008
Because the Internet provides opportunistic criminals with a powerful platform for marketing their tainted goods on a mass scale, and with limited funding and personnel, law-enforcement agencies are unable to make a noticeable dent in the fight against counterfeits, leaving companies with the costly burden of protecting their customers. In the face of ubiquitous and pervasive budget cuts, today's innovative in-house counsel deploys non-traditional responses via technology, to show senior executives some visible, cost-effective results.
What Your Terms and Conditions Tell Your Customers
September 29, 2008
What businessperson hasn't complained about how lawyers ruin deals? The simple handshake and bar-napkin agreement too often turns into hundreds of pages of fine print, with hourly billing to match. Yet neither party really knows whether it all actually states the deal as each understood it over handshakes. Sometimes the fallout begins because the contracts are unintelligible to the layman ' not good. Other times, the lawyer may have taken far longer than the deal allowed to write a contract, or simply blew the budget ' also not good. Whatever the cause, these problems lead many businesspeople to wonder whether their lawyers are for them, or against them.
Prevent Your Tenant Mix from Turning Your Property into a 'REC'
September 29, 2008
An increasing number of properties have been and continue to be classified as having some kind of recognized environmental condition. The REC classification arises from the EPA crackdown over the past few decades to ensure that property owners and the parties who are responsible for causing the contamination actually share in the cost and burden of the remediation process.
Prescribing the Right Amount of Pain Medications
September 29, 2008
Pain is the most common cause of long-term disability, and it is the leading reason patients seek medical attention. But physicians seeking to manage their patients' pain with narcotics must be mindful of both the potential liability involved and the potential for scrutiny by their medical boards.
Bit Parts
September 29, 2008
TV Show Titles/Copyright, Trademark Claims<br>Inter-Label Litigation/Insurance Coverage<br>Trademark Infringement/Laches<br>Video Games/Artists' Indicia
Predominance Requirement for Class Certification
September 29, 2008
Recently, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed the district court's certification of a class action by smokers alleging they were deceived by the defendant tobacco companies' marketing of so-called light cigarettes as a healthier alternative to regular, or "full-flavored," cigarettes.
Pharmaceutical And Medical Device Litigation
September 29, 2008
Part One of this article described some general principles regarding the concept of fraudulent joinder and the patchwork of conflicting definitions and procedures for analyzing fraudulent joinder that has developed in the Circuit Courts. This conclusion offers strategies for defeating fraudulent joinder.
Canadians Tackle Disclosure Documents and Other Franchise Mysteries
September 26, 2008
In Canada, franchise disclosure documents ('FDDs') are not reviewed by any government agency. It is up to the franchisor to prepare and deliver the document correctly, failing which the franchisee can, for a limited period of time, send in a rescission notice.
How to Avoid Insider Preference Liability
September 24, 2008
The Tenth Circuit held on July 15, 2008, that a major creditor with a seat on the debtor's board of directors and a 10.6% equity interest was not an insider in a bankruptcy preference suit. As shown in this article, the decision contains a road map for corporate insiders on how to avoid preference liability.
