Lang, Richert & Patch

Katheryn Hayes Tucker
Fulton County Daily Report

E-discovery rules have caused in-house counsel to take a harder line with some of the e-mails that workers think are private

“Don’t put this in writing, but … ” Those are the opening words of an e-mail that got the writer’s company in legal hot water. And there are plenty more where that came from.

“This is off the record,” started the e-mail that in fact put it all on the record.

How about this one? “We may be in breach of contract, and here’s why.”

These examples of troublesome e-mails general counsel say they’ve run across don’t include the countless off color so-called jokes forwarded to contact lists of colleagues, interested or not, or links to Web sites that are definitely not part of a corporate job description.

(Read on …)

By Scott J. Ivy
Lang, Richert and Patch

Regardless of the industry, almost every business has been faced with an increasingly common dilemma. Your star salesperson or employee, to whom you have devoted significant amounts of time and money training and developing, suddenly announces he or she is leaving to join a direct competitor. Will your customers follow? Will the employee divulge your confidential information in an attempt to lure his or her former customers to his new firm? The hiring company faces similar issues. Will the employee’s former customers follow him or her to your business, a key issue given that you have likely agreed to pay a sizable salary or bonus with the expectation that is exactly what will occur. Will the former employer sue, thereby preventing those very customers from transferring their business and/or at the very least tie your company up in expensive litigation for the next several years? Unfortunately, as many companies learn too late, whether or not the former employer can successfully prevent the new employer from “stealing” these customers is often set in stone by the time litigation is commenced.

(Read on …)

By Christian D. Jinkerson
Lang, Richert and Patch

In Travelers Casualty & Surety Co. v. Pacific Gas & Electric Co. (2007), the United States Supreme Court recently ruled that attorneys’ fees can be recovered in connection with an unsecured or undersecured claim pursuant to a contractual or statutory right in the context of a bankruptcy case. The Supreme Court’s decision overruled the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals and changed the law with respect to all bankruptcy cases in California.

(Read on …)

Roger Parloff
CNNMoney.com

June 1, 2007 - Though the U.S. Supreme Court cut back this week on Americans’ rights to sue for equal pay in the real-world workplace, our rights to sue for wrongs visited upon our imaginary selves in imaginary game worlds made some modestly countervailing gains.

“This has been one of the most important weeks in US virtual-world law in memory, perhaps ever,” says S. Gregory Boyd, an intellectual property attorney and games law expert at Kenyon & Kenyon.

(Read on …)

SACRAMENTO - California Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Allan Zaremberg released the following statement on today’s California Supreme Court ruling permitting private contracting for public works projects:“This ruling is great news for California commuters and taxpayers. The California Supreme Court has upheld the will of the people, who passed Proposition 35 in 2000 to promote the efficient delivery of public works projects and approved infrastructure bonds in 2006 to increase and accelerate those projects. Among other things, Californians need increased transportation capacity and they want it as quickly and efficiently as possible; today’s ruling will help deliver these results by allowing the use of private sector services to augment public sector capabilities.

(Read on …)