Commercial litigator John Paul Nefflen has joined the business and entertainment law firm Shackelford, Bowen, McKinley & Norton, LLP, as a partner in the Nashville office.

“John will be a tremendous asset to our Nashville office and clients. He has significant experience in complex business matters as well as disputes involving entertainment contracts and intellectual property,” said firm managing partner John Shackelford.

In a news release, the firm said:

Mr. Nefflen represents a diverse client base in federal and state courts and in alternative dispute resolution. His practice focuses on complex business litigation work for clients involved in manufacturing, banking and financial services, health care, construction, accounting, real estate, government and utilities.

Mr. Nefflen also represents recording artists and management and entertainment industry executives in contract and intellectual property disputes.

A 1997 graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Law, Mr. Nefflen joins the firm from Burr & Forman LLP. He earned his undergraduate degree from Belmont University in 1994. He is a former member of the Belmont University Alumni Association Board of Directors, and is currently a member of the Friends of the Arts at Belmont, supporting Belmont’s College of Visual and Performing Arts. Mr. Nefflen has served on the Board of Directors for Safe Haven Family Shelter for three years, and he will begin serving as the Board President in January 2017.

Corporate compliance consultant, author and lawyer Thomas Fox is producing a new podcast series that has generated an e-book exploring the outlook for business ethics at home and overseas under incoming President Donald Trump. 

“Trump and Compliance: This Conversation is Just Getting Started” is published by Corporate Compliance Insights, headed by Maurice Gilbert. Its content comes from discussions on Fox’s podcast series, “Everything Compliance.” Part 1 is titled, “This is not the apocalypse (yet).”

As an authority on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, compliance and ethics, Fox is hosting the discussions with other experts in the field, and all are contributors to this e-book.

His podcasts can be found on his FCPA Compliance & Ethics website.

“I am a bit more sanguine than some when it comes to continued enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” said Fox. “The FCPA has held many foreign companies accountable, and it’s crucial to fighting terrorism. Enforcing that law is right in line with President-elect Trump’s trade policies.”

Fox also contends that major U.S. companies now have compliance fully integrated into their systems and that the FCPA has few reputable critics. In addition, enforcement heavily relies on self-policing, and penalties from violators largely pay for the cost to investigate.

Both the “Trump and Compliance” podcast and e-book will be updated quarterly to include details from ongoing discussions between Fox and colleagues regarding developments in the corporate compliance and FCPA space. A free copy of the e-book is available at http://corporatecomplianceinsights.com/trump-and-compliance/.

The former general counsel of a global oilfield services company, Fox has worked as a lawyer in the world’s energy capital for more than 30 years. He conducts training in FCPA, business leadership, compliance and ethics in the U.S. and across the globe.

Fox is host of the FCPA Compliance & Ethics website, which provides business solutions to compliance and legal challenges.

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Martin (Marty) G. Bunin has joined Farrell Fritz as a partner in the firm’s bankruptcy & restructuring practice group. He is resident in the firm’s New York City office and also lives in the city.

His experience includes the representation of committees in Chapter 11 cases, with an emphasis on unsecured creditors’ committees in cases filed by hospitals and other healthcare businesses, resort hotels, manufacturers, service businesses and owners of real estate. Additionally, he is a mediator in bankruptcy and bankruptcy-related disputes in the Southern District of New York and elsewhere.

Prior to joining Farrell Fritz, Bunin was a bankruptcy partner at Alston & Bird.

He is admitted to practice in New York. He is a member of the American Bankruptcy Institute, the American Bar Association and the New York City Bar Association.

Bunin is listed in The Best Lawyers in America in the Bankruptcy & Creditor-Debtor Rights area.

He earned his J.D. degree from New York University School of Law and his B.A. degree from Wesleyan University.

From the legal debate over bathrooms, to the battle over renaming a Houston law school, to a billion-dollar-plus jury award, Texas was home to some of the nation’s most intriguing legal news of 2016.

The staff of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing compiled a list of the year’s top Texas legal stories.

Those stories included the death of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia in West Texas in February, the election defeat of Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson, the on-again-off-again charges against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, the fight for accreditation for the UNT Dallas College of Law, the Baylor sexual assault scandal, and more.

Read about the top 10 stories.

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Bloomberg BNA will present a complimentary event to discuss the widespread corporate apathy towards antitrust risks — and why the business community needs a collective wake-up call.

The event will be at the Bloomberg LP offices at 731 Lexington Ave. in New York on Thursday, Jan. 19, 2017, 8-10 a.m.

Robins Kaplan LLP is an underwriter of the event, will carries up to 1.5 CLE credits.

“Companies rely on their sales personnel to drive business growth and generate new revenue, while the in-house compliance team must prevent, detect, and report actions that could draw scrutiny from antitrust enforcement agencies,” Bloomberg says on its website. “But what if those employees don’t even know what types of conduct is problematic under the antitrust laws?”

Bloomberg BNA and Robins Kaplan LLP conducted a survey of corporate sales and compliance professionals, and the results show a widespread lack of awareness of antitrust guidelines. Among the alarming findings: 25% of respondents are engaged in pricing activities that could rise to the level of illegality.

The event is designed for in-house counsel, compliance and business executives responsible for antitrust compliance.

Register for the event.

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If President Elect Trump follows through on his promise of big tax cuts, it would be a good idea to defer income into next year if you can, advises Robert W. Wood in an article for Forbes.

“Conversely, Trump’s plans make paying expenses in 2016 especially attractive if you can deduct them. The deductions may be worth a lot less in 2017. One good example is legal fees. No one likes paying legal fees, but tax deductions can make them a lot less painful. If you pay a 40% tax rate, $10,000 in deductible legal fees costs you only $6,000. But not every legal bill is tax deductible,” Wood writes.

He warns that personal legal fees, such as for a divorce, can’t be deducted. But the best kind of legal fees are business expenses. Wood also discusses how to handle income from litigation, deductions, and what to expect for future income tax brackets.

Read the Forbes article.

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Double-digit investment returns for little-known New York hedge fund Platinum Partners turned out to be too good to be true, according to federal prosecutors.

The New York Times reports that federal agents arrested Mark Nordlicht, a founder and the chief investment officer of Platinum, and six others on charges related to an alleged $1 billion fraud. It is one of the largest such fraud cases since Bernard L. Madoff’s investment firm unraveled in 2008.

“David Levy, the firm’s co-chief investment officer, was also among those arrested in the morning by agents in Texas, Manhattan and New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City,” writes reporter Alexandra Stevenson. “The men were charged with securities fraud and investment adviser fraud, according to an unsealed indictment filed in Federal District Court in Brooklyn. The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil case.”

Read the NYT article.

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The San Diego Union-Tribune has been tracking the epic class action litigation against Donald Trump and his defunct Trump University, presenting an inside look at the legal maneuvers, the document leaks, the economic and emotional pain suffered by plaintiffs, and the eventual settlement with the future president of the United States.

Reporter Kristina Davis writes that the Trump University lawsuit landed at Zeldes Haeggquist & Eck, a small downtown San Diego law firm, the way so many cases do — with a phone call.

“The class-action lawsuit she filed against Donald Trump and his defunct Trump University became a centerpiece of the presidential campaign, featured in debates and on ‘Saturday Night Live.’ The end result: a $25 million settlement by the president-elect for thousands of former students 6½ years later,” writes Davis.

The attorneys’ big break came when some former Trump University employees leaked playbooks and scripts used by instructors.

Read the Union-Tribune article.

Zapproved, Inc., a developer of cloud‐based software for corporate legal departments, announced it will hold the inaugural Corporate E-Discovery Hero Awards Celebration on Jan. 30 in New York, preceding Legaltech New York 2017.

Nina Totenberg, NPR’s award-winning legal affairs correspondent who has reported on issues surrounding the Supreme Court since 1975, will be the featured speaker at the awards celebration. Totenberg will share insights from her extensive career covering the court as well as her thoughts on the Supreme Court’s direction in light of the incoming Trump administration.

The Corporate E-Discovery Hero Awards honors e-discovery experts and corporate legal professionals who demonstrate excellence and contribute significantly toward improving in-house e-discovery processes and implementing best practices. The awards were established to recognize legal professionals who are leading their organizations by improving efficiency, reducing costs and lowering risk through creativity and innovation.

Industry professionals can nominate an E-Discovery Hero for consideration by Dec. 23, 2016, for recognition at the Corporate E-Discovery Hero Awards Celebration. Nominees should be an e-discovery expert or in-house legal professional who has demonstrated excellence in:

• Technology, systems and metrics
• Team process and workflow
• Employee training and support
• Strategy best practices
• Overall influence and achievement

The event will take place at 7 p.m., January 30, 2017 at the New World Stages, 340 West 50th Street, New York, NY 10019.

Reserve a seat

A new University of Iowa study demonstrates for the first time that financial shenanigans at companies decrease markedly in the years after truth tellers come forward with information about wrongdoing inside their operations, according to a report in The New York Times.

While government whistle-blower programs reward some individuals providing tips about corporate fraud, the costs for those people can be high, due to retaliation from their employers and their industry, writes Gretchen Morgenson. But companies subjected to whistle-blower investigations had less financial wrongdoing after being reported, the Iowa study found.

An analysis of the study found that the decrease lasted for at least two years, the period for which data had been collected for all the companies.

Read the NYT article.

Data security must extend beyond the scope of a company’s own office or network and to any of the company’s service providers that have access to its data, warns Armand J. (A.J.) Zottola in Venable LLP’s Digital Rights Review.

“A company can be held responsible for a data breach involving its own data, regardless of whether the company is directly responsible for managing its own data,” Zottola writes. “The risks associated with sharing data with a service provider are best managed through the utilization of contract provisions governing information security.”

In his article, he offers guidelines to consider throughout the process of drafting information security provisions to govern the management, handling, and control of a company’s data.

Headings for those guidelines include: research applicable legal requirements, set and meet minimum security standards through the establishment of an information security program, ensure the service provider isn’t misusing data, determine security breach response procedures, and create audit requirements.

Read the article.

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Akin Gump recently hosted the webinar “30 Days Postelection, Reading the Tea Leaves on the U.S. Renewables Market,” looking at the future of renewable energy under the incoming Trump administration. Audio of that webinar now is available om the firm’s website.

Panelists included members of the firm’s global projects and finance and public law and policy practices:

• Former U.S. Senator John Sununu (R-NH), adjunct senior policy advisor, public law and policy
• John Marciano, partner, renewable energy tax
• Jeff McMillen, partner, public law and policy
• Ed Pagano, partner, public law and policy
• Brian Pomper, partner, public law and policy
• Ed Zaelke, partner, renewable energy & chair, global project finance practice

“The speakers addressed several topics of interest to U.S. and European private equity funds invested in renewable energy as well as renewable energy investors, developers, tax equity investors and lenders,” the firm says on its website. “The panel discussed how issues such as tax credits, trade policy and environmental concerns might be addressed during a Trump administration.”

Listen to the webinar audio on-demand.

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An informal guidance from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission reminds employers of the commission’s expansive interpretation of what constitutes a reasonable workplace accommodation, reports Seyfarth Shaw LLP in its Employment Law Lookout blog.

Author Bridget M. Maricich advises that employers should continue to meaningfully engage in the interactive process with any employees seeking workplace accommodations for a physical or mental disability and assiduously document those efforts.

“The informal guidance is a useful primer for understanding the EEOC’s expanding stance on employer obligations to provide reasonable workplace accommodations,” she writes.

Read the article.

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The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to consider putting sharp new limits on where patent-infringement lawsuits can be filed, accepting a case that may undercut patent owners’ ability to channel cases to favorable courts, reports Bloomberg.

The case involves an appeal by TC Heartland LLC, an Indiana-based maker of water flavorings that says a Kraft Heinz Co. unit shouldn’t be allowed to sue it in Delaware, reports Greg Stohr.

“A victory for Heartland would also bar most patent owners from pressing cases in the Eastern District of Texas, a patent-friendly jurisdiction where more than a third of all infringement suits are now filed,” Stohr explains. “Heartland’s appeal has support from a group of internet retailers and software companies, as well as the financial-services industry.”

Read the Bloomberg article.

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Reuters is reporting that a Washington judge has ordered Republican President-elect Donald Trump to give a deposition in a lawsuit against celebrity chef Jose Andres stemming from Trump’s disparaging remarks about Mexican immigrants.

Superior Court Judge Jennifer Di Toro on Wednesday directed Trump to testify in New York about Andres’ restaurant deal at Trump’s luxury Washington hotel. She set a time limit of seven hours on the event and ordered that it will take place during the first week of January.

“Trump is suing Andres for $10 million over breach of contract after Andres backed out of a plan to open a restaurant in the Trump International Hotel a few blocks from the White House,” writes Ian Simpson. Andres has said he canceled the project after Trump denounced Mexican immigrants in June 2015 as drug dealers and rapists.

Read the Reuters article.

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The battle over President-elect Donald Trump’s attorney general nominee, Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, is heating up ahead of what promises to be a deeply contested confirmation hearing next year, reports NBC News.

“Sessions has a controversial past on issues of race and immigration, including his failed confirmation of a federal judgeship 30 years ago largely because of racially insensitive remarks,” writes reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell. “In the 1980s, Sessions was considered for a Ronald Reagan-appointed federal district judgeship in Alabama, but was blocked by the Senate after a black former deputy, Thomas Figures, accused him of making racially insensitive statements.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee has scheduled confirmation hearings for Jan. 10-11.

Read the NBC article.

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All parties involved with a construction contract need to explore which dispute resolution option is right for them and the project, and also ensure their contract terms are as clear as possible to avoid potential problems down the road, writes Kim Slowey in Construction Dive.

In her article, Slowey covers mediation, arbitration vs. litigation, and the importance of planning.

She quotes Margaret Greene, partner and leader of the construction planning practice group at Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn in Detroit, who counsels that perhaps the most important aspect of dispute resolution is to minimize the chance of conflict before disagreements rise to the level of “disputes” or “claims.”

Read the article.

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Employers who don’t want employees to arbitrate employment-related claims shouldn’t bury the agreement in an employee handbook that includes a disclaimer stating that the handbook is not a contract, advises Business Management Daily.

That’s because a court could conclude that the conflicting language means the arbitration agreement isn’t binding.

The article describes a recent case in which an employer asked the court to send the case to arbitration, arguing that the employee knew about the arbitration requirement that was included in a handbook.

“The court didn’t see it that way. It reasoned that to be binding, the arbitration clause had to demonstrate clear mutual assent,” according to the article.

Read the article.

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It is vital that a custom electronics integration or security company’s employees follow proper procedures to make sure the sales agreement is legally valid, but that may not be as straight-forward as it seems, writes Jason Knott for CEPro.

He quotes legal expert Ken Kirschenbaum of Kirschenbaum & Kirschenbaum when he writes that there is certain language related to signatures in an agreement that might appear to protect the company, but it actually can hurt.  For example, an agreement should not include a provision saying something like, “this contract is not valid unless signed by an officer of the Company.”

“Unfortunately courts do not always treat the [signature] omission as a two-way street,” Kirschenbaum tells Knott.

Read the article.

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Navex Global has published its 2017 edition of the annual Top 10 Ethics & Compliance Predictions and Recommendations white paper and made it available for free downloading.

These 10 insider tips and predictions from experts present insight on how to prepare now — and get ahead of the trends that will impact the workforce and industry.

Some of the topics discussed include:

• Deliver a Return on Compliance (ROC)
• Thrive in a Five Generation Workplace
• Sort Through the Alphabet Soup of Global Standards
• Be More Than Just the People Who Say ‘No ’
• Mitigate Cyber Mayhem

Download the report.

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