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The Connecticut Supreme Court Thursday narrowly reversed a ruling by a lower court judge dismissing a lawsuit by the families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting against Remington Arms Company, allowing the case to proceed, reports the Hartford Courant.

The decision that remanded the landmark gun case back to Bridgeport Superior Court possibly created a path that other mass shooting victims can follow to get around the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, known as PLCAA, which has protected the manufacturers of the AR-15 assault rifle from lawsuits, writes the Courtan‘s Dave Altimari.

He explains:

The ruling paves the way for the families to subpoena internal documents on how the gun companies have marketed the AR-15, which has become the weapon of choice for mass shooters. The gun manufacturers have closely guarded information on how they market the assault weapons.

Read the Courant article.

Reuters is reporting that a U.S. federal judge has issued a preliminary ruling that Qualcomm Inc. owes Apple Inc. nearly $1 billion in patent royalty rebate payments, though the decision is unlikely to result in Qualcomm writing a check to Apple because of other developments in the dispute.

Reuters’ Stephen Nellis writes that a district judge in California ruled Thursday that Qualcomm must make the rebate payments to Apple, which for years used Qualcomm’s modem chips to connect iPhones to wireless data networks.

“In general, the contract factories that built Apple’s iPhones would pay Qualcomm billions of dollars per year for the use of Qualcomm’s patented technology in iPhones, a cost that Apple would reimburse the contract factories for,” according to the article.

Read the Reuters article.

Purdue Pharma’s chief executive said the company is considering bankruptcy as it faces a cascade of lawsuits alleging that the drugmaker played a key role in driving the nation’s opioid crisis, including aggressively and deceptively marketing the powerful painkiller OxyContin, reports The Washington Post.

Craig Landau said that the company has not yet decided whether to file bankruptcy, but it is something the company is weighing as it considers the impact of potential legal settlements or jury verdicts that could cost tens of billions of dollars, according to the Post‘s Katie Zezima.

“Declaring bankruptcy could halt litigation against the company, bankruptcy lawyers said, and it can be more difficult for plaintiffs to secure judgments in bankruptcy court than in civil court,” Zezima writes.

Read the Post article.

Image by Mike Mozart

A lawyer representing a man who claims Bayer AG’s Roundup weed killer caused his cancer urged jurors to imagine the scales of justice ever so slightly tilted in his favor, as if weighted by a feather, and said that would be enough to advance his trial to the next and final phase, reports Bloomberg.

Reporter Joel Rosenblatt summarized the argument of Aimee Wagstaff, representing Edwin Hardeman:

Roundup, not hepatitis, caused Hardeman’s cancer, his lawyers argued at a critical juncture in the company’s second U.S. trial over the popular herbicide. Hardeman’s exposure to Roundup “was a real factor, it doesn’t have to be the only cause” of his cancer, Wagstaff said. “It doesn’t have to be the only cause of his harm,” even if they determine hepatitis “may have played a role,” she added.

Read the Bloomberg article.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit held that merely requiring extrinsic evidence to interpret a provision of a form contract does not render class certification improper, and that absent a more thorough explanation of its reasoning from the trial court, it could not uphold the trial court’s ruling decertifying the class.

As a result, explains Jeffrey Karek in the Maurice Wutscher’s Consumer Financial Services Blog, the Seventh Circuit vacated the decision of the trial court and remanded for further proceedings.

His article gives the facts in Red Barn Motors, Inc. v. NextGear Capital, Inc. and traces the litigation through the courts.

Read the article.

An indemnity is a powerful risk allocation tool that deserves careful attention and a critical eye, both in terms of subject matter and administration, writes Kathleen Wergzyn for Foley & Lardner’s Manufacturing Industry Advisor.

She explains that a warranty and an indemnity are two different tools serving two different purposes.

The article discusses the breadth, duty to defend, and remedies related to indemnification and warranty.

Read the article.

Lawyers for Neiman Marcus tried Thursday to convince a district court judge in Dallas to dismiss a lawsuit that alleges the luxury retailer’s owners fraudulently transferred its European subsidiary out of reach of creditors, reports The Dallas Morning News.

Neiman Marcus’ is dealing with an unsustainable debt of $5 billion.

“One of Neiman Marcus’ debtholders, Marble Ridge Capital, sued in December to reverse the transfer of the Munich-based MyTheresa e-commerce division, valued at $1 billion, to private equity owners Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.” according to the News‘ Maria Halkias.

Read the Dallas News article.

The National Association of Corporate Directors will present a complimentary webinar on economic value added on Thursday, March 21, 2019, at 2 p.m. Eastern time.

While EVA (or Economic Value Added) is not new, it has been one of the more obscure financial performance metrics for incentive compensation, the NACD says on its website. However, thanks to ISS, it is now center stage. Beginning this year, EVA will be included for “informational purposes” in some ISS research reports. Further, ISS has indicated that they may include EVA in the Financial Performance Assessment (FPA) screens in the future.

What do you need to know about this enigmatic performance metric and how does it apply to compensation plans with a pay-for-performance orientation? This webinar will provide a starting point for understanding EVA and how to evaluate its relevance to your industry, company, and incentive programs.

Register for the webinar.

A website post by Jesse P. Elison of Fox Rothschild attempts to place in context negotiation processes by highlighting the significance of parties’ intentions to contracts.

“[H]ow often do parties, even sophisticated parties represented by counsel, intend all the terms of a contract? The answer partially depends upon whether intention and agreement are equivalents. If they are, the answer is most of the time, but if they are not, the task becomes one chiefly of interpretation—a topic for another day.”

His article explains that developing skills that get the best representation of your intentions into an agreement can yield long-term benefits.

Read the article.

The Supreme Court of Texas recently ruled in favor of the Texas Windstorm Insurance Association (TWIA) regarding attorney-client privilege in a decision that can benefit insurance companies involved in litigation, reports Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

The justices determined that attorney-client privilege extended to communications between a TWIA employee and counsel when the employee was serving as an expert witness for the company. The case involved a dispute between the city of Dickinson and TWIA.

Dallas insurance litigator Meloney Perry of Perry Law P.C. says the ruling is significant to Texas because it aligns the state with the federal rules on expert disclosure and production. She notes it also may be of particular benefit to insurance companies.

“This ruling means that underwriters, auto damage personnel and claims handlers may serve as experts without exposing attorney-client communications, even though they are employed by an insurance company involved in litigation,” said Perry. “One side benefit is this could cut costs from having to hire an outside expert.”

Perry says an insurance carrier employee designated with expert knowledge or who signs an affidavit attesting to certain expertise will not have to produce communications with counsel when Texas law applies. However, certain work product documents may not be protected.

“Work product is still subject to being produced, so parties will need to make the determination on a document-by-document basis. If the witness is provided an investigative report which is work product that may not be protected, but the email between the witness and counsel will be.”

Perry adds that if a federal question is being litigated in federal court, the attorney-client privilege is a question of federal common law. In state court and diversity cases filed in federal court, the attorney-client privilege is controlled by that forum’s state law.

A federal appeals court upheld about $8 million in damages Tuesday to the former general counsel of a Bay Area laboratory who was fired after telling company officials about possible bribery and records falsification by the lab’s employees in China, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

Bio-Rad Laboratories fired general counsel Sanford Wadler in 2013, claiming poor performance. The company also claimed it found no evidence of wrongdoing by its employees.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday found evidence to support the 2017 verdict by a federal court jury in San Francisco that Wadler had acted as a whistle-blower and was dismissed in retaliation for reporting conduct that he “reasonably believed” to be illegal, according to the Chronicle‘s Bob Egelko.

Read the SF Chronicle article.

A federal judge has ordered Tesla chief Elon Musk to explain by March 11 why he should not be held in contempt for what the Securities and Exchange Commission described as a violation of a settlement deal last year, reports the San Francisco Chronicle.

“Musk tweeted Feb. 19 that Tesla would make around 500,000 cars in 2019,” writes the Chronicle‘s Melia Russell. “Later that day, he sent a follow-up tweet saying that number represented Tesla’s ‘annualized production rate at end of 2019’ and it would only roll about 400,000 cars off the manufacturing line this year.”

Bloomberg explains that Tesla’s internal system to have an in-house lawyer vet Musk’s tweets didn’t work in this case because his “social-media minder didn’t bless” the Feb. 19 post:

The sitter — whose official title at Tesla is alternately Disclosure Counsel or Designated Securities Counsel — did step in after seeing the offending tweet and arranged to meet Musk to draft a clarifying post.

Read the SF Chronicle article.

Switzerland’s biggest bank hoped to settle a tax evasion case with French authorities for $204 millions. But when enforcers dismissed UBS Group’s offer, the bank’s legal team decided to play hardball, pushing the case to trial in the hope of wringing out a smaller penalty, according to a Bloomberg report. That effort failed spectacularly.

The bank has been ordered to pay more than $5 billion in the tax-evasion case — matching what was sought by prosecutors, reports Bloomberg’s Gaspard Sebag.

The article quotes Stephane Bonifassi, a Paris criminal lawyer not involved in the case: “It’s too early to draw any definitive conclusions given the appeals have just begun, but they took a risk in thinking they had a solid case and it’s clear now the strategy didn’t pay off.”

Read the Bloomberg article.

While the rule denying the award of “punitive” or “exemplary” damages for breach of contract is subject to certain limited exceptions, it appears to enjoy wide-spread acceptance in most states and in virtually all common-law countries, according to Glenn West, writing in Weil, Gotshal & Manges’ Global Private Equity Watch.

But one of the well-recognized exceptions that can sometimes threaten to swallow the rule is that which permits punitive or exemplary damages anytime ‘the conduct constituting the breach is also a tort for which punitive damages are recoverable.’ And a ‘dog’s breakfast of tort-based fraud claims can frequently accompany a breach of contract claim.” West writes.

He discusses the case of Bombardier Aerospace Corp. v. SPEP Aircraft Holdings, LLC, in which the Texas Supreme Court upheld the liability-limiting provisions waiving punitive damages, even for fraud.

Read the article.

International lawyers are often pushed by clients from common law countries (even more often by their in-house lawyers) to include common broilerplate contract provisions even in countries where they make no sense, writes Dan Harris for Harris Bricken’s China Law Blog.

He explains: “These people/lawyers are simply uncomfortable with contracts that do not include such terms. When we tell them that such provisions are not needed, their response is often, ‘well, it can’t hurt.’ But it can hurt.”

He discusses such Western-style contract staples as representations and warranties, effective date, counterparts, complete agreement, no oral modifications, good faith, headings and titles, third-party beneficiaries, and severability.

The article explains the potential drawbacks of using these clauses in contracts outside common law countries.

Read the article.

A Texas jury awarded $43 million to Intellectual Ventures I LLC after finding telecom heavyweights T-Mobile and Ericsson Inc. infringed on the company’s patents used for wireless services for the LTE network. The jury awarded $34 million against T-Mobile and $9 million against Ericsson, according to a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

The jury also determined T-Mobile and Ericsson failed to provide convincing evidence that Intellectual Ventures’ claims involving the patents were invalid. The case was decided on Feb. 8 following a one-week trial in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall.

“We are grateful for the jurors’ attention in this case and their decision in favor of our client,” said Johnny Ward of Ward, Smith & Hill PLLC, who represented Intellectual Ventures. “This verdict shows you can’t infringe on another company’s patents and expect to get away with it.”

The patents-in-suit trial included U.S. Patent Nos. 6,628,629, 7,412,517 and RE46,206 owned by Intellectual Ventures for wireless transmissions. Bellevue, Washington-based Intellectual Ventures is a global invention and investment business that creates, incubates, and commercializes impactful inventions.

Also representing Intellectual Ventures were Ward, Smith & Hill partners Claire Abernathy Henry and Andrea Fair, along with co-counsel Martin J. Black and Kevin M. Flannery of Dechert LLP.

The case is Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. T-Mobile USA, Inc., T-Mobile US, Inc., Ericsson Inc., Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson, case number 2:17-cv-577, in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Hogan Lovells has published a guide to joint development and collaboration agreements and posted in on the firm’s website.

Protecting intellectual property is a challenge, especially when entering into a joint development agreement, cautions the guide.

When two or more organizations want to work together to develop or enhance their products, combine or integrate their technologies, or jointly commercialize a new product, they have many choices for documenting their relationship.

Read the article.

A recent decision from the Third Circuit addresses a grant of preliminary injunction against an employee who signed multiple agreements with restrictive covenants, and violated them immediately upon beginning employment with a direct competitor, reports Genova Burns.

Authors Dina M. Mastellone and James W. Sukharev discuss the case of Heartland Payment Sys., LLC v. Volrath.

In that case, a former employee of Heartland breached a manager agreement by sending confidential information to his former employer’s competitors.

Read the article.

Although it is tempting to focus only on state laws when evaluating how a service contract is regulated, the federal Magnuson-Moss Warranty Act (MMWA) provides an important reminder that federal law may be equally as significant, point out Brian T. Casey and Jon L. Gillum of Locke Lord in an article for Warranty Week.

“Although service contracts mirror many of the features of traditional insurance products, most states expressly exclude them from the statutory definition of insurance, and the majority of states go one step further by establishing formal licensing and financial security requirements that govern the sale of service contracts to consumers by service contract provider or obligors,” they explain.

But such contracts also are potentially subject to the MMWA.

Read the article.

NAVEX Global has published a new eBook titled “Top 10 Ethics & Compliance Trends for 2019.” The book is available for download at no charge from the company’s website.

“Transparency and trust define our industry’s challenges and opportunities for 2019,” the company says on its website. “With each expert opinion found in this year’s annual trends report, you’ll see how shifts in the workplace and regulatory environment bring to light the importance of authenticity and ethical practices.”

Some of the topics covered are:

• Protected Activity & Corporate Governance
• Third-Party Risk Beyond FCPA
• Artificial Intelligence
• New Global Business Practices
• GDPR Enforcement Updates

Download the eBook.