Civil Litigation - Page 86
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
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On Friday, February 18, 2005, President Bush signed the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 ("the Act") into law. Amazingly, the Act, which its supporters say will curb the ability of plaintiffs' attorneys to abuse the class action procedure, was introduced, debated and passed by both houses of the Legislature in a mere three-week period. -
Distrust plagues the financial markets. The blatant conflicts of interest between Enron and its various independent off-balance sheet special-purpose vehicles (Raptor, Condor, Chewco, etc.) staggers the imagination. The acquiescence of Arthur Andersen throughout the fiasco defies belief. It is thus no surprise that few issues are as sensitive as the question of "conflicts". -
As general counsel, you will need to examine a number of factors to determine whether you are paying your lawyers what they're worth. First, it is helpful to establish an argument for the existence of corporate law departments. This is a question regularly asked by corporate executives as they review their organizations, staffing and strategic direction. The typical reasons for maintaining an in-house law department include: -
Litigation support, it turns out, is no more confined to expert witness testimony than the solar system is to Earth. Earth is what we know most about and it's where our understanding begins. However, everything doesn't revolve around us and we're steadily becoming an incrementally smaller part of something much larger that's constantly expanding. -
In a recent survey of law department costs for a cross-section of Canadian corporations, 100 per cent of the general counsel reported a concern with rising legal costs. -
With a few exceptions, in-house lawyers have fared much better than most other stakeholders in the many corporate scandals that have occurred this year. Accountants, CEOs, investment bankers and stock analysts have undergone much public scorn and scrutiny. We have heard about Nancy Temple, the Andersen lawyer whose revised memo provided the jury with sufficient evidence of intent to find Andersen guilty in its criminal trial. -
Most legal invoices still get submitted the old fashion way, on paper. But some corporate law departments are beginning to request outside counsel law firms to submit their bills electronically. Is electronic billing just the latest fad, or is this an important new trend both law firms and law departments need to consider carefully? -
The brain centre of CIBC is physically located on the 56th floor of Toronto's Commerce Court West, which houses the nine desks of CIBC's key executive management in a dramatic, open-plan concept space. No walls separate these corridors of power. The centre of this matrix, naturally, is chief executive officer John Hunkin. Several desks down from Hunkin is Michael Capatides, CIBC's executive vice-president and general counsel. -
Spring is in the air, the sap is rising, and so are the howls of moral outrage over the Enron fiasco. There are few things more entertaining than misplaced righteous indignation. "Your ship is going down and you're going to be lashed to the mast unless you start talking to us." Such was the verbal horsewhipping a recalcitrant Joseph Berardino, CEO of embattled accountancy giant Arthur Andersen, received at the hands of an enraged Congressman. -
As the great Zero Mostel (playing Max Bialystock) shouted out in the 1968 film classic The Producers, "if you've got it, flaunt it." The problem in Canada, however, is that top legal talent in outsourcing generally suffer from-and there is really no other way to put this-stage fright. And publicity, as one would expect, is something their American competitors embrace.