Employers Beware EEOC Information Request
November 28, 2006
Understandably, companies have become more sensitive about protecting confidential, proprietary business information from disclosure to competitors and others outside the company.<br>A recent ruling by the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, <i>Venetian Casino Report v. EEOC</i>, 2006 WL 2806568 (D.D. Cir. 2006), demonstrates that such disclosures may occur in the most unexpected ways.
In the Courts
November 28, 2006
Recent rulings of importance to you and your practice.
Stock Option Backdating
November 28, 2006
Just as the business community began making headway with Congress to reduce Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) obligations, a new type of corporate wrongdoing has been revealed ' backdated stock options used by the executives at many companies and some directors to convert their options at the most opportune times and at the expense of other shareholders and investors. What is troubling is how the boards of directors at so many companies could have approved the backdating or not known about it after SOX and the recent wave of high-profile corporate fraud investigations and prosecutions.
One Size Fits All?
November 28, 2006
Today, a Procrustean 'one-size-fits-all' approach increasingly characterizes federal appellate practice, particularly for attorneys who handle complex conspiracy or white-collar cases. While page limits for appellate briefs date back to at least the 1940s, within the past 20 years they have been applied with a new and sometimes surprising inflexibility. No matter how long the trial, how complicated its facts, or how numerous the appellate issues may be, the day has passed when counsel can assume that requests to file a brief in excess of the standard word limits will be granted.
Rethinking Corporate Cooperation
November 28, 2006
In the post-Enron world, many public companies have come under intense scrutiny from the government. A diverse chorus of critics argues that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has gone too far, citing the overzealousness of line-level prosecutors, their failure to adhere to the measured tone struck by higher-level officials in their public pronouncements, and their general tendency to treat companies as racketeering organizations.
Protecting Legal Data
November 28, 2006
In today's environment of well-deserved hypersensitivity to corporate compliance as mandated by the SEC and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX), the thought of unauthorized parties viewing or altering privileged corporate records should strike fear in the heart of any corporate compliance officer. That threat can quickly evolve into a reality if your corporation's law department implements an electronic invoicing and matter management system in an application service provider (ASP) environment.
The Bell Keeps Tolling
November 28, 2006
Selective waiver of the attorney-client privilege is a lonely doctrine indeed. Since the Eighth Circuit first adopted it in the 1977 <i>Diversified Industries</i> case, the notion that a litigant may disclose privileged material to government enforcers without waiving the privilege as to third parties has hardly won fans among federal courts of appeal. Most recently, in June, 2006, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit weighed in on the viability of selective waiver. The <i>In Re: Qwest Communications Int'l</i> decision is precisely what advocates for selective waiver needed least; it is a comprehensive evaluation, and rejection, of nearly all of the cogent arguments advanced in favor of the doctrine.
NLRB Rulings Regarding Supervisors Provide Clarity and Controversy
November 28, 2006
Before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) issued its recent decisions in the Kentucky River cases, union leaders and activists predicted dire consequences ' potentially stripping millions of workers, especially in the healthcare industry, of their rights to join a union. Unions, which are trying to attract more employees to their ranks, staged rallies and other events to draw attention to these cases. <br>But the decisions did not dramatically redraw the lines for determining which workers are considered supervisors and which are not. Instead, they provided guidance that will be helpful to employers and unions alike in determining the status of workers whose classification falls into the gray area between supervisor and employee. The analysis remains highly fact-specific and appears unlikely to create the dramatic effects predicted.
