I’m a trial lawyer for injured people and businesses at The Beasley Firm. Founded in 1958, we have recovered over $2 billion for our clients through hundreds of verdicts and settlements in excess of $1 million. We’re listed in Super Lawyers, Best Lawyers in America, U.S. News’s Top Lawyers, [...]
Doing Business On A Handshake
As regular readers know, I've spent the last two weeks trying a case with one of our firm's of-counsel, Francis Malofiy. Last Friday, after 15 hours of deliberations, the jury returned a verdict in favor of our client on all six questions — relating to the nature of the agreement, damages, whether our client breached his obligations, whether defendants would get a set-off, and when the statute of limitations began to run — and awarded him $4.17 million in damages. The vote was 10–2, which is good enough under Pennsylvania law. The judge kindly let the attorneys talk with the ... Continue Reading
Valuation of Minority Shareholder Interests In Oppression, Fiduciary Duty, And Contract Cases
Yesterday afternoon, the defendants in my trial dumped a twenty-one page brief on me, requesting the Court preclude our business valuation expert from testifying, arguing that we had “a bogus valuation expert" whose “report is a sham” describing a “topsy-turvy world” in support of “Plaintiff’s belief that he can obtain a windfall through a whimsical and inflated valuation of this business" — and that was all just in the introduction. It seems somebody needs to read #4 on my advice for litigators. Naturally, within less than a day I filed a detailed response, explaining why our expert was fine, and why the ... Continue Reading
In Defense Of The DOJ’s Antitrust Lawsuit Against Apple And E-Book Publishers
Big waves were made yesterday with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) filing an antitrust lawsuit against Apple and five of the six largest publishers of trade books in the United States, together comprising over half of the New York Times fiction and non-fiction bestseller lists. Here's the complaint. The lawsuit alleges (as best can be summarized in one sentence) that, after Amazon introduced $9.99 pricing of popular e-books, Apple conspired with the publishers so they would all simultaneously move from the "wholesale" model (where retailers set their own price after buying at a set price from distributors) to an "agency" model ... Continue Reading
Martin Lipton Is Wrong About Harvard’s Shareholder Rights Project
Over the past two weeks, one of the enduring questions of corporate governance — whether boards of directors are re-elected entirely every year of if their terms are "staggered" so that only a fraction of the directors (often 1/3 or 1/4) are up for vote every year — jumped back into public discussion. Steven Davidoff wrote about it on March 20th, with a thorough post, The Case Against Staggered Boards, that synthesized the issues well and linked to many of the core academic papers on the subject. As Davidoff asked: According to the data provider FactSet SharkRepellent, 302 S.&P. 500 companies had ... Continue Reading
Google’s New Antitrust Liability With Search Plus Your World And The Chrome SEO Penalty
[UPDATE: Just a few days after I wrote this post based on the Chrome issue, Google released their biggest change in a decade, the "Search Plus Your World" feature that directly integrates results from Google properties like Google+ and Picasa into standard Google search results. That change — a mixing of search with Google verticals, or church and state, so to speak — raises the antitrust stakes considerably. Twitter has already raised alarms. The antitrust analysis for "Search Plus Your World" is the same as for the Chrome SEO penalty, because it would also be alleged to be 'exclusionary conduct.' ... Continue Reading
Do Paterno And Spanier Have Golden Parachutes At Penn State?
The Sandusky child molestation scandal at Penn State continues to be the biggest legal news in Pennsylvania. One lawsuit against Penn State and the Second Mile has already been filed, presumably because the victim was either nearing, or had already passed, the statute of limitations. A civil lawsuit can be filed at any point after a criminal act, though in that case the civil litigation is usually put on hold until the criminal case is finished. I've already discussed most of the issues in the cases that could be filed by sexual abuse survivors in my previous post, linked above, ... Continue Reading
NFL Lockout Injunction Reversal: Using Labor Law Against Employees
Big news in the sporting and antitrust litigation worlds — which overlap considerably — on Friday when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit (which hears all appeals in federal cases filed in the states between North Dakota, Minnesota, Arkansas, and Nebraska), reversed a preliminary injunction imposed by the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota prohibiting the NFL owners from imposing a “lockout” on players. The order is posted here; when I reference Opinion and Bye Dissent below, I'm referring to that PDF. Two judges, Colloton and Benton (both appointed by George W. Bush — hold that ... Continue Reading
More Selective Statutory Interpretation By The United States Supreme Court
One of the nice things about the being a Justice of the United States Supreme Court is that you never have to explain yourself. You don't have to ask questions at oral argument. You don't have to read the briefs filed by the parties, not really, because you can interpret the facts stated and arguments raised however you want. You certainly don't have to be consistent across your own opinions. In one case, you can make an argument inconsistent with the argument you made in another case. Few people will notice and, worse, fewer will care, because caring about the ... Continue Reading
Preventing Investment Fraud, From New World Silver To Goldman Sachs
Although the big financial meltdown began around 2007, financial fraud lawsuits are still all the rage among trial lawyers these days. It usually takes a couple months for an investor to realize they’ve been swindled by a bank and a couple years for the lawsuits to be investigated, filed, litigated, and then sent to trial. I’ve written before here that banks have only minimal fiduciary duties to depositors, but they do have some duties to their clients. Chief among those duties: the bank can’t steal from its own clients. Yet, it happens, and happens a lot. Sometimes the banks just ... Continue Reading
The HuffingtonPost Bloggers Class Action Lawsuit Won’t Go Anywhere
Writing has always been a tough business, one dependent upon unorthodox forms of compensation. Charles Dickens' novels used to come with advertisements for alpaca umbrellas and quack medical treatments. One of Toni Morrison's books was loaded with ads for cigarettes, the New York Times just put up an expensive but easily avoided paywall. Which brings us to the Huffington Post, long despised by other writers who resented its obsession with search engine optimization and by SEO professionals who resented its success in repackaging other's content. But nobody hated the Huffington Post as much as its own bloggers, the folks who generated a ton of its content ... Continue Reading
