Posts on ‘June 16th, 2009’

A husband’s refusal to have sex with his wife three times within a year was enough to persuade a Long Island judge to grant the wife’s petition for a divorce on the ground of constructive abandonment. While noting the lack of a “definitive holding” as to how many requests were needed to satisfy the abandonment standard requiring “repeated” denial of such requests, Supreme Court Justice Arthur Diamond of Nassau County, N.Y., ruled that three was adequate, given the facts of the case.

With American companies suddenly affordable, young, private Chinese businesses are looking to buy. Outbound investment has surged in China even as investment into the country plummeted 21 percent through April because of recessions in the United States and Europe. China has made overseas acquisitions before, but it used to be only by large, state-owned corporations. Now lawyers say Chinese companies are coming west, and Silicon Valley companies will be targets.

The story of what Maurice R. “Hank” Greenberg did with $4.2 billion in American International Group stock supposedly held in trust for employees’ retirement was a tale of “anger, betrayal and cover-up,” AIG’s attorney, Theodore V. Wells, told a federal jury Monday. Wells said Greenberg was angry for being “kicked out” as chief executive and used his position to sell the stock. Defense attorney David Boies countered that the issue is not whether there was a trust, but, rather who set it up and who was its beneficiary.

Oil and gas equipment company FMC Technologies used Legal OnRamp, the social networking site for lawyers, to spread the word last month that it wants to hire tech-savvy, innovative firms that are open to alternative billing arrangements. About 50 firms downloaded a questionnaire from the site and then submitted the forms to FMC. General counsel Jeffrey Carr says he’s pleased with the response, but is surprised so few of the country’s largest firms submitted questionnaires.

If lawyers viewed the dearth of Delaware Court of Chancery electronic discovery rulings as evidence of the court’s lack of concern about e-discovery, recent rulings and opinions may have dispelled any false comfort. Lawyers say the decisions flesh out the court’s sparse EDD law.

So you’ve taken your client’s case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and the justices have asked the solicitor general of the United States whether they should grant review. What are your chances of a nod in your favor? Not bad, according to an unusual study of two of the high court’s most important “information-gathering” tools — a call for the views of the solicitor general, known as a CVSG, and a call for a response, or CFR, to a petition for certiorari.

The plaintiffs who sued over the Exxon Valdez oil spill lost big at the U.S. Supreme Court last year but took some consolation from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Monday. In addition to unanimously siding with the plaintiffs’ argument for hundreds of millions of dollars in interest, a panel also ruled 2-1 that Exxon Mobil can’t recoup tens of millions in costs for its largely successful appeal.

A federal judge denied a Boston University student’s bid to bring abuse-of-process counterclaims against record companies and the Recording Industry Association of America in their copyright infringement lawsuit targeting college students who download Internet music illegally. One of the judge’s orders also granted defendant Joel Tenenbaum’s motion to amend his answer to the record companies’ complaint and assert a defense that the defendants could download music under the so-called “fair use” doctrine.

Filing a patent application in the United States starts the process for protecting an invention in the U.S. But it does nothing to protect it overseas. Patent applications must generally be filed on a country-by-country basis to secure foreign patent protection, but filing applications in all of the world’s patent offices would cost close to $500,000. Foreign filing decisions can therefore have a big impact on a company’s legal budget. As in-house counsel, how should you advise corporate decision makers?