Battle lines are being drawn over last year’s Delaware court ruling that lets companies shift legal fees to investors bringing lawsuits, reports Pensions & Investments.

At the center of the fight is the Delaware Supreme Court decision in ATP Tour Inc. et al. vs. Deutscher Tennis Bund, upholding the corporation’s right to unilaterally amend its bylaws to make unsuccessful shareholder litigants personally liable for legal expenses, even if they prevailed on some, but not all, of the issues.

Pensions & Investments says that, although ATP Tour is a private company, at least 50 public companies added similar bylaws to their governing documents after the ruling, according to a list compiled by law firm Kessler Topaz Meltzer & Check LLP, which represents institutional investors in securities litigation.

Read the story.

Steptoe & Johnson has posted a complimentary on-demand webinar on the challenges in post-production costs related to shale gas development.

On its website, the firm says shale gas development in the U.S. has us moving through some rocky legal terrain to find a “safe” royalty clause or a “new” market at the well in regards to post-production costs. Challenges remain in post-production costs and approaches vary from majority to minority across the states.

In this webcast Karen Donnelly discusses:

• Allocation of post-production expenses in calculating royalties
• Case law update
• Can the market return to the wellhead?
• Title, measurement, and affiliate issues

Watch the on-demand webinar.

United Airlines has announced that Brett Hart, its executive vice president and general counsel, will assume responsibility for customer care and customer experience. John Rainey, United’s chief financial officer, will take on strategy.

Hart joined the airline in 2010 after a stint in the same job for food group Sara Lee, following a period as a partner for the Chicago law firm Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, reports Quartz.com.

Hart will have his job cut out for him, Quartz says. Despite making improvements in metrics like on-time performance, mishandled bags, passenger complaints, and overbooked flights, United still ranked 12th out of 15 U.S. airlines, and last among major carriers, according to the annual Air Quality Rankings released in April.

Read the story.

The Oil & Gas Journal will present its Forecast & Review/Worldwide Pipeline Construction 2015 Webcast, offering outlooks for the oil market and pipeline construction in a year of turbulence.

The webcast will be Friday, Jan. 30, at 10 a.m. Central time.

Based on two annual special reports, the webcast will be presented by OGJ Editor Bob Tippee and OGJ Managing Editor-Technology Chris Smith.

On its website, the Journal says the Forecast & Review portion of the webcast will identify forces underlying the collapse in crude oil prices and assess prospects for changes essential to recovery—all in the context of geopolitical pressures buffeting the market.

Register for the webcast.

Black & Veatch will present a free webinar highlighting key findings from the firm’s 2015 outlook on the integrated North American energy markets.

The one-hour complimentary webinar will be Wednesday, Jan. 28, beginning at noon Central time.

On its website, the firm says the webinar will cover:

– How oil prices and the oil industry will ultimately impact the natural gas and power industries

– The potential impacts the Clean Power Plan and other environmental regulations will have on the U.S. power market

– 25-year energy price forecasts that include projected natural gas, coal and oil prices, average electricity and capacity prices, and carbon emissions price

Register for the webinar.

A white paper provided by DocuSign Inc. focuses on the delivery of business-class electronic signature services, discussing the legal issues that must be addressed in the deployment of e-signature services.

The white paper provides an overview covering 1) the evolution of electronic contracting, 2) the legislation enabling electronic signature usage and 3) the key legal factors for successful deployment of an e-signature system. Subsequent sections then provide detail regarding the specific ways that the DocuSign architecture addresses these critical legal issues.

DocuSign says that electronic contracting is, fundamentally, contracting — and contract law fundamentals apply.

Download the white paper.

A guide written by Jeffer Mangels Butler & Mitchell LLP partner Stanley Gibson helps the reader safely move contract or legal notices from certified mail, traditional fax, and courier delivery.

Readers will learn how to send notices by electronic means and receive irrefutable proof of compliance with notice requirements, essential to managing business risk. Readers will learn though example of common pitfalls and misconceptions with many electronic services, view a side-by-side comparison of technologies and service providers, and take away a scorecard that rates software, services, and methods across a list of best-practice requirements.

This Guide is designed to provide the detail legal professionals, contract managers, and technologists would need to implement an electronic delivery service that provides for all of the considerations and legal requirements essential to give electronic notices the highest evidential weight.

Download the white paper.

Chief information officers are under more pressure than ever to accurately assess their organization’s ability to respond to both internal and external threats, reports CIO Insight. The board of directors and its audit committee are asking questions about information security readiness, and the CEO, CFO and general counsel are looking to the CIO for real-time answers.

Currently, there are two trends that are moving in opposing directions, putting CIOs between a rock and hard place.

The first trend, according to CIO Insight: Social, mobile, analytics and cloud (SMAC) provide opportunities for criminals to, at a minimum, damage a company’s brand.

And the second trend: Explosive demand for chief information security officers (CISO) has created a dramatic shortage of information security, risk and cyber-talent at all levels.

Read the story.

National law firm Wilson Elser announced the opening of its 27th U.S. office located in Edwardsville, Illinois, Madison County, expanding the firm’s national footprint and its presence in the Midwest.

Edwardsville is the seventh office the firm has opened in the past four years. It serves Southern Illinois, St. Louis and clients throughout the Midwest region.

Brian Huelsmann, formerly with HeplerBroom LLC, joined the Am Law 200 firm to open the new office and serve as its regional managing partner.

“Brian’s trial and litigation skills, and his success managing large dockets provide Wilson Elser’s clients with an invaluable counselor,” said Daniel J. McMahon, Wilson Elser chairman. “He brings a wealth of experience, having served as counsel for a wide variety of insurance carriers and insureds in the Midwest and elsewhere, and adheres to Wilson Elser’s tenets of excellent lawyering and a focus on client service.”

“With 27 U.S. offices and four in the Midwest in Chicago, Michigan, Milwaukee and now Edwardsville, Wilson Elser is strategically positioned to serve clients in more jurisdictions throughout the country,” added Mr. McMahon.

Mr. Huelsmann’s practice encompasses toxic tort, personal injury, product liability and commercial litigation matters. He represents Fortune 500 companies, insurers, insureds and self-insureds.

Named for inclusion in Super Lawyers, Mr. Huelsmann is admitted to practice in Illinois, Missouri and Pennsylvania. He has presented and published on asbestos and personal injury–related topics and is an active member of DRI: The Voice of the Defense Bar, serving on its annual toxic tort conference planning committee.

Mr. Huelsmann earned his J.D. degree from Southern University School of Law (2001) and his B.A. degree from Rockhurst University (1997).

About Wilson Elser
Wilson Elser, a full-service and leading defense litigation law firm (www.wilsonelser.com), serves its clients with nearly 800 attorneys in 27 offices in the United States and one in London and through a network of affiliates in key regions globally. Founded in 1978, it ranks among the top 200 law firms identified by The American Lawyer and is included in the top 50 of The National Law Journal’s survey of the nation’s largest law firms. Wilson Elser serves a growing, loyal base of clients with innovative thinking and an in-depth understanding of their respective businesses.

Microsoft former chief privacy adviser Caspar Bowden recently presented “The Cloud Conspiracy 2008 – 2014,” in which he considered how likely is it, legally or technically, that data centers have secret doors for warrantless mass surveillance by government entities.

Network World said in a Jan. 7 report that Bowden explained how the 2008 changes to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Amendment Act (FISAAA) added the secret surveillance of remote computing services, aka the cloud. That surveillance, he said, doesn’t have to be triggered by potential criminality or national security, but is instead “purely political surveillance” of  “ordinary lawful democratic activities.”

Read the story.

Susan K. Hatmaker, Esq. of Hatmaker Law Group along with Alan Thaxter, Senior Client Consultant of Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., will present a free webinar covering an update for 2015 on the Affordable Care Act.

The one-hour event will be Wednesday, Feb. 18, beginning at noon Pacific time.

Hatmaker Law Group’s webinars serve as educational opportunities for employers, owners, managers, accountants, attorneys and human resource professionals to stay current on up-to-date information on important California employment law issues, the firm said in a release about the upcoming event..

For more information contact Laura Dakin at (559) 374-0077 or email laura@hatmakerlaw.com or go to hatmakerlaw.com/events/

Ex-employees are leaving behind orphan 401(k) accounts with abandon, and employers are dumping the funds into forced Individual Retirement Accounts with conservative default investments and high fees, where they whittle down to nothing, according to a new Government Accountability Office Report, 401(K) Plans: Greater Protections Needed for Forced Transfers and Inactive Accounts.

Forbes reports that , at one IRA provider the GAO studied, an unclaimed $1,000 account would be reduced to zero in just 9 years (to blame: a $50 one-time account set-up fee, a $50 annual fee, and a $65 annual address search fee, combined with an 0.11 percent investment return).

Read the story.

Morgan Stanley has confirmed discovery of an insider who allegedly stole account data relating to up to 10 percent of the firm’s Wealth Management accounts, reports ZDnet.

The new year may have only just begun, but financial institution Morgan Stanley already has a disaster to cope with. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, last summer, Morgan Stanley financial adviser Galen Marsh was able to sift through the account records of approximately 350,000 clients — while almost none of them were his particular clients.

By the end of the year, some of these records appeared online, with offers to trade this sensitive information for digital currency. A Dec. 15 posting touted roughly six million account records from the company, while a second notice posted on Dec. 27 provided specific details on 1,200 accounts, asking for 78,000 speedcoins in return, according to the publication.

Read the story.

American Apparel Inc. has strengthened rules to prevent sexual harassment among its employees, just one month after firing controversial founder Dov Charney as chief executive officer for alleged misconduct, Bloomberg reports.

Managers and subordinates are now prohibited from having romantic relationships, including dating casually, according to the new ethics code on the Los Angeles-based company’s website. At about 6,200 words, the new code is more than four times as long as its predecessor.

Bloomberg reports that American Apparel is working to get a fresh start after officially firing Charney on Dec. 16, ending a six-month saga that began when the board suspended him in June for misconduct. In removing Charney, the directors said he violated the chain’s sexual-harassment policies and improperly bought travel for family members with company funds. While Charney declined to comment to Bloomberg, his lawyer has called the allegations “baseless.”

Read the story.

Jennifer Horn and Maria Panichelli presented the second webinar in their core construction curriculum series for Women Impacting Public Policy and Give Me 5%.

The free on-demand presentation, titled “Best Practices in Construction,” covers suggested best practices for before, during and after conclusion of a construction project, in the context of both state and federal contracts, the presenters say.

The presentation provides tips on contracting, documentation, compliance and claims prevention strategies.

Watch the on-demand webinar now.

Squire Patton Boggs and NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions offer a complimentary on-demand webinar title “Shipping Oil and Gas – Ownership Implications and the Jones Act.”

Squire Patton Boggs Senior Partner John J. Reilly and NASDAQ OMX Managing Director of the Global, Tax and Regulatory team Juliane Keppler, lead the presentation.

The firm says on its website that the webinar teaches how to identify your global shareholder base and the implications maritime regulations have in a number of areas:

• Learn about Jones Act and the expanding Oil and Gas shipping industry
• Understand how the Tricor decision impacts the Jones Act
• Obtain best practices to identify your global shareholder base and if your company is meeting the Jones Act criteria or other regulatory guidelines

Watch the on-demand webinar.

Penn State Extension presents a complimentary webinar titled “What We Know and Don’t Know About Methane Gas Emissions Associated With Shale Gas Production.”

Dr. Kenneth Davis, professor of meteorology at Penn State University, is the presenter.

While the gas is a valuable energy source, it also is a potent greenhouse gas, says the moderator, Dave Messersmith.

The webinar discusses the methods used to measure the amount of methane gas emission from shale gas production, the current state of knowledge of these emissions and the current research led by Penn State to improve our knowledge of such emissions.

Watch the webinar.

Les Rosen of Employment Screening Resources offers expert tips for more effective employee background screening in a complimentary on-demand audio recording.

Among this year’s top trends, he says, are the new momentum for the ‘ban the box’ movement to eliminate criminal history questions from job applications, compliance with updated EEOC guidance and controversy over the use of commercial criminal databases.

In an interview about risk management and the latest screening trends, Rosen discusses:

• Highlights of the latest report;
• New views on the relevance of past criminal records;
• Emerging legal and compliance implications of background screening.

Listen to the audio or read the transcript.

Winstead has posted a complimentary on-demand webinar covering generally accepted negotiation conventions.

Whether settling a disputed claim or agreeing to a transaction, it is important to know the accepted ethical limits in negotiation strategies, the firm says on its website. For example, what is “material’ for purposes of Rule 4.01? This recorded webinar covers questions like this.

The target audience for the webinar are in-house counsel and other key decision-making litigation contacts at banks and financial institutions.

Watch the on-demand webinar.