In Texas, there are differing standards for enforcing arbitration, forum-selection, and contractual jury-waiver clauses. Texas courts liberally enforce arbitration clauses, notwithstanding the fact that a party waives its constitutional right to a jury trial and has a very limited right to appeal an...   MORE>>

I. Introduction

Supreme Court Justices Antonin Scalia and William Brennan, Jr. share the same religious background – Roman Catholicism. But that may be all they have in common. In their time on the nation’s highest court, the two men have routinely expressed conflicting views, particularly...   MORE>>

In August 2008, the Congress passed the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of 2008, which requires the establishment of a public database on which the Consumer Product Safety Commission (“CPSC”) will make publicly available reported incidents involving consumer products.[1] While specific...   MORE>>

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, addressing an issue of first impression within the circuit, recently held that when the United States declines to intervene in a qui tam action brought by a private party (i.e., a relator) under the False Claims Act (FCA), the relator’s False Claim...   MORE>>

The trial, appeals and tribulations of Alvin and Donna Gebhart underscore the continuing confusion regarding the application of the “good faith” defense and the basis for charging recklessness in securities fraud cases. During the past four years, Mr. and Mrs. Gebhart have been found not liable...   MORE>>

There are several recent Texas courts of appeals' opinions that view contractual jury waivers differently from, and more stringently than, arbitration clauses. This is an important issue to parties conducting business in Texas as the use of contractual jury waivers has continued to increase.

I. W...   MORE>>

I. INTRODUCTION

"[A]dministrative agencies must apply the same basic rules to all similarly situated supplicants. An agency cannot merely flit serendipitously from case to case, like a bee buzzing from flower to flower, making up the rules as it goes along.” [1] The responsibility of an agen...   MORE>>

The recent case of Gebhart v. SEC, 2007 U.S. App. LEXIS 27183 (9th Cir. 2007), underscores the continuing confusion regarding the application of recklessness in securities fraud cases.

In Gebhart, the Ninth Circuit remanded an appeal from an SEC decision because the agency failed to apply the co...   MORE>>

The December 1, 2006 amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (commonly referred to as the "E-Discovery Rules") added the term "electronically stored information" ("ESI") to the vocabulary of the legal profession. The term ESI is the evolution of the phrase "data or data compilations," whi...   MORE>>

Since the 1970’s, the phrase “data compilations” has been used to describe a category of discoverable information. Although most courts and litigators interpreted this phrase to include computerized records, some questioned if the phrase included all types of electronic records and files. The ...   MORE>>