The end of the year is a time for us to reflect on the issues that resonated with us the most. For In-House readers, those issues entailed compensation and experience of serving as in-house counsel. Here are the Top Ten In House stories of 2013: In-House Counsel Salaries: What Can You Expect in the First 3 Years? In the in-house world, an attorney with one-to-three years’ experience is expected to make between $77,500 and $124,500....
Walmart is not pleased with the Visa/MasterCard settlement and they’re not keeping it to themselves. The company is urging other retailers to reject the multi-billion dollar proposed settlement. Visa and MasterCard reached a $7.25 billion agreement with retailers earlier this month for damages in a price-fixing claim involving credit card swipe fees. The deal repays retailers for unfair fees and also lowers swipe fees for the next few months. As part of the settlement, retailers now have the option to charge credit card users more for their purchases....
If this story starts to sound like something you’ve heard before, don’t worry. It gets better, or worse, depending on how you see it. Google’s self-driving car division, Waymo, sued Uber for allegedly stealing trade secrets for its own self-driving cars. Anthony Levandowski, a former Google engineer, downloaded 14,000 files from the company before he started his own and promptly sold the technology to Uber for $680 million. The case is pending in federal court, where the judge has just dropped a bombshell....
There are 13 medical schools situated within the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals’ geographical reach. Any of those medical schools can dismiss a student based on his suitability for the practice of medicine. There are ways for a student to appeal dismissal based on a public university’s decision that he is not “suited” for medical practice. Suing the school for “major depression” discrimination is not one of those ways, according to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals....
Cameron International Corporation (Cameron), one of the litigants in the Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation, is asking the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the scheduled nonjury trial in the matter, which is set to begin on February 27 in New Orleans. U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier is slated to preside. Cameron, which designed and manufactured the blowout preventer used on the Deepwater Horizon rig, claims that a nonjury trial under the current plan would violate its constitutional rights....
Ah, the iPhone. It has more power than the computers that took us into interstellar space. Yet, it does not come with a manual. Does its stylish body hide secrets, pehaps even ones that can make you a more productive lawyer? But, of course! Read on as we pull back the veil on the mysterious rectangle we are all addicted to. Text is so much more efficient than phone calls, but there are actually who don’t have iPhones....
Fun fact: if your cell phone is turned on, your phone carrier can tell where you are. How? Your phone’s radio is constantly connecting to cell phone towers, which means even without a GPS signal, the carrier can approximate your location. You may have already know this (it shows up in movies all the time), but if you didn’t, well, you do now. What you probably didn’t know is that it might be legal for the police to snatch this data without a warrant....
The exciting innovations of yesterday are the ever-increasing piles of tech trash of today, and you certainly shouldn’t just chuck yesterday’s unwanted gadgets in the trash can. It’s not just a good idea to recycle your old tech. In an effort to encourage citizens to dispose of electronics in an environmentally friendly way, laws like Illinois’ Electronic Recycling and Reuse Act make it illegal to throw certain electronics away. Whatever the laws in your jurisdiction, here are three legal alternatives to the dumpster for your old smartphones, TVs, and tablets....
The Fifth Circuit rejected a traffic violation camera companies’ attempts to drag a challenge to their validity into a federal court. The circuit court held that the more proper venue was Texas’ court system. In a wonderfully technical case that would be fit for discussion in any advanced civil procedure course, the court details rather entertainingly just how it came to its decision. The plaintiff in this case was not even in the state at the time when his car was photographed violating traffic laws in Texas....
“No thank you, Mr. Pecker.” That’s what Jeff Bezos said to David Pecker, who controls the National Enquirer. Bezos addressed Pecker in a public response to alleged extortion and blackmail. The National Inquirer allegedly threatened to publish intimate photos that Bezos shared with his lover. You can guess why Bezos called out Mr. Pecker. Cost and Embarrassment Bezos said he chose to publish the story rather than be bullied, despite the cost and embarrassment....
The result of the San Diego Comic Con trademark lawsuit didn’t just crush the producers of the Salt Lake City Comic Con under a massive pile of attorney fees, it’s having more reach than some might expect, and likely to the delight of the SDCC’s attorneys. Recent reports explain that other comic cons are abandoning the practice of calling the gatherings a “con,” which as anyone and everyone knows, is short for convention when placed after the word comic....
In US v. Lewis, No. 09-4343, the Fourth Circuit faced a challenge to a conviction of defendant for unlawful possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. In affirming the conviction, the court held that the district court did not err when it denied defendant’s motion to suppress, as well as in applying the 2005 guidelines in effect at the time of defendant’s offense, in determining that the application of the amended 2008 guidelines would contravene the Ex Post Facto Clause....
The First Circuit decided an insurance subrogation matter and a criminal case. In Fed. Ins. Co. v. Commerce Ins. Co., No. 09-1156, the court faced a challenge to the district court’s judgment against the insurer of a retirement home in its subrogation claim against the insurer of the resident who accidentally caused a fire, and against her estate. In affirming the district court’s decision, the court held that the implied co-insured doctrine controlled the outcome of the case and precluded the plaintiff from pursuing its subrogation claim because it has failed to meet the burden of showing that a provision in the “Residence and Care Agreement” overcomes the presumption that the landlord’s insurance is held for the mutual benefit of both parties....
Cappuccitti v. DirecTV, Inc., No. 09-14107, involved an action against DirecTV, Inc., seeking the recovery, on behalf of plaintiffs and similarly situated DirecTV subscribers in Georgia, of the fees DirecTV charged its subscribers for canceling their subscriptions prior to the subscriptions’ expiration. The court of appeals vacated the district court’s partial dismissal of the complaint on the merits, holding that the district court lacked subject matter jurisdiction under the Class Action Fairness Act (CAFA) because the complaint failed to meet the CAFA’s requirement that at least one plaintiff allege an individual amount in controversy over $75,000....
The Electronic Frontier Foundation has sent quite a letter to the superintendent of schools in Williamson County, Tennessee, calling out the district’s Bring Your Own Technology (BYOT) policy for its restrictions on student speech online. BYOT policies are becoming increasingly popular as schools realize it’s in everyone’s best interest to let kids bring their own electronic devices from home. But Williamson County’s policies appear to be a little on the fatally overbroad side....
In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli declares: “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.” And writer Rex Huppke agrees –except he means F.E.A.R, not fear. Though he tailors his approach to the world of business in general, the F.E.A.R. approach is just as useful when approaching legal issues. Here’s how. Huppke urges to approach a given situation by first figuring out if what you need to do is necessary....
FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Where do people spend more and more of their time on the Internet? In your face on Facebook - that’s where. Indeed, Americans now are socializing more on Facebook than conducting searches and related activities on Google, according to recent statistics. So what is the average time spent on facebook? The data, from comScore Inc....
Last week we had one of the worst days of news in recent history. The ongoing Israeli conflict in Gaza, and the downed Malaysian Airlines flight 17 put front and center what we often try to forget: there are world conflicts that persist and life in other countries is not as safe as it can be here. While we’re insulated in our corporate cubes and offices, you may think that outside of news, these global crises don’t have an impact on us....
Unless you’re some fancy Senator, you’ve got to use email. Maybe all day long. It can be easy to get buried under hundreds of daily emails. Google Inbox, the invite only app, tries to make email less of a chore. But, for lawyers, is it worth actually switching over to? It can be a pain searching through email. Even if you’re great a composing complex Google searches (show me emails “from:me to:you after:2011 before:2012” Siri!...
Traditional wisdom says that avoiding trial will help keep costs down, but could it be that litigation is actually cheaper than arbitration? At least one study indicates that it might be. The study looked at a small sample of cases from a single company that was assessing whether its arbitration program lowered costs compared to litigation. It looked at a similar number of litigation and arbitration cases, and the results were a little surprising on the surface....
