FisherBroyles, LLP has expanded its Cyber-Risk; Privacy & Data Security practice group with the arrival of new partner Stuart Panensky. Based in the firm’s Princeton, N.J. office, Panensky is the former co-chair of a boutique insurance law firm’s Cyber-Risk, Technology & Data Security practice group.

“Privacy and data security are very current issues with which the leadership of all of our clients are dealing,” said FisherBroyles, LLP General Counsel and Managing Partner of Litigation Joel M. Ferdinand. “The importance of offering the full spectrum of cyber and privacy legal services is absolutely unmistakable. Having Stu on board will allow us to further meet the cyber liability needs of our clients and, in particular, bolster the firm’s data breach incident response and technology liability capabilities. Stu will be an exciting addition to the Cyber-Risk; Privacy & Data Security and Litigation practice groups.”

Panensky said, “I am so pleased to be part of a firm that truly appreciates the relationship between cyber-risk, technology and privacy. This is a unique opportunity for me to offer my clients FisherBroyles’ full suite of privacy counseling. I am also very impressed with FisherBroyles’ own embrace of technology, as well as its deep bench in the privacy and technology areas across multiple industry sectors.”

Panensky is a business attorney and commercial litigator. His practice is concentrated in cyber-risk/technology, design professional and construction litigation, environmental liability, and other miscellaneous professional liability.

In a release, the firm said Panensky leads breach response investigations and provides legal advice on the nature of cyber occurrences, scope of data exfiltration, obligations to notify impacted consumers and/or state and federal government regulators, as well as contractual obligations to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. As breach counsel, Panensky is networked with other breach response vendors (IT, forensics, e-discovery, public relations, breach notification and others) and coordinates them in data breach response efforts including print and email notification, call-center management, credit monitoring and restoration services, and other cyber-incident response activity.

The firm said Panensky provides legal counsel related to pre-breach cyber-risk preparedness including, without limitation, drafting incident response planning documents, hosting mock-breach “tabletop” presentations to clients, opining on privacy and data and information security company policies, and reviewing technology vendor/provider contract agreements and scope documents. He previously served as co-chair of the Claims & Litigation Management Alliance’s Cyber Liability Committee and frequently speaks and writes on cyber-risk.

Prior to joining FisherBroyles, Panensky was a partner at Traub Lieberman Straus & Shrewsberry LLP. He is admitted to practice law in state and federal courts in New Jersey and New York and has been recognized as a New Jersey Super Lawyer or Rising Star on multiple occasions. Mr. Panensky received his J.D. from Syracuse University College of Law and his Bachelor of Science in Cinema Studies from Ithaca College.

Jason Lewis and Jason Hopkins have joined DLA Piper’s Litigation practice as partners in Dallas.

Lewis is a former enforcement attorney with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission who handles civil and criminal regulatory investigations and litigation matters. His practice focuses on SEC enforcement, government investigations, internal corporate investigations, FCPA matters, white collar criminal defense, securities litigation, crisis management and business disputes.

Hopkins focuses on securities litigation, including defending civil and criminal investigations and lawsuits brought by the SEC, FINRA, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, IRS and DOJ, as well as state securities agencies and state attorneys general.

“Jason and Jason are talented trial lawyers with considerable experience in high-stakes criminal and civil matters,” said Loren Brown, co-chair of DLA Piper’s global and US Litigation practices. “They immediately enhance both our growing litigation team in Dallas and our trial bench nationally.”

“These additions will enhance our growing platform in Dallas, a crucial market for many clients, as we continue to expand there and across the state,” said Marc Katz, managing partner of the firm’s Dallas office. “They bring strong reputations as high-caliber individuals and attorneys who have a phenomenal litigation and regulatory investigation practice. We are extremely excited to welcome them to the firm.”

The firm’s expansion in Texas this year has also included Litigation partners Rob Hoffman, Michael Moore and Matthew Nickel; Employment partners Marc Katz and Isabel Crosby; and Corporate partner Steven Bartz in Dallas. In Austin, the firm recently welcomed Corporate partners David Parrish, Nicole Brennig, Elise Green, Philip Svahn, Sara Stinnett and Richard Cardillo.

Lewis and Hopkins join from Greenberg Traurig LLP. Lewis received his J.D. from Cornell Law School and his B.A. from the University of Oklahoma. Hopkins received his J.D. from the College of William and Mary and his B.A. from the University of Mississippi.

Foley Gardere LLP announced that Cynthia Harkness has joined the firm’s Finance practice as Of Counsel in the Austin office. Harkness joins Foley from Haddad Legal Group, P.C. where she was the head of the Business Transaction practice.

In a release, the firm said that, for more than 30 years, Harkness has counseled global businesses ranging from start-ups to large corporate entities in financial and structured transactions, mergers and acquisitions, dispositions of assets and entities, and creating and dismantling business entities. She also has experience counseling clients with regard to corporate bankruptcies, restructurings, risk management, licensing, and compliance and employment arrangements. Harkness advises clients in domestic and international financial and capital markets, as well as in the corporate, real estate, consumer and energy sectors.

Before entering private practice, Harkness was the general counsel of the Gapstone Group LLC; general counsel of The Weston Group; and senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary of Fieldstone Investment Corporation/Fieldstone Mortgage Company. She also has worked in varying in-house positions at Constellation Power Source, Inc., Enron Broadband Services, Enron Wholesale and Crédit Agricole Indosuez.

“Cynthia’s diverse transactional practice paired with her extensive in-house counsel experience provides our team with a unique perspective as we help our clients tackle some of today’s toughest issues,” said Laura Bilas, chair of Foley’s Finance practice.

The firm said Harkness also has business management experience and has been called upon to help clients build legal, compliance, human resources and quality control departments. As it relates to aiding human resource departments, Harkness has experience drafting and implementing policies and procedures, online training and online performance-management systems.

“Cynthia will be a great addition to Foley Gardere and to our Austin office as we expand our capabilities and services in the private equity and corporate practices,” said Kimberly Yelkin, managing partner of Foley Gardere’s Austin office.

Harkness also is a qualified as a FINRA Non-Public arbitrator.

The Washington Post reports that Facebook’s disclosure that its search tools were used to collect data on most of its 2.2 billion users could potentially trigger record fines and create new legal vulnerability for not having prevented risks to user data, three former federal officials said.

“The three former officials, all of whom were at the Federal Trade Commission during the privacy investigation that led to a 2011 consent decree with Facebook, said the company’s latest mishap may violate the decree’s provisions requiring the implementation of a privacy program,” according to reporters Craig Timberg and Tony Romm.

They quote David Vladeck, who was head of the FTC’s bureau of consumer protection when the decree was drafted and signed by Facebook, as saying that Facebook could face fines of $1 billion or more for this and the mishap in which Cambridge Analytica improperly gained access to information on as many as 87 million Facebook users.

Read the Post report.

The renewable energy industry, now designated as a technology and innovation-related area of special concern to the protection of the U.S. industrial and scientific base, is one of seven sectors that the U.S. Trade Representative recently identified as being of significant national security concern, writes Stephen Paul Mahinka in the Power & Pipes blog for Morgan Lewis.

“The USTR’s primary concern in its investigation was with acquisitions and investments related to technology transfer, intellectual property, and innovation in seven industry sectors that it specifically identified as being of significant national security concern. Renewable energy is one of the seven sectors highlighted for increased scrutiny, through expanded reviews of certain types of deals by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States,” according to the post.

Although the report focused on Chinese acquisitions and investments, the identification of renewable energy as one of the seven main industry sectors of concern means that acquisitions and investments by entities in other foreign nations may also be subject to heightened scrutiny by the committee, explains Mahinka.

Read the article.

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Bruce Vincent of Muse Communications offers some tips on the best practices for writing or updating your online biography to impress potential clients.

In a post on the Muse website, Vincent says the key is making sure that what you say about yourself is well written, organized, and presented in a way that will impress the people who see it.

One of the best places to start when you’re ready to begin writing or updating your bio is to handle the “easy stuff” before working on the narrative, including your:

• Areas of practice;
• Undergraduate and law school and any accompanying honors;
• Professional affiliations, including local and state bar groups;
• Professional accolades;
• Pro bono accomplishments;
• Published articles or presentations.

Read the article.

An article in Gray Reed & McGraw’s Texas Construction Law Blog offers some steps cleaning and restoration professionals can take in an effort to minimize the damage from a payment dispute with a client after a natural disaster.

Authors Russell Jumper and Tim Fandrey point out the importance of having a form agreement specific to natural disaster mitigation and remediation ahead of time.

Other points discussed in the article are the agreed scope of the project, making sure insurance proceeds go to the contractor, keeping the client or insurer from taking an estimate to a competitor, and being prepared for litigation.

Read the article.

Daniel Schwartz, writing for Shipman & Goodwin’s employment law blog, provides a handy list of typical provisions in a separation agreement between an employer and an employee.

He prefaces the list with a caveat: His description of a “typical” agreement does not mean that these provisions are in every agreement or even that these provisions ought to be in some agreements. Each separation or settlement has differing facts that may make certain provisions more important than others.

Some of provisions on the list include nondisparagement of one or more of the parties, return of property, and benefits upon separation of employment.

Read the article.

Estes Thorne & Carr PLLC is celebrating its 10th anniversary as one of the largest women-owned law firms in North Texas. The Dallas Business Journal has ranked the firm among North Texas’ 100 largest women-owned businesses. And for six consecutive years, the firm has made the list of Best Law Firms by U.S. News – Best Lawyers in America.

In a release, the firm said the firm’s partners Dawn Estes, Jessica Thorne and Lori Carr have decades of big firm experience. Their varied practice includes commercial litigation, labor and employment matters, family law, construction, energy litigation, ERISA litigation, professional liability, and alternative dispute resolution. The firm also often serves as Texas local counsel.

“We seized an opportunity 10 years ago to create a firm that allowed us to unite our strengths, and we’ve never looked back,” said Estes, who was selected a Top 100 commercial litigator in Texas in 2017 by Super Lawyers. “We said we always wanted to swim in the deep end. By creating the right environment for us and our clients, we’ve never been out of our depth.”

Thorne, regularly recognized by Super Lawyers and Best Lawyers in America for her family law practice, credits the success of the firm to its devotion to serving clients. “We established a goal to be a law firm where collaboration, seamless integration and creative problem-solving represent the rule rather than the exception,” she said. “And we wanted to have fun.”

Carr, Board Certified in Labor and Employment Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization, is an experienced mediator and arbitrator who delivers expertise in all aspects of her practice, from litigation to workplace investigations, the firm said. “Our women-owned status made us unique 10 years ago, but today we’re known for the quality of our legal counsel, and that’s how we like it,” she said.

Carol Payne, also selected a Top 100 commercial litigator in Texas by Super Lawyers for 2017, said the future of the firm looks bright as it builds upon the vision and tenacity of the firm’s founding principals.

Dallas attorney Jeffrey Simon says U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams’ call for more Americans to carry the opioid antidote naloxone is one that could save countless lives, and play a key role in addiction recovery.

“Naloxone should be widely available and at the ready for emergency medical personnel, people who are opioid addicts, or people who live with opioid addicts. I equate having naloxone at the ready to having a CPR kit at the ready — both can save lives as emergency care if administered in time,” says Simon of Simon Greenstone Panatier Bartlett, P.C.

“Unfortunately, it’s easy for anyone to overdose on opioids, so we are not just talking about saving the lives of addicts. But when we speak of opioid addicts, we need to remember that addiction is a disease. We want addicts to get into recovery, and if they die from an overdose, that can’t happen. Keeping them alive long enough for them to make headway with addiction treatment is crucial, and naloxone is often a key component to achieving that goal,” he says.

Simon Greenstone and co-counsel collectively represent more than 40 counties in Texas as well as other states in opioid litigation.

Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP (formerly Hunton & Williams and Andrews Kurth Kenyon) began its new fiscal year on April 1 with the promotion of the following 14 lawyers:

Administrative Law
Samuel L. Brown, San Francisco

Corporate
Brittany M. Bacon, New York
Taylor E. Landry, Houston
Lawton B. Way, Richmond

Energy & Infrastructure
Parker A. Lee, Houston
Chumbhot Plangtrakul, Bangkok

Labor & Employment
Ryan M. Bates, Washington
Robert T. Dumbacher, Atlanta

Litigation
Brian C. Pidcock, Houston
Bridget B. Vick, Houston
Thomas R. Waskom, Richmond

Public Finance
Clayton T. Holland, Houston

Tax & ERISA
Hilary B. Lefko, Washington
Jocelyn Tau, Houston

Image by Bjørn Erik Pedersen

MarketWatch is reporting that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. could collect the largest damage award ever against a global public accounting firm when a federal judge decides what to award the agency after a verdict against PricewaterhouseCoopers.

The judge in the case has already ruled that PwC had been professionally negligent in not detecting the criminal fraud that led to the failure of Colonial Bank Group in 2009, according to reporter Francine McKenna.

The FDIC has asked Judge Barbara Rothstein to award it $625 million in compensation for the bank’s alleged net losses from a fraud with mortgage originator Taylor Bean and Whitaker, which also failed in 2009.

Even PwC’s estimate of damages based on the judge’s decision, per court filings, of $306 million would result in the largest-ever final judgment or jury verdict for accounting malpractice, MarketWatch reports.

Read the MarketWatch article.

Image by Ben Sutherland

Irelsie Alvarez said she and fellow jurors wanted to send JPMorgan Chase & Co. a message with their startling $8 billion verdict in a Dallas probate case — an award that’s destined to be reduced to no more than $90 million, reports Bloomberg.

The trial was in late 2017, but lawyers for the bank company were back in court on Thursday, saying the defendant is entitled to a take-nothing verdict.

The widow of deceased American Airlines executive Max Hopper sued the bank for allegedly mismanaging the estate of her late husband.

Alvarez, a 26-year-old insurance agent, said she took the suggestion of lawyers for Hopper’s family that a big damage award was needed “in order to prevent this from happening again.”

Reporter Tom Korosec writes that the jury award was the largest of 2017 and the ninth-largest in U.S. history.

Read the Bloomberg article.

Image by Mike Mozart

The Minneapolis  Star Tribune is reporting that Target Corp. has agreed to pay $3.7 million to settle a lawsuit over concerns that the way it uses criminal background checks as part of the hiring process has disproportionately hurt black and Latino applicants.

Reporter Kavita Kumar quotes Sherrilyn Ifill, president of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund: “Target’s background check policy was out of step with best practices and harmful to many qualified applicants who deserved a fair shot at a good job. Criminal background information can be a legitimate tool for screening job applicants, but only when appropriately linked to relevant questions such as how long ago the offense occurred and whether it was a nonviolent or misdemeanor offense.”

As part of the settlement of the class-action complaint, independent consultants will recommend changes to Target’s current screening guidelines.

Read the Star Tribune article.

Employers large and small are committed to taking action to pursue expanded diversity and inclusion in their workforces through the use of a contract provision known as an “inclusion rider,” points out Don Lawless in a post in Barnes & Thornburg’s Hot Topics in Employment Law blog.

“Consideration of gender, race, or national origin in pursuit of diversity is a legal two-way street,” he warns. “If goals are applied like quotas, it creates the possibility of reverse discrimination claims by qualified and interested job candidates who are not considered because they will not help meet the established metrics.”

The article states that sophisticated employers have used established goals as a tool toward implementing equal employment opportunity objectives, steering clear of applying goals like quotas.

Read the article.

Flexera will present a complimentary webinar about the basics of open source licensing, vulnerabilities, trends and expectations for compliance.

The event will be Wednesday, April 18, at noon Central time.

Data shows that most companies are significantly under-counting their use of open source software (OSS), leading to potential legal and security concerns that need to be respected, monitored, and — if needed — resolved. Additionally, your customers are expecting higher levels of compliance. This begs the question, what is your legal team’s role in managing compliance and security vulnerabilities associated with OSS?

Marty Mellican, VP and Associate General Counsel at Flexera, will discuss the need for process and lawful management of OSS. This webinar will cover:

• The basics of intellectual property (IP) law and how open source licenses are built on top of those principles
• The most common licenses, including the GPL, AGPL, BSD, Apache, and MIT to name a few
• How to work effectively and securely with OSS both as a consumer and a creator of OSS
• Trends in OSS license enforcement in the last year
• Expectations for compliance and what compliance looks like
• How GDPR will affect your open source use and management

Register for the webinar.

Although non-disclosure agreement negotiations may seem like a perfunctory step in the M&A process, NDAs present many issues that buyers and sellers should carefully consider before escalating discussions and venturing further toward a deal, according to a post by Faegre Baker Daniels.

Lance Bonner and Kate Sherburne explain: “Unlike confidentiality agreements in other commercial transactions, NDAs negotiated at the onset of the M&A process are often non-mutual and only bind the buyer with respect to the seller’s confidential information. As a result, negotiating an NDA typically begins with a form prepared by the seller or its investment bank or their respective legal counsel. Key negotiation points will vary depending on the characteristics of the proposed transaction and relationship of the parties.”

The authors discuss the areas that are commonly important, including confidential information, exclusions, representatives of the buyer, access to employees, suppliers and other business relations, non-solicitation, and more.

Read the article.

Robert S. Mueller

The recent assurance that President Trump is not officially a target n Robert Mueller’s investigation may not be worth much, reports Politico. Mueller may not be able to secure an indictment against a sitting president, but his report could serve as a trigger to impeachment proceedings.

Reporter Josh Gerstein interviewed lawyers who told him that it’s more significant that Mueller reportedly plans to writes a report about Trump’s potential obstruction of justice in the probe.

“The key isn’t that Trump is not (yet) a ‘target’ but that he IS a SUBJECT of Mueller’s investigation & that Mueller will write a REPORT on what Trump did, why, and what it adds up to. That is HUGE,” Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe wrote on Twitter.

Read the Politico article.

Crain’s Chicago Business reports that the exodus of DLA Piper lawyers leaving for McDermott Will & Emery is “significantly” fewer than 50 and brings in “dramatically” less than the $100 million in revenue attributed to them, according to an internal DLA memo.

The memo is a response to reports that about 50 lawyers across the country were leaving the legal behemoth for Chicago-based McDermott. Reporter Claire Bushey writes that  McDermott Chairman Ira Coleman wrote in a memo that altogether, the new attorneys would add more than $100 million to McDermott’s top line.

DLA Piper firm leaders responded in an email to employees that the McDermott memo contained “materially inaccurate and misleading pieces of information.”

Read the Crain’s article.

Facebook Inc. finds itself in the eye of a rapidly building legal storm over the disclosure of user data to political research firm Cambridge Analytica as lawsuits stack up from users and investors, and regulatory agencies pile on, Bloomberg Technology reports.

Reporter Christie Smythe quotes Marc Melzer, a New York-based attorney: “Facebook’s having to fight on multiple fronts, with potentially conflicting strategies and obligations, is what will make this ‘litigation swarm’ problematic.” The company will likely “want to move slowly and withhold as much as they can without antagonizing regulators or the courts that are presiding over the suits.”

“Damages could be substantial for shareholders, with one group of investors estimating that at least $50 billion in the company’s market capitalization has been wiped out as a result of the disclosure, which affected 50 million users,” Smythe reports.

Read the Bloomberg Technology article.