Environmental & Energy
Fact or fiction: apportionment and divisibility under CERCLA
By Earl Hagstrom
Decisions handed down in 2012 have made "divisibility" more difficult to establish as a defense. ...
Environmental & Energy, Administrative/Regulatory
California's Green Chemistry initiative has a long REACH
By Chris M. Amantea
For those companies doing business nationally and internationally, the initiative reach is global. ...
Environmental & Energy
CEQA reform: the 'Lord's Work' or a fool's errand?
By Michelle Ouellette
Approximately 30 bills have been introduced this year in the name of CEQA reform or modernization. But which, if any, of these...
Government, Environmental & Energy
EPA's enforcement of the Clean Air Act: rhyme, reason or random?
By Davina Pujari
The "General Duty Clause" of the CAA has become a major EPA enforcement tool for responding to accidental releases and environ...
Ten years ago, actress and singer Barbara Streisand taught the legal profession a lesson about how the Internet works. Many at...
Letters, Law Practice, State Bar & Bar Associations
Why should lawyers pay for nonlawyers?
By Sheldon Sloan
It boggles my mind to consider the ramifications of licensing nonlawyers.
On April 11, a jury convicted infamous con man Christian Gerhartsreiter for the 1985 murder of John Sohus, despite no direct e...
Intellectual Property, Alternative Dispute Resolution
Challenges in 'soft' intellectual property mediation
By Denise Madigan
Clients in the "soft" IP cases pose special challenges because certain concepts, such as "fair use" and "substantial similarit...
Intellectual Property
Equitable estoppel case out of touch with reality
By Rebecca Clifford
Equitable estoppel is a well-established doctrine, but its fact-specific application often is hard to predict. This is exempli...
Intellectual Property
Patent enablement: What is 'undue experimentation'?
By Audrey A. Millemann
In Cephalon v. Watson Pharmaceuticals, the court held that experimentation is not "undue" even though it is "complicate...
Intellectual Property
New patent office proceedings: preventing collateral damage
By Vernon M. Winters
Although the White House enthused that the AIA would offer new ways to avoid patent litigation, the law of unintended conseque...
Intellectual Property
Don't just patent everything, you need to have a strategy
By Antonia L. Sequeira
Just because something is novel and potentially patentable does not mean that you should expend your technical staff's time an...
International Law, Intellectual Property
Doing business in China? Beware trademark hijackers
By Kimberly A. Eckhart
True or false: If you are not selling your product in China, but merely sourcing or manufacturing there, you cannot be held li...
Intellectual Property
Just when you thought it was safe to revive patent applications again
By Joe Liebeschuetz
If the decision in Exela Pharma v. Kappos is reversed, then the district court will proceed to scrutinize the statutory...
Letters, Law Practice, State Bar & Bar Associations
Nonlawyer licensing an ill-conceived idea
By John Smith
Just when I thought that I had heard everything imaginable in my 28 years of practicing family law, the State Bar is now consi...
It is unclear how SB 115 would affect a situation where a teenager decides to seek out his or her natural parents. By Peter J....
Environmental & Energy
Proposed CEQA bills would clarify law, protect public health
By Erin Chalmers
With all of the recent discussion about fundamentally altering the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA, it is easy t...
Letters, Law Practice, State Bar & Bar Associations
Licensing nonlawyers equals nonsense
By Kenneth Brooks
What I see in the quest to license nonlawyers is my State Bar trying to save our standards of living rather providing access t...
U.S. Supreme Court, Law Practice, Intellectual Property
Back in state court: patent-based malpractice
By Jonathan W. Hughes
The high court's opinion in Gunn v. Minton appears to put an end to the fairly brief period of federal court "arising u...
Securities, Corporate
Restricted stock units present high wire act for companies
By Wendy Davis
Internal Revenue Code Section 409A governs these, and severely limits the ability of issuer to peg vesting to liquidity events...
Appellate Practice
Clear lesson for navigating the complex post-trial world
By Kasey J. Curtis, Paul D. Fogel
The lesson from a recent case is clear: when you enter the sometimes complex post-trial world, know the controlling rules cold.
U.S. Supreme Court, Criminal, Constitutional Law
Time to stop defying prison overcrowding order
By Erwin Chemerinsky
Gov. Brown's initial response has been to criticize the court decisions and to vow to take the matter to the Supreme Court. Bu...
U.S. Supreme Court, Tax, Corporate
Internet sales tax held constitutional
By Robert W. Wood
New York's Amazon sales tax - requiring tax collected at time of purchase by online sellers with affiliate programs - has been...
Letters, Family
Parental rights bill not a 'change' in the law, more like a clarification
By Cathy Sakimura
SB 115 does nothing more than give the courts an opportunity to look carefully at the facts of each case and, based on those f...
Government, Banking, Administrative/Regulatory
Treasury Department wary of virtual currencies
By Brian E. Klein
On March 18, the arm of Treasury responsible for combating money laundering, FinCEN, released interpretative guidance regardin...
Government, Family
Budget cuts lead to dysfunctional family law departments
By Franklin R. Garfield
Many divorcing couples now prefer to do their talking directly or through counsel under the auspices of a mediator rather than...
A second look at the Senate Bill 115 reveals that the amendment, however unintentionally, would expose women to unwanted pater...
U.S. Supreme Court, Intellectual Property
High court's 'first sale' ruling threatens market segmentation
By Andrew J. Thomas, Lisa J. Kohn
The U.S. high court acknowledged that its decision "will make it difficult, perhaps impossible, for publishers (and other copy...
Law Practice, Ethics/Professional Responsibility
Unstable clients with guns, the worst kind
By Wendy L. Patrick
The only thing worse than a difficult client is a difficult client with a gun. Whether or not you believe a threat, it is best...
Tips on how to have a successful mediation. ...