General commercial litigation involves virtually every type of dispute that can arise in the business context, including breach of contract cases, partnership/joint venture disputes, class actions, business torts, civil RICO claims, breach of fiduciary duty allegations, and shareholder issues. Successful commercial litigators need to be able to assess the merits of a dispute and scale either a prosecution or defense that fits the legal and business needs of the client
Automated transcription startup lands $31M investment; CEO calls it ‘an important milestone’ I found this article in the ABA Journal. It was announcing that Verbit, the AI powered transcription platform- specializing in combining human and artificial intelligence to provide transcription and captioning solutions, secured a $31 million Series B funding Read more…
How should we interpret legal instruments? How do we identify the law they create? Current approaches largely fall into two broad camps. The standard picture of interpretation is focused on language, using various linguistic conventions to discover a document’s meaning or a drafter’s intent. Those who see language as less Read more…
In California, the lis pendens, though it serves the useful purpose of notifying potential purchasers of property of pending lawsuits, is subject to serious abuse. A lis pendens effectively prevents alienation of the property until the judgment in the underlying action has become final. For this reason, lis pendens is susceptible to abuse by parties who assert meritless claims to Read more…
Short for strategic lawsuits against public participation, SLAPPs have become an all-too-common tool for intimidating and silencing critics of businesses, often for environmental and local land development issues. An “anti-SLAPP” law is meant to provide a remedy from SLAPP suits. Under most such statutes, the person sued makes a motion Read more…
Passed into law in 1992, California’s anti-SLAPP statute (prohibiting stra- tegic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPPs) has evolved into a nuanced but powerful procedural device for litigants facing lawsuits arising from protected petitioning or speech activity. Found at Code of Civil Procedure sections 425.16 through 425.18, it presents a Read more…
Getting SLAPP-ed in Federal Court: Applying State Anti-SLAPP Special Motions to Dismiss in Federal Court After Shady Grove In recent years, dozens of states have enacted anti-Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation (SLAPP) laws to counter SLAPP suits, or lawsuits filed to silence a defendant who has spoken out against a Read more…
A company, its principals, and their legal counsel involved in business litigation in any form should ask themselves questions regularly, such as: 1. Why are we in the lawsuit? 2. What are the business causes and objectives of the litigation? 3. What are we trying to achieve? 4. What has happened and will potentially Read more…
TIPS FOR SURVIVING BUSINESS LITIGATION: BUSINESS NOT PERSONAL By Anthony C Duffy Paraphrasing the famous line in the Godfather movie for non-criminal purposes, business litigation is or should be about “business”- not “personal” animosities or disputes. Humans have emotions and unique and diverse personalities. Disputes almost inherently create adversarial attitudes Read more…
Presidential Control Over International Law