An attorney assisted the pro se plaintiff in Delso v Trustees for the Retirement Plan for Hourly Employees of Merck & Co., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16643 (D.N.J. March 5, 2007) by ghostwriting certain court papers for her. The defendant contended that this was unethical under the New Jersey Rules of Professional Conduct. Magistrate Judge Tonianne Bongiovanni agree ...

When must a litigation hold be implemented? How explicit must a pre-litigation warning be? The only way to insure that the duty to preserve evidence has been triggered is to demand it. Consider Cache Poudre Feeds, LLC v. Land O’Lakes Inc., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 15277 (D. Colo. March 2, 2007). In April and June of 2002, plaintiff’s counsel telephoned and w ...

In Sundance Image Tech., Inc. v. Cone Editions Press, Ltd., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 16356 (S.D. Cal. March 7, 2007), the plaintiff claimed that the defendant posted libelous statements on the Internet about plaintiffs' products, causing plaintiffs' revenues to fall dramatically. How do traditional libel doctrines apply to defamation via web? 1. ...

Most decisions to consider the issue hold that a lawyer’s communications with the investment banker of his or her client are not protected by the attorney-client privilege for the simple reason that the banker is not the client nor someone retained by the lawyer to assist in the rendering of legal advice to the client. For a decision upholding an assertion of pri ...

Section 16(a) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 requires officers, directors and other insiders of a public company to report their trades in company securities, and § 16(b) prohibits short-swing insider profits. Section 16(b) imposes a two-year statute of limitations on any action for disgorgement of those profits. This two-year limitations period is tol ...

Although this issue most commonly comes up in connection with experts, it is not necessarily so limited. In case 1, witness A testifies. The trial judge finds that the witness lied or otherwise offered untrustworthy testimony (for an expert, motives may be challenged or testimony may be rejected on Daubert grounds), and the judge so writes in an order or opinio ...

Email authentication was the issue in State v. Reynolds, 2007 Iowa App. LEXIS 232 (Iowa App. Feb. 28, 2007), a prosecution for theft for cashing in phony postal money orders at a bank. The prosecution offered, and the trial court admitted, packets of documents relating to each transaction at issue consisting of (1) a bank transaction ticket, (2) a cash out statemen ...

Engagement letters matter. The plaintiff insured in Pengate Handling Sys., Inc. v. Westchester Surplus Lines Ins. Co., 2007 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 13303 (E.D. Pa. Feb. 27, 2007), sought communications between the defendant insurer and the outside law firm which the carrier had retained shortly after the claim was filed. District Judge Sylvia Rambo found "the engageme ...

From Samuel N. Fraidin, thoughts on Alfa v. OAO (posting of March 4, 2007): 1. Experts are frequently allowed to bring in material that would otherwise be hearsay (e.g., books whose authors aren't available to be cross examined), but under Rule 703 that is limited to sources that are typically consulted by experts in the field. (See also Rule 702(1)-(2).) I ...

"The Seventh Circuit has squarely held that 'a suit dismissed without prejudice is treated for statute of limitations purposes as if it had never been filed.... [T]he statute of limitations is deemed unaffected by the filing of the suit, so that if the statute of limitations has run the dismissal is effectively with prejudice.'" In re NeoPharm Secs. Litig., 2007 U. ...