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When Greenpeace submitted a complaint alongside other environmental groups pushing for the investigation of BigOil and their friends, it looked as if the interest group had finally found a vulnerable point in the giant’s armor. Greenpeace then used RICO to pry open an even larger vulnerability. But RICO can giveth, and it can taketh away, as Greenpeace is now aware. The Canadian paper-pulping company Resolute Forest Products recently filed its own RICO suit in Georgia federal court, alleging that Greenpeace and its affiliates have waged a defamatory “enterprise” against the company....

In “Being John Malcovich,” people were able to enter his mind and experience different relationships through his eyes. It’s a comedy, with some strange twists, but basically it ends happily ever after. In being more approachable, attorneys may also find themselves happier in their client relationships. Here are some perspectives from different lawyers on achieving good client relationships: 1. Be Human Increasingly, electronic communications are taking the place of person-to-person communications....

Stephen R. Williams is not a math whiz, but he can do simple division. As in-house counsel for hospitals, Williams recently calculated that he averaged 18-hour days for a week. He was practically doing resident doctors’ hours. After wiping limited sleep from his eyes, he realized that over a $100,000-salary year it would be about $15 an hour. That’s right, in-house attorneys sometimes make less than burger flippers. No Billables No disrespect to the hamburger helpers of the world....

In debtor’s appeal from a bankruptcy court’s order sustaining creditor’s objection to the discharge of debtor’s debts, the order is affirmed where: 1) debtor acquired and concealed an equitable interest in his wife’s businesses; and 2) the doctrine of continuing concealment provides for situations like this, in which a debtor kept his assets out of a creditor’s reach during the look-back period by means of a sham ownership arrangement established more than one year before the bankruptcy petition was filed....

It was as close to a win-win decision as they get, especially considering that both sides lost. The U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed an injunction landlords had obtained against enforcement of an anti-harboring statute, then dismissed their case and said they were not subject to prosecution under the law. Because the plaintiffs lacked standing, the court could have side-stepped the harboring issue. But instead, the court laid down the law....

It’s a sign of the economic times: More companies are handing legal tasks to their in-house counsel, and outside law firms are losing out. A survey of companies with in-house legal teams showed a 6% uptick for in-house expenditures last year, compared with 1% growth in 2009. Corporate spending on outside legal services declined by 3% in 2010, the ABA Journal reports. Case in point: Minnesota-based Jones Lang LaSalle, a real-estate and investment-management giant....

I hope you’ve purchased your Costco-sized bottle of antacids: The holiday season means travel, and travel means stress via missed flights, delayed flights, poor weather, nasty people, and luggage that’s in Boston instead of Albuquerque (but don’t worry; you’ll get a $25 voucher for your troubles). So how can you get work done on the go? Thankfully, airports, airplanes, trains, and even buses are much friendlier to getting work done than they ever have been....

If you represent a North Carolina client with a felony possession conviction, you may have new grounds for appeal. In an unpublished opinion, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated and remanded a man’s conviction for possessing a firearm as a convicted felon based on an August 2011 Fourth Circuit opinion in U.S. v. Simmons. The appellant, Jason Michael Parrish, challenged the conviction by asserting that his priors were not felonies because they were not punishable by a term of imprisonment exceeding one year....

So, you want to hire an unpaid intern? It certainly shouldn’t be difficult to find one. These days, with the slow hiring in law firms, there are many young attorneys out there who are trying to get some experience. There are also several law schools that host clinics, where students get class credit to participate in unpaid internships. With the need for small firms to tighten their belts, it might be smart to hire an unpaid intern....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. Social networking, via sites like Facebook and Twitter, is the current big thing. Indeed, the popularity of such sites has caused nouns like the word “friend” to become verbs in the new social networking vocabulary. But is all well and good in the social networking universe? Not necessarily, according to the latest Security Labs Report by M86 Security, a provider of Web and messaging products....

In an action for breach of an agreement to pay a construction company for building a condominium, summary judgment for plaintiffs is reversed where the contract was exempt from the requirements of the Interstate Land Sales Full Disclosure Act because Florida law provided plaintiffs with the remedy of injunctive relief to force defendant to finish construction of the condominium within two years, and thus the contract was one “obligating” defendant to do so....

Keeping in step with the mantra that “you are your own worst enemy,” a new Thomson Reuters survey reveals that corporate board members present security risks to the company. The Thomson Reuters annual Board Governance survey – which gleans its results from more than 125 general counsel and company secretaries across a wide-ranging cross-section of industries and geographies globally – shows that corporate board communications present genuine security risks. Here are a few of the survey’s main highlights:...

Apple unveiled the new iPhone 7 last week and while the newest iteration of the smartphone isn’t reinventing the wheel, it is making some small changes. Chief among them: Apple is dropping its headphone jack. That means that if you want to listen to music on your iPhone, you’ll have to use Bluetooth headphones called AirPods that sit, cordlessly, in your ear, or get more traditional, cord-based headphones that hook up with the iPhone’s Lightning charger, instead of a headphone jack....

Lessons in the law come from all kinds of places. Often, it is in the courtroom where litigators demonstrate their skills. It is beyond Trial Advocacy 101; it is the real deal. Sometimes the lessons occur outside the courtroom, and occasionally in the hallway. Here’s one lesson seasoned litigators should know: never argue in the courthouse halls. Hallway Arguments The main reason you should never argue in courthouse corridors is that you don’t know who might be listening....

When the topic of Space Law comes up, some lawyers are bound to roll their eyes, while others will start scanning their memories of which Starship Enterprise crew member could have been a space lawyer. But in reality, right now, most space law is about as exciting as an international patent dispute, or as crazy as crazy gets. Although we are actually pretty close to having some serious (and cool) legal issues in outer space, until commercial space travel and space tourism really take off (pun intended), space law will likely remain in the provenance of the patent lawyer, legislators, and lobbyists....

FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the internet. The Internet certainly serves up interesting legal cases. A recent one involves a lawsuit filed against an adult Web site called YouPorn for allegedly running afoul of computer crime and consumer protection laws by virtue of a data collection practice referred to as “history sniffing.” Two California residents, in their Los Angeles federal lawsuit, claim that YouPorn, via history sniffing, improperly has been harvesting information about Web sites that the residents and others have visited....

In late August, British Petroleum (BP) asked the Fifth Circuit to put a freeze on the settlement process, which BP had approved in 2012, to avoid entitling business plaintiffs to an excess recovery. BP had most recently estimated that it would pay $9.6 billion in settlement funds to plaintiffs injured in the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill. But the company complained that the rules approved by the claims administrator may allow businesses to recover billions for “fictional losses,” reports The Times-Picayune....

FINRA, the securities industry’s self-regulating organization, will be able to regulate with a little more impunity now after the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that there is no private right of action for association members to sue the regulatory body when it doesn’t follow its own rules. A broker that was a registered member of a FINRA affiliated broker sought to bring an individual lawsuit against the organization due to an alleged failure to abide by their own rules....

Seized cell phones are safe from a warrantless search by police, the First Circuit recently held. The court ruled that a police cell phone search for data is not constitutional when a person is arrested unless officers get a warrant first. For Brima Wurie, his cell phone was the one important item that was searched by police officers the evening he was arrested for possessing crack cocaine. Because police looked through his seized cell phone without a warrant, they knew to search Wurie’s house, where they found 215 grams of cocaine – a huge difference from the 3....

If you’re like me, you go to the produce section with a list. That’s because usually my wife tells me what I want: avocados, tomatoes, lettuce, apples, and bananas. It’s all good because at least I know I’m getting the right stuff. But once in a while, I wander through the produce section with that rare air of knowing I can buy anything I want. Today I’m getting peanuts – in the shell, roasted and salted!...