Recognition Under Chapter 15
November 27, 2007
The U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York recently held in two related cases under Chapter 15 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code involving failed hedge funds that the mere presence of a registered office in the Cayman Islands, without 'pertinent' nontransitory economic activity in the Cayman Islands, was insufficient to recognize Cayman liquidation proceedings as 'main' or 'nonmain' and therefore the court denied relief under Chapter 15. This article offers commentary and practice points relating to Chapter 15 and these cases.
Seller Beware: Recovering the Value of Preferential Transfers of Goods or Equipment
November 27, 2007
Imagine you are an equipment manufacturer. You sell $45 million in goods to a reliable customer on credit, shipping them to a third-party warehouse to be held for the customer to pick up when needed. Months later, unable to pay and sliding toward bankruptcy, the customer returns the unused equipment. The next thing you know, the customer, having filed for bankruptcy, sues you to recover not only the $45 million value of the returned equipment, but also an additional $55 million in cash payments the customer had made.That is exactly the situation Nortel Networks Inc. ('Nortel') recently faced ... Part One of this article discusses some of the many novel legal issues relating to prepetition equipment returns that arose in the Nortel case.
Rights of Children Conceived and Born After a Father's Death
November 27, 2007
Over the last several decades, scientific advances have made it possible for a living person to parent a child using a deceased partner's frozen sperm, eggs or a previously fertilized and subsequently frozen embryo or pre-embryo. The scarce case law as well as the statutory law in the several states of this country are ill-equipped to deal with the myriad issues this new technology presents.
Court Ruling Spikes Internet Ministers, Highlights Legal Issue
November 27, 2007
Family law attorneys are urging couples to steer clear of Internet-ordained ministers when seeking an officiate to perform their nuptials. Their warnings follow a recent Pennsylvania court decision in which a judge declared a marriage invalid because the couple had been married by an Internet-ordained minister. The court ruled that the officiate was unauthorized under state law to perform a wedding.
Interpreting and Applying the Hague Convention
November 27, 2007
The Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction aims to protect children from being wrongfully removal or retained in a country other than their own and to establish procedures to ensure their prompt return to their country of habitual residence. Laudable though these goals are, they are subject to the nuances of the interpretations given to the law in the numerous courts around the world. How the courts of this and other countries deal with the various aspects of the Hague Convention can be cause for confusion even for experts in the field, let alone for the attorney who deals with very few of these cases.
Cyberinsurance for Data Security Risks
November 26, 2007
The harms that can result from computer security breaches are largely uncovered by the types of insurance policies most law firms maintain, and that makes those firms subject to unnecessary risk for theft of client data. Combined with the inadequate security most law firms provide for client data anyway, the resulting exposure risk may well violate legal professional ethics.
Online Sweepstakes And Contests As Promotional Devices
November 26, 2007
Online sweepstakes and contests are well known devices that traditional and e-commerce firms and related operations frequently use to promote their products and services. While these tools of the online-promotions and online-marketing trade offer the promise of a cost-efficient way to target interested consumers and create a great deal of buzz, they are hardly trouble-free, and a myriad of traps await the unwary. The attorneys general of several states closely regulate and monitor sweepstakes and contests, and failure to conduct promotional and marketing campaigns properly can result in enforcement actions and consumer lawsuits, so be sure to operate a sure thing instead of taking a gamble.
When Legal Spam Isn't Spam
November 26, 2007
Demands for consumer 'extra effort' from Web merchants or service providers could become very common after a mid-2007 federal court ruling ' <i>Douglas v. Talk America, Inc.</i> In that case, a federal appeals court considered what it labeled an 'issue ' of some significance, (which) potentially affects the relationship of numerous service providers with millions of customers: ' whether to enforce a modified contract with a customer where the customer claims that the only notice of the changed terms consisted of posting the revised contract on the provider's Web site.'
Is Anyone Out There?
November 26, 2007
The recent flurry of activity in behavioral targeting has privacy advocates sharpening their proverbial claws and ready to enter the fray. Indeed, between Google's merger with DoubleClick, AOL's acquisition of Tacoda, and Facebook's announcement that it may leverage user information to generate advertising revenue, there's plenty to talk about. For e-commerce counsel, the primary issue emerging is whether our jurisprudence can balance privacy interests against the advertisers' business interests, or whether such things are better left to those most vested in the issue. This article delves into the relationship between the quality of the online experience and the extent to which personal information should be shared with commercially interested parties.
