Sunday, March 25, 2007 8:27 AM
Blawg's Sunday Paper, a quick spin through the blawgosphere and the week that was.
Blawg Review, The Carnival of Law Bloggers, celebrated its 100th edition last week. For anyone who is not familiar with the Blawg Review, Blawg Review #100 is a great place to get all of the details.
Blawg Review is the blog carnival for everyone interested in law. A blog carnival is a traveling post about a topic or theme. For example, there's Carnival of the Capitalists, concerning business and economics, and Grand Rounds is about medicine and healthcare. Blawg Review, of which this is the 100th issue not counting the extraordinary annual Blawg Review Awards for 2005 and 2006, has topics discussed by lawyers, law students and law professors.
Blawg Review #100 is a milestone that we hope will give new readers a chance to catch up with what has become one of the most popular blog carnivals. It just might be the best blog carnival anywhere. We're honored that Blawg Review is a featured blog carnival this week at the blogcarnival.com website.
Rest assured, this is just a snippet of a much longer post that will give you a brief summary of all that has come before as well as a quick glimpse at the future. Stop by Blawg Review #100 to see for yourself
Professor Douglas Berman at Sentencing Law and Policy said, in the post On Fisher's ability to hook Justice Scalia, [t]he ABA e-Journal has this great new piece discussing Jeff Fisher's ability in both Crawford and Blakely to connect Justice Scalia and the Supreme Court's liberal wing to develop new rights for criminal defendants.
Bruce MacEwen, back from Law Firm Leaders Forum in San Francisco talked about China in his post The New New Thing:
The 19th Century was Britain's, the 20th Century was the United States', and the 21st Century is____? China's, of course! (Said he to resounding acclamation, being congratulated on stating the obvious.)
So, is it?
Truth be told, the most honest answer I've heard lately was provided by the managing partner of an AmLaw 25 at the Law Firm Leaders Forum in San Francisco which I attended two weeks ago. Opined he: "China has to be the biggest opportunity in front of us. The key questions are, how big and how fast? The answer is: No one has a clue."
Kevin O'Keefe at Lexblog talked about (the general lack of) Blogging from the ABA TechShow 2007:
As with LegalTech earlier this year in New York, I'm concerned about the lack of blogging from lawyers and legal technology professionals while attending technology conferences. There's WiFi in the conference rooms at all technology conferences today so blogging can be done in a snap. Promoters could find a law student to live blog in a snap - the ABA TechShow's last blog post was 2 days before the event...
...Let's get with it lawyers. We can talk a good talk about being tech savvy and hip. But our conduct lags behind other industries big time.
Anne Reed at Deliberations wrote about Voir Dire questions in her post A Personal Collection Of Voir Dire Questions:
If you'll need to select a jury in the next several months, but you can't work on voir dire questions right now, here's a strategy that might be helpful. Start building a personal collection of juror questionnaires.
They're easy to find. If you set up standing Internet news searches for "juror questionnaire" and "jury questionnaire," you'll hear about high-profile cases where the jurors had to respond to a pretrial questionnaire. Unless the questionnaire is sealed, it's a public document -- available on PACER in federal court, and often through court or newspaper sites in state court.
Matt Conigliaro at Abstract Appeal talked about the Fourth District: Billions and Billions:
Few Florida opinions have circulated among Florida lawyers, and the national news media, as quickly as this decision has traveled.
It's the Fourth District's opinion released yesterday in the appeal of a $1.5 billion verdict entered against Morgan Stanley. The plaintifff company claimed Morgan Stanley lured it to purchase the ultimately worthless shares of Sunbeam, Inc. A jury awarded over $600 million in compensatory damages and $850 million in punitives damages.
A divided Fourth District reversed. The majority held that the plaintiff company's expert testimony on damages failed to establish the fraud-free value of Sunbeam's stock and so failed to provide competent evidence under the plaintiff's "benefit of the bargain" damages theory. The majority also held that the punitive damages award failed as a matter of law in the absence of proof of actual damages.
Lyle Roberts at The 10b-5 Daily wrote about developments in the courts regarding the question, What Is A Deceptive Act?
In two decisions issued last year, the Eighth Circuit and the Ninth Circuit split over the extent to which secondary actors (e.g., accountants, lawyers, or bankers) can be held primarily liable under Rules 10b-5(a) and (c) for deceptive devices, schemes, and acts. The Eighth Circuit limited the scope of potential liability, holding that "any defendant who does not make or affirmatively cause to be made a fraudulent misstatement or omission, or who does not directly engage in manipulative securities trading practices, is at most guilty of aiding and abetting and cannot be held liable under Sec. 10(b) or any subpart of Rule 10b-5." In contrast, the Ninth Circuit created a broader test, finding that "to be liable as a primary violator of Sec. 10(b) for participation in a 'scheme to defraud,' the defendant must have engaged in conduct that had the principal purpose and effect of creating a false appearance of fact in furtherance of the scheme." In a decision issued yesterday, the Fifth Circuit has sided squarely with the Eighth Circuit and limited the scope of liability.
Meanwhile, Broc Romanek at The Corporate Counsel.net Blog noted that SEC Adopts Foreign Private Issuer Deregistration Rules:
Yesterday, the SEC adopted long-awaited rules that will make it easier for foreign private issuers to deregister and terminate their SEC reporting obligations. New Rule 12h-6 and related Form 15F will enable a foreign private issuer meeting specified conditions to terminate its '34 Act reporting obligations. The final rules are similar to those re-proposed with some technical adjustments. Here are opening remarks from Corp Fin - and here are comments from Commissioner Atkins, Nazareth and Campos.
The new rule will be effective 60 days after publication of the SEC adopting release in the Federal Register - it is expected that the adopting release will be published by mid-April so that the rules will be effective by the middle of June. If this happens, calendar year companies will be able to avoid filing a 2006 Form 20-F (for large accelerated filers, the first to require internal control reports under Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley).
Attorney Michael Goldstein at the E-Legal Lawyer talked about How Intellectual Property Assets Affect Estate Taxes.
Michael Geist reported that the DMCA Architect Acknowledges Need For A New Approach:
McGill University hosted an interesting conference today on music and copyright reform. The conference consisted of two panels plus an afternoon of open dialogue and featured an interesting collection of speakers including Bruce Lehman, the architect of the WIPO Internet Treaties and the DMCA, Ann Chaitovitz of the USPTO, Terry Fisher of Harvard Law School, NDP Heritage critic Charlie Angus, famed music producer Sandy Pearlman, and myself.
The most interesting - and surprising - presentation came from Bruce Lehman, who now heads the International Intellectual Property Institute. Lehman explained the U.S. perspective in the early 1990s that led to the DMCA (ie. greater control though TPMs), yet when reflecting on the success of the DMCA acknowledged that "our Clinton administration policies didn't work out very well" and "our attempts at copyright control have not been successful"
And, finally, from the lighter side, Victoria Pynchon at the Settle It Now Negotiation Blog, posted a really funny video clip, for your viewing enjoyment, a parody of Employment Conflict Resolution from the hilarious television series "The Office." Click Here: Win Win Win: Conflict Resolution on The Office
Have a great Sunday...