Photo by Gage Skidmore

Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail system while she was secretary of state violated State Department rules, the agency’s Inspector General concluded, according to a report published by Bloomberg.

“The audit by the State Department’s independent investigator found no evidence that she requested guidance or approval to conduct official business via personal e-mail on a private server — and concluded the agency likely wouldn’t have granted the request,” wrote Billy House and Laura Litvan. “The Inspector General also faulted the State Department’s handling of electronic records and communications beyond Clinton’s tenure.”

In its conclusion, the Office of the Inspector General wrote: “Longstanding, systemic weaknesses related to electronic records and communications have existed within the Office of the Secretary that go well beyond the tenure of any one Secretary of State.”

Read the article.

Photo by Kārlis Dambrāns

Huawei Technologies sued Samsung Electronics on claims of infringement of smartphone patents, the Chinese firm’s first intellectual property challenge against the world’s top mobile maker, reports Reuters.

“Huawei has filed lawsuits in the United States and China seeking compensation for what it said was unlicensed use of fourth-generation (4G) cellular communications technology, operating systems and user interface software in Samsung phones,” according to the report.”

“The lawsuit marks a reversal of roles in China where firms have often been on the receiving end of patent infringement disputes. In smartphones, makers have grown rapidly in recent years but different intellectual property laws outside of China have slowed overseas expansion,” writes Yimou Lee and Anne Marie Roantree.

Read the article.

The Associated Press is reporting that Volkswagen and attorneys for vehicle owners affected by the company’s emissions cheating scandal are on target to meet a June deadline for a final settlement proposal, a federal judge said Tuesday.

A federal judge in San Francisco said the parties have made substantial progress in reaching a deal for that could affect more than 480,000 owners of polluting Volkswagens in the U.S.

“Many questions remain unanswered, including how much money owners can expect in a buyback and how much additional compensation beyond repairs and buybacks they’ll receive,” according to the report.

Read the article.

Global companies have been embracing socially responsible spending projects to build stronger relationships with local communities, writes Michael Volkov in his firm’s Corruption, Crime & Compliance blog. He writes that the idea makes a lot of sense and real projects can result in real benefits.

“As with any significant source of money, there are risks. Major global companies have been caught in some embarrassing situations, some of which can have real legal and reputational consequences,” he explains.

In an attempt to promote the goodwill of the company in emerging markets, companies sometimes spend large amounts of money, only to find out later that foreign leaders have lined their pockets with the funds to the detriment of the locally intended beneficiaries, he adds.

Read the article.

Banks’ interest in smart contracts could lead them to beef up their legal departments in the near term, as the financial industry and regulators alike continue to wrestle with the implications of blockchain technology, writes Brian Patrick Eha of American Banker.

In his article Eha explains that “a smart contract is a piece of software that executes its terms automatically and encodes rules agreed upon by all parties. Smart contracts are decentralized — living on a blockchain — and transparent, viewable by all parties. They can be used to transfer value, and that transfer is triggered in response to certain events.”

“What if smart contracts were to catch on? Ideally, the code would be reusable in the form of templates, cutting down on legal busywork. Just not all legal work,” according to the article.

Read the article.

Narrowly interpreting a policy’s breach of contract exclusion, a federal court judge in California ruled that the exclusion applied only to actual breaches of contract and that an alleged breach in the underlying complaint against the policyholder was insufficient to eliminate coverage, according to an article written by Amy B. Briggs, Christine Spinella Davis, Stephen T. Raptis,Robert H. Shulman and Susan P. White of Manatt, Phelps & Phillips, LLP.

Their article described the case:

A competitor filed suit against the insured, charging the policyholder with making disparaging comments so that its offer of employment would appear more attractive and “to solicit [the competitor’s] employees in breach of a written and implied contract.” The insurer rejected the policyholder’s request for defense, relying on a breach of contract provision in its commercial liability policy. But the court said the allegation was just that—an allegation—and not an actual breach of contract. Other policy exclusions used the term “actual or alleged,” the court noted, implying that the insurer knew how to include and elected not to use such language for the breach of contract provision.

Read the article.

CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, and other risk and security professionals should familiarize themselves — or refresh their recollections — around Price and Payment, Proprietary & Confidential Info, Changes in Scope and Deliverables, Termination and Remedies, Disclaimers and Indemnifications, advises David Adler in CIO.

“Several obstacles affect and often limit successful negotiations in this area,” he writes. “The risk itself can be a moving target. For example, in the acquisition of an IT services subscriber base (regardless of industry), how will customer attrition, revenue projection revisions, and loss of key personnel affect the price paid (value)?”

“One way to prepare for and better engage in such negotiations is to develop a contract negotiation playbook,” he adds. “While each set of tactics and strategies will necessarily reflect the internal business rules of the individual company, the five areas discussed here should form a part of any playbook.”

Read the article.

Global finance firm Burford Capital focused on law announced it has expanded its New York team.

Among those joining Burford in its New York office are:

Justin Brass, Managing Director. Brass formerly was a Managing Director at Stone Lion Capital, a credit-focused hedge fund, and with a professional background spanning law and finance at firms including Paul, Weiss and Jefferies.

Christopher Catalano, Director. Catalano was Assistant General Counsel at JPMorgan Chase following a litigation career at Kirkland & Ellis, Wilson Sonsini and O’Melveny & Myers.

Sarah Lieber, Vice President. Lieber was Deputy General Counsel for CIFG Services following a career as a litigator at Jones Day.

“We are delighted to welcome Justin, Chris and Sarah to Burford, where they join our terrific team of more than 60 other people meeting client needs around the world. Burford has grown its team every year since we started this business in 2009, and this year is no exception, as we continue to field the industry’s largest group of highly experienced litigators and financial professionals to serve our clients,” saide Burford’s Chief Executive Officer, Christopher Bogart.

Actiance, a provider in communications compliance, archiving, and analytics, has announced the Actiance Platform for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries.

“Actiance’s next-generation, cloud-based, unified platform addresses new and existing regulatory retention and security and privacy requirements, while reducing the risk and expense of costly eDiscovery and compliance activities,” the company said in a release. “With the Actiance Platform for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, organizations can embrace new communications channels while protecting data and ensuring compliance.”

The release continues:

Similar to financial services, the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries are highly regulated and highly litigious. The introduction of new regulations, constant changes to existing protocols, and the explosion of collaboration technology has necessitated healthcare and pharmaceutical companies to update their information management strategies. Regulations, including the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the 2013 HIPAA Omnibus Final Rule, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), and the Physician Payment Sunshine Act final rule (42 CFR Parts 402 and 403), govern processes like Electronic Health Record (EHR) adoption, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) reimbursement, and document retention and management for everything from drug research and development to sales and marketing. Innovations, such as telemedicine and doctor-patient chat, led to laws for Protected Health Information (PHI) and Electronically Stored Information (ESI).

“Patients are taking greater control of healthcare decisions and increasingly demand real-time communications across new channels such as Skype and social media. However, due to regulatory and legal requirements associated with health-related data, the healthcare industry has been slow to respond. With the strain of new channels and huge increase in health data, existing record retention systems originally designed for email capture are reaching their breaking points,” Kailash Ambwani, CEO, Actiance. “The Actiance Platform empowers healthcare and pharmaceutical organizations to meet the needs of today’s patients without worrying about regulatory compliance. This solution is another step in the right direction as healthcare decision makers grapple with the growing demand for infrastructure that meets their needs and increased regulations.”

As new communications channels and networks become available to the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries, records management responsibilities become even more critical. Implementing new communications and social channels without the necessary safeguards and processes exposes firms to non-compliance with industry regulations, potential litigation, and an increased threat of security breaches and data leakage. Organizations risk steep fines and reputational damage without the proper processes, procedures, and technology in place to help manage these complex requirements.

The Actiance Platform for the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries provides:
A single point of control and security for regulated structured and unstructured content, with context, from a variety of sources, in real-time;
The ability to automatically meet regulatory compliance, data security, retention and disposition requirements for more than 70 communications channels;
Cost-effective and quick responses to eDiscovery requests, without impacting employees;
Access to employee identities and profiles maintained across enterprise and public social channels, including first-degree connections;
Increased employee productivity through automated capture, policy management, and archiving of various communications channels in one data repository;
Effective early case assessment with access to the complete archive of all relevant communications;
Automatic classification and tagging of Title 21 CFR Part 11 records based on custom lexicons; and,
Ensured compliance with FDA social media use guidelines by pharmaceutical sales and marketing departments

To learn more about the Actiance Platform, download our healthcare and pharmaceutical white papers.

Additional Information
Stay up to date with Actiance: http://www.actiance.com/blog
Become a fan of Actiance: http://www.facebook.com/actiance
Follow Actiance on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/actiance

About Actiance
Actiance is the leader in communications compliance, archiving, and analytics. We provide compliance across the broadest set of communications and social channels with insights on what’s being captured. Actiance customers manage over 500 million daily conversations across 70 channels and growing. Customers include the top 10 U.S., top 5 Canadian and top 8 European and top 3 Asian banks. The Actiance advantage is customers stay ahead of compliance and uncover patterns and relationships hidden within their data. Learn more at www.actiance.com.

Actiance headquarters are in Redwood City, California. For more information, visit http://www.actiance.com or call 1-888-349-3223.

The law firm Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale, P.C. announced that John L. Senica has joined the firm’s Chicago office as an attorney in the Business Services Practice Group.

The also announced expanding its Chicago office space on the 33rd floor of its current building at 200 West Madison St.

Senica has more than 30 years of experience in corporate law, working in finance, secured lending, private equity and venture capital. He represents clients in business, commercial lending and commercial real estate transactions. He works with closely held companies and commercial lenders and handles matters related to business planning, commercial finance and mergers and acquisitions, the firm said in a release.

Prior to joining Greensfelder, Senica was the founding member and Resident Director of the Chicago Office of Miller Canfield, where he also served as a Senior Principal. Previously, he practiced in business transactional law for more than a decade as an equity partner at an Am Law 50 national law firm.

“John is a great addition to our firm as he brings decades of experience in corporate law and helps to further broaden Greensfelder’s transactional practice in Chicago,” said David B. Goodman, Managing Officer of Greensfelder’s Chicago office. “John’s insights and experience from opening and growing Miller Canfield’s office in Chicago also will be invaluable as we continue to expand and build Greensfelder’s presence in the Chicago market.”

Senica said, “As a Chicago native, I have a strong affinity for Midwest people, values and culture, and I was particularly drawn to Greensfelder’s culture and rate structures that I believe are highly appealing to middle market businesses and banks in Chicago and across the nation. I also am impressed by the firm’s deep commitment to Illinois expansion, as well as the depth of talent at the firm across a wide range of practice areas including real estate, franchising, health care and energy.”

Senica joins Greensfelder as the firm moves its Chicago office to expanded space with about 52 percent more square footage than the space it previously occupied since the office first opened in November 2008.

Senica is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and formerly served on the Board of Directors of the LaSalle Street Council. He earned his J.D. from Northwestern University School of Law and holds a B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.

Masuda Funai will host a legal symposium titled “Issues Facing U.S. Subsidiaries of Japanese Multinationals” on Thursday, June 9, 2016, in Glenview, Ill., at the Glen Club, 2901 W. Lake Avenue. Glenview is a suburb of Chicago.

The event will begin at 8 a.m. with registration, networking and breakfast.

The program beings with a session called  “Compliance Concerns; Business Ethics,” starting at 8:30 a.m. Next will be “Governance and Parent-Subsidiary Matters” at 9:30 a.m. The morning program will include “Protection of Intellectual Property” at 10:45 a.m.

“Update on Professional Responsibility Issues” will be presented at 12:30 p.m., after lunch.

Anyone wanting more information may contact Carrie Buell, Senior Marketing Coordinator, at events@masudafunai.com or 312.245.7444.

Register for the symposium.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has tapped lawyer A.B. Culvahouse Jr., a longtime Washington fixture, to help vet his potential running mates, says a Bloomberg report that cites people familiar with the campaign.

Culvahouse ran the vetting process for Republican presidential nominee John McCain in 2008 that ultimately selected Sarah Palin.

“Trump has said publicly that he’s relying on multiple people to recommend vice presidential picks, including campaign manager Corey Lewandowski and one-time rival Ben Carson, though neither has the legal qualifications that are essential to the vetting process,” the report says.

“During five elections, Culvahouse has both helped potential running mates deal with the intrusive vetting process and served as the vetting interrogator. He has a reputation for being very deliberate in establishing the credentials of potential candidates, and their pitfalls,” wrote Kevin Cirilli and Jennifer Jacobs.

Read the article.

Financial regulators have proposed new rules limiting the incentive pay of employees and other service providers at financial institutions, report Mark Jones and Robert L. Tian of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.

“The new rules seek to establish general requirements applicable to the incentive-based compensation arrangements of covered persons working in covered institutions. Covered persons are any executive officers, employees, directors or principal shareholders who receive incentive-based compensation at a covered institution. Additional restrictions apply to senior executive officers and significant risk-takers,” they write.

Their article discusses the prohibition of excessive compensation, appropriate performance measures, effective controls, approval by the board of directors, and disclosure and record-keeping.

Read the article.

As a result of changes to regulations that define which white collar workers are exempt from the overtime provisions of the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), millions of workers will lose their current FLSA-exempt status on Dec. 1, 2016, reports Ropes & Gray LLP.

“The hardest hit industries are likely to be education, retail, health services, leisure/hospitality, and business and professional services. Before the Final Rule goes into effect, employers should assess which employees will be affected, and how the employer will want to respond. One approach would be to raise the salaries/compensation of these employees to meet the new salary/compensation thresholds,” the firm writes. “Following this path may impose not only direct costs, but also indirect costs by creating pressure to raise salaries for other employees higher up on the organizational chart, or causing disgruntlement for those employees if the salary differential is compressed.”

Or, a company could reclassify these employees as nonexempt and pay them overtime in accordance with the FLSA. With this approach, employers could limit hours of nonexempt employees to 40 per week or reduce the employees’ hourly rate in light of their expected future overtime earnings, according to the firm’s alert.

Read the article.

Greentech Media and NRG Energy Inc. will conduct a webinar to help companies just beginning to consider solar as part of their overall energy strategy, as well as those already further down the path to a solar solution.

The event will be Tuesday, June 7, at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

“In this webinar, two experts from NRG’s renewables team will discuss how businesses can navigate through the possibilities and logistics of a solar solution – from choosing relevant technologies to implementing effective delivery approaches,” Greentech says on its website. “Both are vital in turning the promise of solar power into the reality of a functioning system.”

Register for the webinar.

ContractWorks has published a complimentary white paper designed to aid in the selection and implementation of a contract management solution.

The company says it interviewed hundreds of companies and compiled a guide to help with the determination of what type of solution best fits a company’s needs and tips on how to find it .

The white paper covers:

1. A simple framework for understanding if you need a contract management solution.

2. How to understand your organizations goals and the corresponding contract management features that will have the greatest impact on your process.

3. Ways to narrow down your search for a solution.

Download the white paper.

The Rock Center for Corporate Governance at Stanford University recently conducted a nationwide survey of 1,202 individuals — representative by gender, race, age, political affiliation, household income, and state residence — to understand public perception of CEO pay levels among the 500 largest publicly traded corporations.

“74 percent of Americans believe that CEOs are not paid the correct amount relative to the average worker,” the survey found. “Only 16 percent believe that they are. While responses vary across demographic groups (e.g., political affiliation and household income), overall sentiment regarding CEO pay remains highly negative.

Key takeaways are:

• CEOs are vastly overpaid, according to most Americans
• Most support drastic reductions
• The public is divided on government intervention

Download the survey.

Donald Trump’s list of people he would consider nominating to the Supreme Court includes judges who have indicated support for various conservative causes, range in age from 41 to 58 and hail primarily from conservative and Republican-governed states, reports Reuters. The eight men and three women all are white.

The list includes William Pryor, who as Alabama attorney general, urged the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 to uphold a Texas law banning gay sex.

Another is Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, who earlier in his career was part of Texas’ legal team that won a Supreme Court battle to display the Ten Commandments on a monument in the state Capitol.

Read the article.

The suspicious death of a Dallas attorney has triggered tighter security inside in a downtown Dallas courthouse, and a Dallas County District judge has made a direct connection between the defendant in an ongoing civil lawsuit and the possible murder of attorney Ira Tobolowsky, reports NBC 5 TV in Dallas.

In a recent suit, Steven Aubrey asked for more than $500,000 from Tobolowsky and wrote that: “Tobolowsky must be punished with sanctions for his outrageous abuse of the judicial system and his violation of statutes, codes and rules.”

“I think at this point with the allegations which have been made related to Mr. Aubrey and his implication in the death of Mr. Tobolowsky and related issues, I don’t think that it is unreasonable for a judge other than myself to hear this case,” said Dallas County District 14 Judge Eric Moye. “And so I’ve conferred with Judge Murphy and we have agreed that a voluntary recusal is appropriate at this time.”

Tobolowsky , a prominent Dallas attorney, died in a house fire last week. Investigators say that fire may have been arson.

Read the article.

A former Skadden Arps lawyer who cheated friends and relatives of life savings in a Ponzi scheme and then tried to kill himself was sentenced in New York to five years in prison Thursday, reports the Associated Press and the New York Post.

His crime was revealed when he wrote a long suicide note and jumped into the Hudson River in a 2014 suicide attempt that ended with his rescue by police divers.

A U.S. District Court judge gave Bennett a sentence at the high end of federal sentencing guidelines. She announced it after hearing several of the 58-year-old’s friends describe giving hundreds of thousands of dollars for a supposedly safe investment. Some of them told the judge he is a “pathological liar.”

Read the AP story and the Post story.