Posts on ‘September 22nd, 2009’

Testing employees for illegal drug use is one thing. But what about testing them for legal prescription drug use? The latter concept has one Tennessee employer in hot water, battling two separate suits in which employees claim they were forced to undergo unlawful drug tests that checked for various prescription medicines, such as painkillers. The suits claim the employer had no valid reason to order the tests and took adverse action against employees who tested positive for various legally prescribed drugs.

Heirs of the late comic writer Jack Kirby have retained Marc Toberoff — a thorn in the side of many Hollywood studios — to file copyright claims related to several superheroes. Toberoff reportedly sent 45 notices of copyright termination to Marvel Entertainment, The Walt Disney Co., Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures and 20th Century Fox seeking to regain copyright control of certain characters. The claims come on the heels of Disney’s $4 billion acquisition of Marvel in late August.

The number of online social networks — from JD Supra to Twitter — can seem overwhelming. The good news is legal pros can ignore most of them, concentrate on a single online network, experiment with one or two others, and turn their efforts into new clients, files and billable work.

As state judicial elections become nastier, more expensive and more important to special interest groups, complaints regarding alleged misrepresentations are on the rise, according to a number of election scholars and litigators. In the shadows of a tug-of-war over the truthfulness of an ad campaign for the 2008 race for a judgeship on the Wisconsin Supreme Court is a potential U.S. Supreme Court challenge raising the question of just how different judicial elections are or should be from other elections.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Monday it will go to trial against Bank of America Corp. over bonuses at Merrill Lynch, opening the possibility of also bringing charges against bank executives, a week after a judge’s stinging rejection of a $33 million settlement of the case. Despite its decision to go to trial in the case, the SEC noted in a statement issued Monday night, “We firmly believe that the settlement we submitted to the court was reasonable, appropriate and in the public interest.”

Global warming lawsuits brought by New York State and others who challenged major utilities on carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants were reinstated Monday by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In a decision that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo called “game-changing,” the circuit found there was no need for the trial court to defer to the political branches and refrain from hearing the suit until there is a definitive policy statement on global warming from Congress and the president.