Law Reports

By Tamlin H. Bason A manufacturer of an exercise trampoline failed to demonstrate that its asserted trade dress had acquired secondary meaning, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled March 8, dismissing a manufacturer’s trade dress complaint for a second time (Urban Group Exercise Consultants Ltd. v. Dick’s Sporting Goods Inc., S.D.N.Y., [...]

By Jay-Anne B. Casuga The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit March 11 upheld a jury verdict in favor of a Syrian Muslim electrician for Chrysler Group LLC in Missouri who alleged he was fired in retaliation for filing a discrimination charge against the company (Al-Birekdar v. Chrysler Grp. LLC, 8th Cir., No. 08-3780, 3/11/13). A jury [...]

By Bernard J. Pazanowski Courts calculating the cramdown rate in Chapter 11 bankruptcy cases can simply add the prime rate and a risk adjustment amount between 1 and 3 percent, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit held March 1 (Wells Fargo Bank N.A. v. Texas Grand Prairie Hotel Realty LLC, 5th Cir., No. 11-11109, [...]

By Che Odom The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board released expanded versions of two inspection reports March 7 that detail previously nonpublic criticisms that the board had of audit quality controls at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. The criticism concerns audits performed in 2008 and 2009 and the firm’s apparent difficulty with auditing estimates and fair value and maintaining professional skepticism and supervising [...]

House Republicans March 5 questioned the Securities and Exchange Commission’s plans to consider requiring disclosure of corporate political spending, saying the agency should conserve its resources for mandatory rulemaking. “The Commission appears to be allocating its limited resources on a discretionary project wholly unrelated to its mandate to ‘protect investors, maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets and [...]

By Louis C. LaBrecque Unionized employees at Labor Department agencies have received notices regarding the number of proposed furlough days their agency expects them to take during the remainder of fiscal year 2013, with the number of proposed days varying widely by agency, a union official told BNA March 8. Alex Bastani, president of Local 12 [...]

A copyright infringement claim based on a plaintiff’s architectural works cannot be sustained absent reliable evidence that a defendant ever had access to those works, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit held Feb. 26 (Building Graphics Inc. v. Lennar Corp., 4th Cir., No. 11-2200, 2/26/13). Affirming summary judgment in favor of the defendants, [...]

By Richard Hill The Justice Department said in a Feb. 27 letter to two senators that it is prepared to bring criminal cases against banks and financial corporations “when we have the evidence, no matter the crime.” At the same time, it defended the use of non-prosecution agreements and deferred prosecutions as “an important middle ground” [...]

Two Chapter 7 debtors were liable for a willful and malicious injury when they removed various fixtures from their home after it had been foreclosed upon according to a Feb. 13 ruling from the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado (Schrader v. Vectra Bank Colorado NA (In re Schrader), D. Colo., No. 1:12-cv-01961 (RBJ), [...]

By Denise Lugo NORWALK, Conn.–A narrow-scoped accounting provision was issued March 4 by the Financial Accounting Standards Board to resolve diversity in practice for the treatment of business combinations achieved in stages–referred to as step acquisitions–involving a foreign entity. FASB issued the guidance as ASU No. 2013-05, Foreign Currency Matters (Topic 830), Parent’s Accounting for the [...]

By Anandashankar Mazumdar In response to an online petition, the Obama administration has expressed disagreement with the Copyright Office’s decision in October to eliminate an exemption from anticircumvention law that would allow cellphone owners to unlock their phones in order to change service providers. The controversy originates with the Copyright Office’s conclusions after conducting its latest [...]

By Fanni Koszeg Agency rulemaking pursuant to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (Dodd-Frank) has brought many controversial rules. In particular, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) receives much criticism from market participants for being overly aggressive in exercising its new authority to regulate the previously largely unregulated $600 trillion-dollar over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives [...]

By Diane Davis Judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit announced March 4 that they have selected San Francisco attorney Hannah L. Blumenstiel to serve as a judge of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California, according to a news release. Fills Seat Vacated by Retired Judge Carlson Blumenstiel, [...]

By Patrick Dorrian A New York City human resources case manager, whose schizophrenia interfered with his ability to arrive at work on time may have been entitled to a reasonable adjustment in his work hours and disciplined in violation of federal, state, and local law, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held March 4, overturning [...]

By Marc Heller Virginia may offer the most hope–and the toughest chances–for a proposal to boost sales tax collection from online retailers. Partly because of Gov. Bob McDonnell’s (R) transportation plan that relies on tax revenue from remote sales, and partly because of the roles of two political heavyweights representing Virginia in Congress, the Old [...]

The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Feb. 25 certified a class action by investors against the largest group of feeder funds that allegedly funneled money to convicted fraudster Bernard Madoff (Anwar v. Fairfield Greenwich Ltd., S.D.N.Y., 09-00118, 2/25/13). In 2009, investors filed a putative class suit against Fairfield Greenwich Group, [...]

By Cecelia M. Assam A recently released Federal Trade Commission report about the top 10 consumer complaints of 2012 “paints an inaccurate portrait of consumer complaints against the third-party debt collection industry,” an industry group said Feb. 27. In a statement, Pat Morris, CEO of ACA International, insisted that members “take consumer complaints seriously and agree [...]

The Sumter County Board of Education plausibly discriminated against an elementary school principal because of her age bias complaints when it terminated her employment before the end of her contract, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama decided Feb. 26 (Danner v. Sumter Cnty. Bd. of Educ., N.D. Ala., No. 12-cv-02391, 2/26/13). The district court [...]

By Angela Gregorits DANA POINT, Calif.–The Meltwater clipping service litigation promises to further define the legal playing field for online news aggregators, especially insofar as replication and retransmission of headlines and leads are concerned, according to a speaker participating in a Feb. 8 panel discussion at the American Bar Association Forum on Communications Law’s 18th [...]

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit Feb. 25 affirmed the dismissal of a would-be securities fraud class action against St. Joe Co.,(JOE) a Florida-based real-estate development company, finding that the plaintiffs failed to adequately plead loss causation for their 1934 Securities Exchange Act Section 10(b) claim (Meyer v. Greene, 11th Cir., No. [...]