Source: China Law Blog On Wednesday, September 8, 2010, The China Business Network will be putting on a China Event at the Cira Center in Philadelphia, entitled, “Put China in Your Business Future.” It is shaping up as a great event, and I urge you all to attend. I am going to be on one [...]

Source: WSJ.com: Law Blog – WSJ.com The FCC has appealed a July ruling by the 2nd Circuit that the agency’s rule against fleeting expletives is unconstitutionally vague. Read the rest of the story…

Source: ABA Journal Top Stories Opponents of same-sex marriage have launched a campaign to unseat the three Iowa Supreme Court justices whose votes helped legalize it who are up for retention in the Nov. 7 election. The campaign is spearheaded by Bob Vander Plaats, a conservative activist who lost the Republican nomination for governor in [...]

Source: ABA Journal Top Stories Corporate law departments’ interest in pro bono has surged as they grow eager to establish their own legal volunteer legacies, and they’re looking to their outside counsel to become active partners in the effort. “It’s definitely a national trend,” Ellyn Haikin Josef, a staff attorney who coordinates Vinson & Elkins’ [...]

Source: Law.com – Newswire Plaintiffs lawyers in the 9/11 respiratory cases cannot pass on to clients some $6.1 million in interest costs associated with financing the massive litigation, a New York federal judge ruled Friday. Even though the lead lawyer marshaled opinions by bar associations, court cases and experts to show that borrowing to finance [...]

Source: Law.com – Newswire Billionaire Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, filed suit Friday in federal court against 11 Internet search and e-commerce companies, including Apple, Google and Facebook, alleging that they are using technology developed at his now-shuttered California laboratory, Interval Research Corp. The suit lists alleged violations of four technology patents developed at Interval [...]

Source: Law.com – Newswire The $20 billion compensation fund for victims of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill has begun taking applications, but plaintiffs lawyers doubt it will significantly forestall litigation. It could even lead to a new wave of lawsuits. Many of their clients, especially large businesses, are unlikely to seek final settlements anytime soon, [...]

Source: SettlementBoard.com If the death was wrongful, that is, caused by the negligence or wrongdoing of another, a Georgia wrongful death lawsuit may result in a reward of substantial financial compensation from the wrongdoer. If you believe that your family may have suffered a wrongful death, learn your rights right away by consulting with the [...]

Source: Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog The latest issue of the Marquette Law Review features a student comment by Ryan Parsons on the treatment of “temporary victims” under the federal sentencing guidelines.  In crimes such as bank fraud, individual accountholders that have been defrauded are often reimbursed by the bank and, therefore, made economically [...]

Source: WSJ.com: Law Blog – WSJ.com Barry Grissom, the newly installed U.S. Attorney in Kansas, was a model for years before he got into law. Read the rest of the story…

Source: ABA Journal Top Stories A lawyer is facing federal money-laundering charges after allegedly being victimized in a fraudulent cashier’s check scheme and then panicking and withdrawing some of the money once he found out the check was a fake. Attorney Danilo Aguilar of Guam is apparently one of a number of lawyers who have [...]

Source: WSJ.com: Law Blog – WSJ.com Billionaire Paul Allen today sued Apple, Google and nine other companies claiming they are using technology developed about a decade ago at his Silicon Valley laboratory. Read the rest of the story…

Source: Law.com – Newswire A judge has sanctioned a leader in flash drive technology for mishandling e-discovery in what the judge called a “David and Goliath-like” struggle. The judge ruled he would instruct the jury to draw a negative inference from the fact that SanDisk, which has a market capitalization of $8.7 billion, had lost [...]

Source: Law.com – Newswire Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia has denied a bid by France’s Sanofi-Aventis to halt sales of a generic version of its blockbuster blood thinner Lovenox, a move which may help pave the way for the Food and Drug Administration to approve generic biologic [...]

Source: Law.com – Newswire When it comes to fighting foreclosures, homeowners and their lawyers may have found a new strategy to score courtroom victories. Defense lawyers across Florida are increasingly attacking the validity of affidavits that owners of notes must file with the courts as part of the foreclosure process. Attorneys are successfully arguing that [...]

Source: ABA Journal Top Stories A former Wisconsin judge who complained about a lack of clerical help has been reprimanded for a backlog of about 3,500 cases. Former Judge John Zodrow had worked in the city of Cudahy municipal court, which had an annual caseload of about 4,000 cases, according to an opinion by the [...]

Source: WSJ.com: Law Blog – WSJ.com Manhattan federal judge Alvin Hellerstein has ordered lawyers representing 9/11 workers to justify some of the expenses they propose charging to their clients. Read the rest of the story…

Source: ABA Journal Top Stories Justice Sonia Sotomayor credits her critics with strengthening her resolve and helping her move from a federal trial court to the country’s top court. Speaking at an event sponsored by a group seeking to improve diversity in the legal profession, Sotomayor said she had mixed emotions when President Clinton nominated [...]

Source: WSJ.com: Law Blog – WSJ.com Iowa conservatives are mounting a political campaign to oust three supreme court judges in the state, who joined a ruling last year striking down a state law that bars recognition of same-sex marriage. Read the rest of the story…

Source: ABA Journal Top Stories Pepperdine law professor Douglas Kmiec, the U.S. ambassador to Malta, crashed his car in California on Thursday, killing a nun who was a passenger. Kmiec suffered moderate injuries and another passenger, a pastor, was also injured, according to stories by the Los Angeles Daily News, the Los Angeles Times blog [...]

Source: California Employment Law Articles The California Supreme Court decided significant employment law cases since our last review in 2009. The Court’s opinions address a number of topics of interest to employers: wage and hour law, harassment, arbitration agreements, attorney-client privilege, and the significance of “stray remarks.” However, the Court also left many issues for [...]

Source: California Employment Law Articles Employees returning to work after pregnancy or adopting a child face complex challenges. The elusive “work-life balance” is difficult to achieve, and circumstances can create the need for additional time off and other issues. We discussed workplace laws protecting pregnant employees in a previous article. Here, we focus on employers’ [...]

Source: California Employment Law Articles A recent decision by the California Court of Appeals, finding an employer’s decision to honor a competitor’s non-compete agreement tantamount to a violation of California Business and Professions Code section 16600, thus violating public policy, underscores the Catch-22 faced by employers when hiring employees subject to covenants not to compete. [...]

Source: Federal Employment Law Articles Employers under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are not required to provide health care coverage, but a failure to do so may result in monetary penalties. Is this the end of federally-required employee benefits? Maybe not! Read the rest of the story…

Source: Federal Employment Law Articles On July 14, 2010, Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) published notice in the Federal Register of proposed rulemaking1 aimed at “strengthening” the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) privacy, security and enforcement regulations (collectively referred to as the [...]

Source: Federal Employment Law Articles This article focuses on the enactment of expansive whistle-blowing protections in the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Gregory Keating, a shareholder in Littler’s Boston office, comments on the trend of increasingly broad whistle-blower protections, and discusses the implications of the act. In addition, Keating recommends that employers [...]

Source: Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog Before we get to the candidates, how did the building do? Wednesday night’s one-hour session between Mark Neumann and Scott Walker, who will face off in the  Republican primary for governor on Sept. 14, was the first event of its kind in Eckstein Hall, the new home o [...]

Source: WSJ.com: Law Blog – WSJ.com New York governor David Paterson allegedly misled ethics investigators regarding his attendance at last year’s World Series, according to a report issued today. Read the rest of the story…

Source: SettlementBoard.com Just 4 years ago The Texas Youth Commission (TYC) was “overhauled” due to a sex abuse scandal and cover up. During the process most top officials of the agency were fired or forced into retirement while facing charges of physical and sexual abuse of incarcerated youth. Still, the conditions remain unsafe from abuse [...]

Source: Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog The First Amendment to the United States Constitution states, in part, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . .” These two clauses, the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause, respectively, are viewed by most as [...]