As soon as this week, Time Warner Cable could finally find the buyer it’s spent years searching for, should federal regulators approve the $67.1 billion deal. But Time Warner isn’t the only big name looking to be bought up these days. From insurance, to retail, to railroads, companies are pursuing mergers left and right. Here are five that we’ve got our eye on. Alright, we’ll start with the obvious, Time Warner Cable and Charter....
The case? Thomas Roque v. Natchitoches Parish School Bd., in which Roque is alleging that he was denied a school superintendent position because of race-based discrimination. During oral arguments for the case, Roque’s attorney David Broussard got a quick lesson in Fifth Circuit appellate advocacy, courtesy of Fifth Circuit Judge E. Grady Jolly and District Court Judge Lance M. Africk (sitting by designation) in the form of a double bench-slapping....
Onoh v. Northwest Airlines, Inc., No. 09-10971, involved a state-law breach-of-contract and intentional-infliction-of-emotional-distress action against an airline. The court of appeals affirmed the dismissal of the complaint on the grounds that plaintiff’s conversation with an airline agent, in which the agent allegedly stated that “the U.S. State Department would not permit [her] to travel . . . .”, was sufficiently related to defendant’s provision of “services” under the Airline Deregulation Act to trigger preemption....
Forget dusting for fingerprints. Many of today’s top investigators are focused on the digital realm. As data breaches continue to make headlines – from the leaking of the Panama Papers to the hacking of major companies like Blue Cross and Sony – more and more companies are turning to lawyers to determine what went wrong during a data breach, how to prevent cyberattacks, and what legal obligations are likely to flow from a breach....
When it comes to online marketing for lawyers and law firms, one of the hottest areas that lawyers are investing in is social media. However, those “promoted” posts and advertisements on social media might not help as much as naturally good content that’s consistent with your branding. For the most part, users of social media tend to skip over promoted posts and advertisements. However, if the promoted post contains high quality content, rather than a traditional or direct advertisement, it is more likely that the consumer will engage with the content....
LinkedIn endorsements are pretty easy to come by. People you’ve never met will rush to endorse your skills in the hope that you will do the same. On the professional’s Facebook, an endorsement is the equivalent of a like or share – easily gained and not of much weight. Except, of course, if you’re a lawyer. In which case, accepting unearned endorsements on LinkedIn may land you in ethical trouble....
The Fifth Circuit gave the O.K. to a Dallas ordinance which allows CNG-fueled cabs to move to the head of the line when picking up passenger’s from the city’s Love Field Airport. The Court’s decision on Thursday in Association of Taxicab Operators USA v. City of Dallas comes as a big win for cities incentivizing compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles, which operate with lower emissions than gasoline powered vehicles. The Fifth Circuit opined that this law is not preempted by the federal law, particularly the Clean Air Act....
The Department of Justice has withdrawn its appeal of a district court ruling that excluded evidence gathered by a webcam nailed to a utility pole across the street from a suspected drug dealer’s house. After the district court for the Eastern District of Washington found that the surveillance violated the defendant’s constitutional right to privacy, prosecutors appealed. The DOJ had argued in earlier filings that “the webcam on a pole” surveillance was legal, since it was similar to an officer’s observations on the street....
FindLaw columnist Eric Sinrod writes regularly in this section on legal developments surrounding technology and the Internet. In making its case, EPIC states in its brief that the National Security Agency (NSA) of the US collects personal data from all across the globe and transfers such data without adequate legal protections. EPIC argues that the NSA has access to the majority of Internet traffic and a “nearly unbounded capacity to monitor and and collect private communications....
When it comes to patents and intellectual property, the techies down in Silicon Valley often repeat a familiar mantra: patents are anticompetitive, anti-innovation, just plain bad. But that simplistic outlook was challenged, a bit, in a recent talk by Ted Ullyot, former general counsel for Facebook. In a presentation entitled “Innovation, Disruption and Intellectual Property: A View From Silicon Valley,” Ullyot told students and professors at Marquette Law School that the relationship between technological innovation and intellectual property law was slightly more complicated than typical dogma allows....
Are you uninspired by your corporate law job and have an insatiable attraction to seeming glamour of entertainment law? With the Oscars right around the corner, your interest in the field might be intensifying. Though an in-house position at a Business and Legal Affairs department might sound like a dream job, the road to getting there is often arduous. Here are five tips to consider before gunning for an in-house entertainment position:...
Is Bill Cosby seriously laughing as he approaches a retrial for sexual assault? The standup joker took to the stage recently for the first time in years, his scandal pre-dating the Harvey Weinstein affair that has torched Hollywood. Meanwhile, the Cosby show has dragged on with the retrial set for April. After so many women have publicly accused Cosby of drugging and raping them, it’s hard to imagine his public appearances are part of a pre-trial strategy....
FindLaw has a lot of content. Millions of pages of content, to put things in perspective. It’s unsurprising then, that occasionally, we even surprise ourselves by stumbling across some very useful content. Today’s discovery? We have a ton of sample contracts, and not just the blank forms you can find all over the Internet. These are the actual contracts from the biggest companies out there. Employment compensation agreements. Stock options. Severance....
MoveOn.org is being hauled into federal court for allegedly using Louisiana’s motto on a billboard criticizing Gov. Bobby Jindal. Lt. Gov. Jay Dardenne filed a federal suit against MoveOn.org in his official capacity as both lieutenant governor and commissioner of the Louisiana Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism claiming that the advocacy group used the state’s service mark and motto without permission, reports The Times-Picayune. Can a political billboard crib a state’s motto like that?...
On December 15th, shortly after appearing on ‘Tucker Carlson Tonight,’ Vanity Fair contributing editor and Newsweek senior writer Kurt Eichenwald checked his Twitter. What he saw sent him into a seizure. Eichenwald, an epileptic, had been targeted by a Twitter user who messaged the journalist with a strobing .gif designed to trigger a seizure. In case the intent wasn’t clear, the online assailant, under the account @jew_goldstein, included the message “You deserve a seizure....
The cleanup costs a defense contractor sought to collect against the US Government were not precluded because of previous litigation, according to the Ninth Circuit. The costs under CERCLA were, according to the federal court, separate from the damages that had previously been collected in another suit which was brought by a downstream water agency. As a result, the costs were not subject to preclusion. Footing the Bill? Plaintiff Whittaker was a defense contractor responsible for testing and manufacturing munitions at a government facility in Santa Clarita, California....
If tech startups have one thing in common, it’s the ability to exploit the underemployed for profit. And while lawmakers have been slow to react when some industry is “disrupted,” the fight over how to classify the gig-economy workers rages on. Most recently, the NLRB issued a ruling classifying the workers for SuperShuttle in the Dallas-Fort Worth area as independent contractors rather than employees, and while you might not think of SuperShuttle as belonging to the new wave of tech startups, you might want to think again....
A Ninth Circuit panel recently upheld a new California law that requires licensed pregnancy clinics to inform women about publicly funded family planning services, including contraception and abortion services. The law was passed after the state legislature found that women often did not know about the public services available to them and that religious clinics misled them about their options. The court rejected religious clinics’ contention that the law violated their right to free speech and freedom of religion last week, ruling that the state’s disclosure law did not violate the clinics’ rights....
US v. Matos, No. 09-1178, concerned a challenge to the district court’s imposition of a sentence of 84-months’ imprisonment and four years’ supervised release for defendant’s wire fraud and money laundering convictions. The court affirmed the 84-month sentence in concluding that the defendant cannot establish that his concurrent sentences of 84 months constitutes plain error. The court also held that Godin and Ahrendt do not advocate in favor of remanding for resentencing in light of Amendment 709, that the district court did not commit plain error in counting defendant’s prior convictions, and that defendant has not met his burden of showing that the district court’s orders of restitution was plain error....
Is it possible that the authors of South Dakota’s marijuana initiative were stoned at the time they drafted it? After all, marijuana proponents invariably use the hallucinogenic drug. Memory loss and paranoia, for example, are common side effects. And apparently, the authors forgot to include a critical phrase in their ballot draft. The state attorney general says now the ballot measure legalizes only paraphernalia – not marijuana. They’re “Trying to Kick Us” Melissa Mentele, an advocate with New Approach South Dakota, said Attorney General Marty Jackley and the Legislative Research Council have it in for them....
