Law

✒ What a show! P.S.: Looking forward to Michael Lewis’ book.

✒ “The lawsuit relies on the so-called Caremark doctrine, referring to a 1996 Delaware decision involving shareholders suing the directors of a healthcare company over a costly fraud scandal. The Caremark decision held that boards of directors retained a duty of oversight over their companies. The McDonald’s decision widened the scope of Caremark claims beyond … Read More

✒ Explanation by Jim Harra, Head of HM Revenue & Customs: “Carelessness is a concept in tax law, it can be relevant to whether someone is liable for a penalty for an error in their tax affairs. There are no penalties for innocent errors in their tax affairs — so if you take reasonable care but nevertheless … Read More

✒ The legislation with “EU-origin” has become so intertwined with the UK-law such that the untangling will be very challenging and definitely will take time. Some argues that the timeline outlined by proposed Retained EU Law (REUL) Bill, which aims at “purging” the UK statute book of unwanted EU regulations, is unrealistic and ill-conceived, and … Read More

✒ The European Court of Justice (ECJ) ruled on 22nd November that open access to the ultimate-beneficial ownership (UBO) registries violate owners’ right to privacy and thus struck down an EU directive that opened them to the public. This will have impacts as to how money-laundering cases are investigated, how international sanctions are to be … Read More

✒ “Holmes’ crimes were not failing, they were lying — lying in the most serious context, where everyone needed her to tell the truth,” prosecutors wrote.

✒ The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of the UK marks the first time that the regulator bars ads by a bank on greenwashing grounds, setting a precedent for the financial sector. Any future ads by HSBC that include environmental claims have to be “adequately qualified”, and “not omit material information” about its contribution to greenhouse … Read More

✒ How to walk away from a signed deal.

✒ The staff claimed that the firm was indirectly liable for the negligence of the manager who organised the drinks and “failed to take reasonable care for the safety of co-workers”. In the (work) email invitation, the manager stated: “I expect absolute attendance from all those who attended last year’s invitational. Nothing short of a … Read More

✒ Fighting back against China trademark squatters.

✒ Legal practitioners have described the new law passed in Russia — which provided the country with the ability to use foreign patents without the consent of the patent holders and without paying royalties — in effect an “act of war”. It sends the message that intellectual property rights don’t need to be respected. Could … Read More

✒ SPACs have become an increasingly popular means for going public in recent years, with a record 617 SPAC going public globally in 2021 worth a combined $172.2 billion, according to data from Dealogic. Meanwhile, SPAC IPOs rose to account for more than 60% of all IPOs in 2021, while SPAC mergers accounted for more … Read More

✒ The physical world of work is regulated by national legal frameworks. But there is no national boundaries in the metaverse, so where is the jurisdiction with the greater connection to the work? The law of the country where the company owning the platform is? The law of the country where the servers are based? … Read More

✒ Besides the potentially onerous clauses, the use of Chinese law to govern cross-border loan could also be a concern, as a lawyer opined: “The absence of case precedent in Chinese law means there would be a wide degree of discretion for courts to rule in a dispute. You also have to consider that English … Read More

✒  The verdicts — guilty on four counts of defrauding investors in Theranos — represented a landmark decision in Silicon Valley, where few start-up founders have faced such public legal reckonings. The two sides of the debate: On the one hand, “enthusiastic optimism” is the spirit of entrepreneurship, and “hype” is intrinsic to the Silicon … Read More

✒ The law that provides social-media platforms a safe harbor.

✒ I have seen a few in the course of my career, not all of them pleasant.

✒ Law schools can charge higher and higher amounts knowing that students can tap the U.S. government’s Grad Plus loan program (the fastest-growing federal student-loan program). Some statistics: Over the past decade, Miami has increased law-school tuition and fees by 43%, to $57,000 for the coming school year, according to American Bar Association data. That’s … Read More

✒ A case about the dangers of intense stress and letting emotions undermine one’s judgment. “I regret letting anger get the best of me,” Mr. Kamensky says.

✒Public Law 101: written or unwritten?