Marriage, Divorce and Estate Planning
March 27, 2007
Trusts and estates law is replete with special rules, or exceptions to the general rules, designed to recognize and protect the financial side of the marriage partnership. What happens, however, when husbands or wives decide that they no longer wish to be married? Once the decision is made to end the marriage, one spouse usually wishes to minimize any benefits that the other spouse could obtain from the estate.
Religious Rights of Divorcing Parents
March 27, 2007
Other than holding that courts cannot use race as a criterion for decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has not delved deeply into defining the constitutional rights of divorcing parents in the context of a custody dispute. In <i>Shepp v. Shepp</i>, 906 A.2d 1165 (Pa. 2006), however, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently held that a divorced parent had a constitutional right to advocate his sincere religious belief in polygamy to his 9-year-old child.
Myth-Busting the New Amended Federal Rules
March 26, 2007
Wherever you turn these days, there seems to be a new CLE seminar being offered or white paper being written on the 'sweeping changes' to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as they relate to the discovery of electronically stored information.<br>And most of them are tied together by a common thread: an alarmist air of hype.
Commercial v. Non-Commercial Speech
March 26, 2007
With the explosion of media, communications, and advertising channels and techniques, including e-commerce conduits and businesses, and the resources they offer employees and users, it is evermore difficult to figure out the difference between 'commercial' and 'non-commercial' speech. But finding the answer is extremely important, because it usually determines whether one is liable for consumer fraud and false advertising, and for right-of-publicity claims.
Mandatory e-Discovery
March 26, 2007
e-commerce was born in the digital age, so lawyers handling e-commerce litigation are old hands at mining their clients' computerized documents ' e-mails, online purchase orders, call-center records and the like ' to resolve these disputes. The e-commerce lawyer may know more about the bits and bytes of the underlying communications and data-storage technology, but that will not necessarily preserve, identify and produce all the relevant ESI.
Inside Blogging
March 26, 2007
Although blogging has gone mainstream in some professions, there's one group of people mostly absent from the blogosphere: the in-house bar.
When Death Is More Than a Blue Screen
March 26, 2007
Consider all the critical information that would vanish if a key employee of your business died suddenly, and others had to locate that information.
Protecting Your Company from Consumer Protection Claims
March 26, 2007
Companies in virtually every sector of the economy have become targets of allegations that their business practices or products have injured consumers. These cases often arise as class actions, frequently exposing target companies to the risk of significant defense costs, liability, or a product recall. In the face of the ever-increasing risk of consumer protection claims, most companies have put into place risk management strategies that principally rely on a variety of insurance policies. All too often, though, when a company needs its insurance most, it finds that it does not get the protection that it expects. Instead, insurers frequently make every effort to evade payment under their policies.
