Litigation Financier’s Battle Against Sysco Provides Food for Thought
Cloaked in secrecy, neither the terms of litigation financing agreements nor the attendant scuffles between financier and claimant, are typically aired in public. That changed for about four months of 2023, during which Sysco, a food distributor, and Burford Capital, a multi-billion dollar litigation financing firm, duked it out in federal and state court over…
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Gun Trusts in Estate Planning: No Time To Be Quick on the Trigger
When considering an estate plan, clients who own firearms should remember that very often, their firearms require special consideration and planning, particularly given the intricacies of federal, state, and local gun laws and regulations. Gun trusts are a common mechanism for ensuring ease of ownership and inheritance of certain types of firearms and other weapons…
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Q3 Employment Law Updates: Enforcement Actions Bring Much for Employers to Consider
The third quarter of 2023 has been pretty exciting as far as employment lawyers are concerned. Substantial regulations have been proposed and the pressure from federal agencies continues to rise. We will talk about some of the most influential changes over the last three months which will be of interest to all employers. NLRB Comes…
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Peekaboo: How To Continue Preparations for Brave New (Data Privacy) World
On September 12, 2023, Delaware became the 13th state to adopt a consumer data privacy act, joining Florida, another state to recently adopt consumer privacy laws, and others in providing resident consumers with rights regarding their personal information. Delaware’s Personal Data Privacy Act (the “PDPA”) goes into effect on January 1, 2025, but businesses should…
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Diversity Driven Derivative Suits: Culture Wars Come to the Boardroom
Traditionally deployed to protect a corporation from its board’s imprudent investment or financial decision-making, in recent years shareholders have taken to bringing derivative actions on a corporation’s behalf for its board’s alleged failure to pay more than lip service to the diversity, equity and inclusion (“DEI”) commitments the company publicly proclaims. Spurred in 2020 in…
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Court Rulings Demonstrate That Privilege Is Not Always a Right
Earlier this year, following oral argument and 16 amicus submissions, the Supreme Court dismissed as improvidently granted (“DIG”)[1] a writ of certiorari on the issue of whether communications involving both legal and non-legal advice are protected by the attorney-client privilege.[2] This red-hot issue was granted review following the decision styled In Re Grand Jury, in…
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Danger, Does Not Compute: SEC Takes Aim at Predictive Data Analytics Per Proposed Rules
On July 26, 2023, the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”), in a 3-2 vote, issued a release (the “Release”) containing proposed rules to address conflicts of interest associated with broker dealers’ and investment advisers’ use of predictive data analytics (“PDA”) technologies, and PDA-like technologies, when interacting with investors.[1] The SEC’s proposed rules amend Rules 151-2,…
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Release Me? Supreme Court to Resolve Contentious Bankruptcy Issue
In March 2022, we discussed the decision by the Southern District of New York (the “District Court”) overturning the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York’s (the “Bankruptcy Court”) confirmation of drugmaker Purdue Pharma’s controversial Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Plan (the “Plan”).[i] The District Court determined that the Bankruptcy Code did not permit the…
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Key Questions When Determining Eligibility for State Historic Tax Credits
Real estate developers have long had ample reasons to take on projects involving historic buildings, courtesy of Section 47 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986. As amended, Section 47 (the “Code”) provides for a rehabilitation tax credit, also commonly known as the historic tax credit (“HTC”) equal to 20% of qualified rehabilitation expenditures (“QREs”)…
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What SEC’s Transparency Rule Means for Investors, Advisers and Funds
Earlier this summer, we wrote about both new and amended rules proposed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) under the Investment Advisers Act of 1940 (the “Advisers Act”) regarding private funds, their advisers, and transparency to investors (the “Proposed Rules”). On August 23, 2023, the SEC adopted the final rule (the “Rule”), which cut…
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