According to analyst firm Gartner, on average it will cost your organization $1,400 to fulfill one consumer request for data, which is required by the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), GDPR. Companies are expecting to receive hundreds to thousands of consumer requests each year. Do you have an efficient process in-place to process these requests?

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“LegalZoom, the leading provider of online legal help, announced today that Nicole Miller will join the company as General Counsel. In this role, Miller will lead the company’s legal organization and provide strategic guidance on compliance, risk management, and corporate governance,” reported by LegalZoom in BusinessWire.

“Miller joins LegalZoom from The Honest Company, where she served as General Counsel, building the legal and compliance teams from the ground up, and leading them to manage the commercial, corporate and risk sides of the business. Under her leadership, those teams created a legal infrastructure that enabled them to support fast-paced growth, and positioned the company for success. Prior to The Honest Company, Miller practiced corporate law at the law offices of Cooley and Gibson Dunn & Crutcher. She received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and her law degree from the University of Texas School of Law. Prior to law school, Miller worked on legislative policy in the California State Senate.”

Read the article.

“The Fourth Court of Appeals of Texas overturned a jury verdict awarding HouseCanary, Inc. (“HouseCanary”) $740 million in damages for trade secret theft and fraud against Title Source, Inc., now known as Amrock,” reports Mena Gaballah, PharmD and Joshua M. Rychlinski in Crowell Moring’s Trade Secrets Trends.

“Amrock and HouseCanary are competitors in the real estate sector. Amrock provides title insurance, property valuations, and settlement services in real estate transactions. HouseCanary is a real estate analytics company that developed software to determine property values. HouseCanary agreed to provide this software to Amrock, and, according to HouseCanary, Amrock reversed engineered it. After the relationship between the two broke down, Amrock sued HouseCanary for breach of contract and fraud, and HouseCanary counterclaimed for breach of contract, fraud, misappropriation of trade secrets, among other claims. The jury found for HouseCanary, awarding it compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorney’s fees.”

Read the article.

“A total of $26.1 million of the $143 million Merrimack Valley gas explosion class-action settlement was earmarked for payment of legal fees and administrative costs,” report Jill Harmacinski in The Eagle-Tribune.

“And yet, some victims are being asked to pay an 11% fee to get their checks, which are compensation for everything from spoiled food and property damage, to lodging costs, mental anguish and other fallout from the Sept. 13, 2018 gas disaster.”

“The first round of checks was recently issued with an average settlement payment of $8,000. Eleven percent of that payment is $880.”

“As of Friday, a spokesperson for Attorney General Maura Healey said the office had heard from eight recipients about the fee being assessed by attorney David Raimondo of the Raimondo Law Firm. Healey’s office is looking into this.”

Read the article.

“Gov. Steve Sisolak on Sunday called for an investigation into the arrests of several legal observers at a protest against police brutality this weekend on the Strip,” reports David Ferrara in Las Vegas Review Journal’s local news.

“At least seven attorneys and law students who documented interactions with police and demonstrators were taken to jail late Saturday.”

“News of the arrests drew condemnation from public officials and attorneys on social media.”

“Attorneys are trained to ‘take notes and not engage with either side.’”

Read the article.

MIAMI, June 17, 2020 – Global law firm Reed Smith today announced that Felipe Berer has joined the firm as a partner in the Miami office in the Global Disputes Group. Berer is also a member of the firm’s Latin America Business Team. Formerly head of the Brazil practice at Akerman LLP, Berer represents multinational companies doing business in the United States, Brazil, and throughout Latin America. He has significant experience advising Brazilian companies in a wide array of industries on cross-border commercial disputes, litigation and arbitration, and insolvency matters both in the US and in Brazil.

An internationally recognized lawyer, Berer is dual licensed in the US and Brazil and a native Portuguese speaker whose clients include Fortune 500 companies and some of the largest and most successful Brazilian conglomerates and investors. Sometimes acting in the capacity of outside general counsel, he works with companies that are often involved in parallel litigation in both jurisdictions. In addition, he advises Brazilian companies that are creditors or debtors in bankruptcy and insolvency proceedings related to Chapter 11 and Chapter 15 filings in the US, or where there is a Brazilian insolvency recognized in the US. He also regularly advises international clients on a wide array of matters, including trade policy, export controls and sanctions under US and Brazilian laws, contract negotiations, especially supply and distribution agreements, and government affairs in Brazil.

Berer has been ranked by Chambers Global for eight consecutive years, 2013-2020, in the International Trade (USA) category as the only Foreign Expert for Brazil based in the United States.

Berer began his legal career at Barbosa, Müssnich, & Aragão Advogados in Rio de Janeiro. He later practiced at Bryan Cave and Mayer Brown before joining Akerman in 2012. He received his LL.B. from Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro and his LL.M. from Georgetown University Law Center. He is a former president and current member of the advisory council of the Brazilian-American Chamber of Commerce of Florida, serves on the advisory board of the Brazil-Florida Business Council, and is on the board of directors of Georgetown University’s Club of Miami.

Geyser to lead national appellate and Supreme Court practice

DALLAS – Daniel L. Geyser, one of the nation’s leading Supreme Court and appellate lawyers, has joined the Dallas office of Texas-based appellate firm Alexander Dubose & Jefferson LLP (ADJ). Highly regarded for his work and high-profile wins before the U.S. Supreme Court, Geyser will serve as chair of the firm’s U.S. Supreme Court and Federal Appellate Practice and will focus on complex and high-stakes appellate litigation.

Geyser’s 18-year legal career is punctuated with an impressive list of accomplishments. Prior to joining the firm, he was one of the few lawyers in private practice to argue eight merits cases in the U.S. Supreme Court’s past three terms, prevailing in matters that industry experts said could not be won. He had three certiorari petitions granted in a 12-month period and personally handled over 5 percent of the Court’s merits docket for October Term 2018. In 2019, Law360 named him an “Appellate MVP,” an honor awarded to only four lawyers in the United States. Most recently, both Chambers USA and The Legal 500 recognized Geyser as one of the nation’s leading Supreme Court and appellate lawyers. He has argued more cases in the U.S. Supreme Court in private practice than any other active lawyer in Texas.

Beyond the Supreme Court, Geyser handles high-stakes appellate matters nationwide. He has argued cases in the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fifth, Seventh, Eighth, Ninth (including before the en banc court), Eleventh, and Federal Circuits, and briefed still other cases before the First, Sixth, and D.C. Circuits. He has special expertise at the rehearing stage where he has recently handled high-stakes cases involving subjects such as securities, patents, ERISA, arbitration, and bankruptcy. In addition to an active federal practice, Geyser has handled landmark appeals in state courts, including arguing seven times in the Texas Supreme Court.

Before launching his own practice, Geyser was the appellate chair at Stris & Maher, leading that firm to the National Law Journal’s “Appellate Hot List” and a national appellate ranking in Chambers USA. He also practiced with an elite appellate team at Munger, Tolles & Olson in their Los Angeles office where he received the State Bar of California’s Wiley W. Manuel Award for Pro Bono Legal Services (2006) and was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Pro Bono Panel. From 2007-2011, Geyser served in the Office of the Solicitor General of Texas, where he conducted and supervised appellate litigation for the State.

Geyser graduated Phi Beta Kappa with honors and distinction from Stanford University and received his law degree with honors from Harvard Law School. During law school, he was the Notes Chair of the Harvard Law Review, a best-brief winner and oralist on the championship team of Harvard’s moot-court competition, and a research assistant to Professor Laurence H. Tribe, working on his academic writing and appellate docket. After completing his J.D., he clerked for the Hon. Alex Kozinski of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

About Alexander Dubose & Jefferson

Attorneys at Alexander Dubose & Jefferson LLP collaborate closely with clients at all stages of litigation. The firm provides multiple layers of experience and expertise, including: pretrial strategy to maximize the odds of a favorable outcome at trial; in-trial support including error preservation, issue identification, trial briefing, and jury-charge work; and post-trial management of all aspects of the appeal. The firm has offices in Austin, Dallas, and Houston. In addition to former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson, the firm’s lawyers include a former Chief Justice of the Austin Court of Appeals, a former Justice of the Houston (14th) Court of Appeals, and multiple former staff attorneys and law clerks of the Supreme Court of Texas and the U.S. Courts of Appeals for the Fifth, Sixth, and Ninth Circuits. The firm also has numerous lawyers recognized for excellence in Texas appellate law by Chambers USA, America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, Best Lawyers in America, and Texas Super Lawyers. To learn more about Alexander Dubose & Jefferson, visit https://www.adjtlaw.com.

Media Contact:
Jennie Bui-McCoy
800-559-4534
jennie@androvett.com

“Following the declaration of a global pandemic due to the widespread transmission of the coronavirus (COVID-19), the issuance of shutdown and/or stay-at-home directives cascaded from commercial enterprises and state and local governments across the United States,” write Levi McAllister, Michael M. Philipp and Katherine Dobson Buckly in Morgan Lewis’ Power & Pipes blog.

“During this period of extreme disruption to daily routine, the continuity and integrity of energy operations were necessary to ensure that the massive shift to home-based life could exist with minimal business disruption. Front- and back-office personnel engaged in trading energy commodities quickly transitioned to a work-from-home (WFH) posture, ensuring that their firms could preserve market access for production or output while also consummating the transactions needed to procure an adequate fuel source, managing price exposure to highly volatile commodity prices, or executing preexisting trading strategies.”

Read the article.

“Now, more than ever, clients and their advisors need to revisit contract forms on which they may have been relying for years. While many of us have lived through times that required certain adjustments in how we viewed contractual obligations — recessions, wars, oil embargoes, natural disasters, 9/11 — none of these events had the widespread and long-lasting impact that the current COVID-19 pandemic is having. None of these events shut down the U.S. economy and impacted global supply chains across every industry in the manner we are now experiencing,” warns Lori S. Smith in Taking Care of Business’s Contracts.

“With this in mind, there is a need to figure out what the ‘new normal’ will look like for contract negotiations in a post-pandemic world. Business professionals need to now anticipate more widespread disruption than we could have ever before imagined. It isn’t just force majeure clauses or material adverse effect provisions, as these will likely add pandemics and government shutdowns to their ever-growing list of contemplated risks, if they were not already expressly covered. And it is not clear, at least in the near-term, whether a resurgence or mutation of COVID-19 or the emergence of another virus can truly be seen as unforeseeable in a post-COVID world. The issues are much more fundamental to the approach that parties may take in negotiating contracts. Commercial contracts between purchasers, vendors, distributors, licensors and licensees will need to evaluate allocation of risk from both sides and come to a new happy medium that all can live with in an ever-evolving world. While parties should review their standard contracts in their entirety,” he provides some key provisions to think about.

Read the article.

“For the past three months there has been a lot of information about Covid-19.  What is not clear is how insurance policies, in particular, commercial insurance policies do or do not provide coverage for losses experienced because of Covid-19 or government reaction to Covid-19,” discusses Mark S. Humphreys in his Dallas Fort Worth Insurance Lawyer Blog.

“In the wake of government orders shutting down or seriously limiting the operations of businesses to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak, many affected businesses have turned to their insurers for coverage.  This has led to a flurry of lawsuits across the nation seeking rulings that such claims are covered and asserting that the failure to accept such claims constitutes breaches of contract, bad faith, and other common law and statutory violations.”

“Perhaps anticipating that courts may find these purported losses not covered under applicable policies of insurance, insureds have begun to look elsewhere for relief, including to insurance brokers, as demonstrated by three recent lawsuits: Sean Boutros, M.D., P.A. v. Sentinel Insurance Co. Ltd., John’s Grill v. The Hartford Financial Services Group, Inc., and Ybarra Investments, Inc. v. Scottsdale Insurance Company.  In all three cases, insureds sought business interruption coverage after their businesses were forced to shut down due to COVID-19, and all three sued the insurer and the broker through which they purchased the insurance.”

Read the article.

“Amazon faces increased competition scrutiny even as the pandemic sends its retail business skyrocketing,” reports in Isobel Asher Hamilton in Business Insider.

“Investigators in two US states, California and Washington, are reportedly gearing up to launch antitrust probes into Amazon over whether it uses its marketplace to favor its own products over those of third-party sellers.”

“In addition to being individually scrutinized, Amazon is being folded into more general national antitrust investigations into big tech. Axios reported Saturday a House tech competition probe has written to the CEOs of Amazon, Apple, Alphabet, and Facebook requesting they testify in July. The letters sent by the committee reportedly contained reminders that subpoenas could be used to compel CEOs to testify and provide documents.”

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“ANSER, a not-for-profit corporation dedicated to public service in the fields of national security, homeland security, and public safety, announces the appointment of Susan Herlick as Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. In this role, Ms. Herlick will lead ANSER’s legal, compliance, and governance functions. Ms. Herlick succeeds MG Daniel V. Wright, USA (Ret.) who retired from ANSER in April after ten years with the company,” reports ANSER via Cision PR Newswire.

“Ms. Herlick is an experienced corporate legal and business executive who most recently served as Vice President, General Counsel and Risk Management for the North American operations of Keolis SA, a French global leader in operating public transportation systems. Ms. Herlick previously served as Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary of Orbital Sciences Corporation, a publicly traded aerospace and defense government contractor.  Earlier in her career she was a lawyer in the Washington, DC offices of Hogan Lovells.”

“Ms. Herlick received her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from Carleton College in Minnesota, and her Juris Doctor Degree with high honors from George Washington University National Law Center in Washington, DC.”

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Barnes & Thornburg has added John M. Moye as a partner in the firm’s Litigation Department. Moye is the eighth attorney to join the Atlanta office since the beginning of the year.

An experienced business litigator, Moye concentrates his practice in the areas of technology and software litigation, trade secrets and restrictive covenants, complex commercial litigation, and telecommunications law.

Moye has served as lead counsel in numerous federal and state court proceedings throughout the United States, representing companies and manufacturers in a range of complex commercial disputes, intellectual property matters, trade secret and restrictive covenant cases, and software implementation disputes. He also has advised large telecommunications providers engaged in clashes over Long-Term Evolution (LTE) technology provisions and class actions arising out of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

Moye also champions numerous pro bono efforts and works closely with the Atlanta Volunteer Lawyers Foundation. The Georgia Immigration and Asylum Network named him as the organization’s “Volunteer Attorney of the Year” for his work representing detained immigrants from Central America in federal asylum proceedings.

Moye’s legal experience runs even deeper, having served from 2008 to 2015 as an adjunct professor at the UNC School of Law. Earlier in his career, Moye worked as a reporter for Forbes Magazine, where he wrote about technology issues, startups and entrepreneurs.

“The Law Offices of Jeffrey Lohman has faced some significant setbacks in litigation with Navient purporting that Lohman’s office set up TCPA lawsuits in violation of RICO. While no substantive ruling has been entered in that suit yet, the Court has at least preliminarily found that emails between Lohman and his clients are discoverable pursuant to the crime-fraud exception to the A/C privilege,” reports Eric J. Troutman in

“But Lohman’s office had a better day … in a suit in federal court in Missouri.”

“The Johnson case is quite different from the Navient matter in that it is not a RICO case and does not directly challenge Lohman’s (alleged) conduct of encouraging folks to stop payment to create possible TCPA lawsuits. Rather the suit involves the relationship between Lohman and something called Burlington Financial Group, which allegedly took $2,500.00 from the Plaintiff for debt services it (allegedly) never provided.”

“Lohman’s role in the overall transaction appears to be pretty limited.”

Read the article.

The International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC) has announced that Parwana Noorzad, an attorney at Quarles & Brady LLP in Indianapolis, has accepted an invitation to join the IADC, the preeminent invitation-only global legal organization for attorneys who represent corporate and insurance interests.

“I am honored to be invited as a new member of the International Association of Defense Counsel,” Ms. Noorzad said. “I look forward to participating in the educational and professional development opportunities IADC provides and I am excited to work alongside other defense lawyers and insurance executives who are members of this prestigious organization.”
A member of her firm’s Litigation & Dispute Resolution Practice Group, Ms. Noorzad concentrates her practice in product liability litigation. She represents domestic and international manufacturers of a variety of products in litigation in state and federal courts across the United States. Prior to joining Quarles & Brady, she was a deputy prosecutor for the Marion County Prosecutor’s Office, Special Victim’s Unit, where she prosecuted major felony cases.

Ms. Noorzad serves on the board of directors and as secretary of the Indianapolis Legal Aid Society, which works to ensure that qualified, low-income persons living in central Indiana have immediate and direct access to quality legal assistance. She also serves as the social media vice chair of the DRI Women in the Law Committee, which supports the career advancement of women by providing a form for leadership, education, and professional development. In addition, she recently served on the board of directors and as treasurer of Legacy House, an Indianapolis nonprofit agency that provides counseling and advocacy to victims of violence.

Ms. Noorzad received her J.D. from the Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts (with high distinction) from Indiana University Bloomington.

About the International Association of Defense Counsel
The IADC is the preeminent invitation-only global legal organization for attorneys who represent corporate and insurance interests. Founded in 1920, the IADC has members who hail from six continents, 51 countries and territories, and all 50 U.S. states. The core purposes of the IADC are to enhance the development of skills, promote professionalism, and facilitate camaraderie among its members and their clients, as well as the broader civil justice community. For more information, visit www.iadclaw.org.

“If you sue someone for fraud, you can win punitive damages in addition to regular compensatory damages,” explains Lee E. Berlik in Berlik Law’s Contracts.

“If you’re suing only for breach of contract, punitive damages are a no-go. As punitive damages can add up to $350,000 to the value of the plaintiff’s claim, plaintiffs naturally try to add fraud claims to their breach-of-contract lawsuits whenever possible. The “source of duty” rule, however, limits the circumstances under which plaintiffs can pursue such a strategy. The rule provides that tort claims (like fraud) can only be pursued if the source of the duty allegedly breached is the common law and not a contract entered into between the parties. The Virginia Supreme Court has clarified in recent years that if a fraudulent misrepresentation is made within a contract, the plaintiff is limited to contract remedies, but if a misrepresentation is made for the purpose of inducing another party to enter into a contract, a separate fraud claim can be pursued.”

Read the article.

“Two decades after Florida reached a landmark legal settlement with tobacco companies, an appeals court is slated to hear arguments Tuesday in a dispute about more than $100 million in payments,” reports News Service of Florida in Florida Politics.

“R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. wants the 4th District Court of Appeal to overturn a ruling that said the company is responsible for making payments to the state related to four brands of cigarettes: Salem, Winston, Kool and Maverick.”

“R.J. Reynolds was part of the 1997 settlement in which cigarette makers agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars a year to the state because of smoking-related health costs and, in exchange, received liability protections. An R.J. Reynolds parent company in 2015 sold the four cigarette brands to ITG Brands, LLC, which was not part of the settlement. As a result of the sale, R.J. Reynolds contends it is no longer responsible for making payments linked to the four brands.”

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Farrell Fritz is pleased to announce that Jacklyn A. Zitelli has been appointed to the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center Board of Directors.

Jacklyn, a Jericho, NY, resident, is counsel in the firm’s real estate practice group. She earned her J.D. from St. John’s University School of Law and her B.A. from Syracuse University.

For over 60 years, the North Shore Child & Family Guidance Center has been dedicated to restoring and strengthening the emotional well-being of children and their families. The Guidance Center helps children and families address issues such as depression and anxiety; developmental delays; bullying; teen pregnancy; sexual abuse; teen drug and alcohol abuse; and family crises stemming from illness, death, trauma and divorce.

“Britain’s biggest domestic bank Lloyds has been fined 64 million pounds ($81.2 million) by the Financial Conduct Authority for mistreating hundreds of thousands of mortgage customers in financial difficulties,” reports in Reuters’ Business News.

“Lloyds and its Bank of Scotland and The Mortgage Business units were also in the process of paying around 300 million pounds in redress to 526,000 customers, the FCA said in a statement on Thursday.”

“The fine is the largest imposed by the watchdog for mortgage-related failures, and would have been 91.5 million pounds had Lloyds not agreed to accept the watchdog’s findings early on.”

“The hefty penalty comes at a sensitive time for Lloyds, which along with rival banks has millions of customers struggling to make ends meet in the coronavirus pandemic, with many taking repayment holidays on mortgages.”

Read the article.