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Ever since the Medici family of Florence popularized the use of written documents to facilitate trade between city states and nations in the 15th century, letters of credit and their progeny, bills of lading, warehouse receipts and similar instruments of title, have consisted of written documents. Commercially effective and reasonably efficient for hundreds of years, letters of credit and documents of title in tangible form have become increasingly outmoded because of economic and temporal constraints. A recent article in <i>The Wall Street Journal</i> estimated that at least 5% of the cost of all international trade transactions was attributable solely to the cost of documentation [Gabriel Kahn, "Financing Goes Just-in-Time," <i>The Wall Street Journal,</i> June 4, 2004, Section A, p. 10]. With the growth of international trade and the relocation of manufacturing from industrialized nations to countries with cheaper labor costs, international shipments have increased dramatically as cost-conscious businesses search for increased efficiency. The historic standard of a 2-week turnaround for a written letter of credit for a secured bill of lading transaction and the cost of associated paperwork have created a need for a cheaper, faster system. Not surprisingly, merchants have found opportunities to use the Internet and other electronic arrangements to help solve this problem. This article will describe some of the alternative electronic bill of lading arrangements that have arisen since the 1990s for shipping goods internationally and the impetus that their spread provided to a Uniform Commercial Code working group that responded by overhauling and updating Article 7 to make it more reflective of modern trade practice.

Highlights of the latest equipment leasing news from around the country.

The Web site <i>ClinicalTrials.gov</i> provides regularly updated information about federally and privately supported clinical research with human volunteers. <i>ClinicalTrials.gov</i> offers information about a trial's purpose, who may participate, locations and phone numbers for more details. You can search for clinical trials by type and location, <i>eg,</i> breast implants and New York. Do a focused search by disease, location, sponsor or treatment or browse by condition, sponsor or status. If you click on "condition" you can find out what studies are recruiting participants &mdash; with information listed either alphabetically or by disease heading. Disease headings include bacterial, digestive, immune and connective tissue. A search by funding organizations, <i>ie,</i> sponsors, turns up federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Department of Veterans Affairs, as well as 272 private corporations. The lists include trials no longer recruiting patients. If you want to restrict your search to trials of a certain status, you can find trials that are not yet recruiting, recruiting, no longer recruiting and completed.

Highlights of the latest product liability cases from around the country.

Technology has emerged as a critical trial advocacy tool in product cases. In an electronic world where information is delivered in 30-second sound bites, 1-minute commercials, and 12-minute programming segments, technology can be used to convey complex information about product design and use in the bite-sized pieces needed to connect with today's jurors.

The first part of this article discussed the split in the circuit courts on the issue of whether a party must produce all communications and materials that were supplied by the party's attorney to a testifying expert, even if these communications (oral or written) would otherwise be protected as attorney work product. The majority of federal courts have adopted a "bright-line rule" that all information shared with a testifying expert must be produced, even if it includes "core" attorney work product, namely the attorney's mental impressions, conclusions, opinions or legal theories. A minority, however, has declined to follow this bright-line rule and instead has held that providing attorney work product materials to a testifying expert does not waive the attorney work product protection. The conclusion of this series will discuss the minority view and compare the two views.

Although not a part of every product liability case, if the product manufacturer makes "subsequent remedial measures" after the injury-causing event, a motion in limine seeking to exclude this evidence at trial is a must. There is a tremendous risk that the jury will irrationally assume that a product was defective when sold, and that the manufacturer was negligent for supplying such a product, simply because the manufacturer made changes to the product after the accident.

Highlights of the latest commercial leasing cases from around the country.

Parties to commercial leases often have opportunities to exercise rights that they have bargained for in the lease negotiation process. Those rights may be held by both the landlord or the tenant and may relate to the termination of the lease, the renewal or extension of the lease term, the right to expand or contract the premises, the right to reduce rent, the right to relocate the tenant to other premises or whatever the needs and creativity of the parties may have caused them to negotiate. Typically, these rights are important to the operation of the business of the landlord or the tenant, and the lease document requires that a right be exercised by giving notice in a certain manner and by a certain date. If the notice is not timely and properly given, the right may be lost.

Much ink, thought, and aggravation have gone into crafting carve-outs to a tenant's obligation to pay its proportionate share of operating expenses. Depending on the relative leverage of the parties in the deal, the tenant may get significant concessions from the landlord, including carve-outs for capital items and other potentially costly expenditures.