Legal Research

Selections from National Law Journal Daily Headlines March 5, 2009

By David Badertscher, PLL

Source: NLJ.COM, March 5, 2009

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FROM THE UPCOMING ISSUE  |  Wave of anti-Ponzi laws coming ? but will they work?
"State lawmakers and Congress are trying to tackle Ponzi schemes through legislation, but lawyers are skeptical about whether new laws can stop the scams, much less snare them. With plenty of fraud statutes already on the books, attorneys argue, it's not more laws that are needed but more oversight, and more victims who are willing to come forward and name the con artists. "

WEB-ONLY  |  High court's 'Wyeth' ruling on federal pre-emption a dramatic 'sea shift'
"Federal pre-emption ? a widely used and often effective defense by big business against state tort lawsuits ? will be a much harder argument to win because of the U.S. Supreme Court recent ruling in Wyeth v. Levine, and not just in suits against the pharmaceutical industry, but in a broad swath of suits involving regulated industries ? from railroad cars to pesticides to consumer products, according to plaintiffs' and defense attorneys. "This is a sea shift," said plaintiffs' counsel Sol Weiss. 'Pre-emption as a defense is going to be much more difficult without express written language in the congressional act.' " 

WEB-ONLY  |  Next moves for newly-unemployed associates
"More and more, today's jobs searches start by logging onto the Internet instead of with an informal face-to-face interview and a handshake. The world of cyber job hunting presents lots of opportunity but also potential pitfalls for attorneys looking to land a position ? and there are plenty of people in that category, given the widespread layoffs hitting law firms."

WEB-ONLY  |  Federal judge tosses three consumer antitrust class actions against Qualcomm Inc.
"A federal judge has tossed out three consumer antitrust class actions against Qualcomm Inc., holding that the alleged injuries to consumers were too remote to be traced to alleged anti-competitive conduct by Qualcomm. The suits by secondary purchasers of mobile phones accused Qualcomm, the world's largest maker of mobile phone chips, of using its monopoly control of the chip patents to charge allegedly anticompetitive fees to the cellphone industry, which contributed to higher costs to consumers."

WEB-ONLY  |  9th Circuit deals a blow to plaintiffs' lawyers in 'principal place of business' test
"In a blow to plaintiffs' class action lawyers, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has made it tougher to hold that a national company is a 'citizen' of California merely based on the disproportionate size of the state's population. The dispute stems from a California consumer class action against HSBC Bank of Nevada and Best Buy Co. alleging that Best Buy failed to disclose that an annual fee would be charged to Californians in an online credit card offer."

WEB-ONLY  |  Outgoing Northwestern president leads charge to stop ABA from stipulating employment terms at law schools
"Northwestern University is leading a charge to revamp certain employment criteria by which a council of the American Bar Association decides which U.S. law schools are accredited. Outgoing university president Henry Bienen in January sent a letter to 35 other university presidents, provosts and chancellors whose institutions have law schools asking them to sign a statement that urges the ABA's Council on Legal Education and Admission to the Bar to stop stipulating employment terms at law schools. "

COLUMN

BUSINESS INFORMATION  |  State Compliance Laws
"Connecticut, Massachusetts and Nevada recently enacted laws requiring businesses to institute compliance measures to secure personal data that can be used to perpetrate identity theft. A first-of-its-kind Massachusetts regulation is the most comprehensive of the new laws. Businesses that own, license, store or maintain personal information about a Massachusetts resident must be in full compliance by Jan. 1, 2010, including implementing a comprehensive, written data security program for personal information."

Full post as published by New York Supreme Court Criminal Term Library on March 05, 2009 (boomark / email).