Civil Litigation - Page 3
This is FindLaw's collection of Civil Litigation articles, part of the Litigation and Disputes section of the Corporate Counsel Center. Law articles in this archive are predominantly written by lawyers for a professional audience seeking business solutions to legal issues. Start your free research with FindLaw.
Civil Litigation
Civil Litigation Articles
-
Intellectual Property, or "products of the mind," is generally classified as Patents, Copyrights, Trademarks, or Trade Secrets. Each form of Intellectual Property is subject to its own set of laws and rules on how it is created, protected, maintained, and utilized. While future articles will address each of these in more detail, this article will focus on the need to keep a close watch on the details of your Intellectual Property so that you can protect them and get value from them. -
Class actions can put defendants under enormous and undue pressure to settle or face a crippling verdict. That pressure is intensified when there is the specter of class-wide punitive damages. These awards can serve the state's legitimate interest in punishing and deterring unlawful conduct, and so punitive damages cannot be avoided completely in high-stakes litigation. -
In a recent decision, Utah Federal District Court Judge Dale Kimball sustained two employees' claims for intentional infliction of emotional distress against their former employer. The lawsuit was filed by a husband and wife who both worked for the same employer. They alleged that the employer's treatment of them after learning that the husband had AIDS was so callous and manipulative as to be actionable under the very high standard governing Utah's common-law tort of "outrage." -
In California, a homosexual employee is taking his former employer to trial for religious discrimination based on comments by his Mormon supervisor. The supervisor allegedly told the gay employee he should "become heterosexual and a Mormon or he would go to hell." The plaintiff also claims he was pressured to participate in prayer meetings at work. -
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a back pay award or settlement must be taxed as wages in the year in which the amount is paid and may not be attributed to the prior years for which the amount was intended to be compensation. The case involved the Cleveland Indians baseball team which paid $2.7 million in back pay to 22 baseball players for salary that should have been paid 7-8 years earlier. -
Ways to protect your ideas and your business. -
What rights do you have under trade secret law? -
Regardless of the industry, companies often fail to consider the benefits of having an agreement on their website which binds their users. While for purely information sites, agreements offer little benefit, they have great advantages for product or service sites -
Under the recently adopted Boston Public Health Commission "Clean Air Works Workplace Smoking Restrictions" Regulation, most workplaces and commercial buildings in the City of Boston are required to be "smoke free" working environments beginning May 5, 2003. -
On May 11, 2003, Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed the Equal Pay Act of 2003. The Illinois Act mirrors the federal Equal Pay Act in that it prohibits employers from paying an employee of one sex less than an employee of the opposite sex for work that is the same or substantially similar.