MVA Litigation

Class action settlements, certification of issues classes, and class notice requirements are among the topics that may be the subject of upcoming proposed amendments to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 23. On the agenda for the October 30-31, 2014 Advisory Committee on Civil Rules meeting is a report from the Rule 23 Subcommittee, which was formed in 2011 to consider modifying the rule governing class actions for the first time since the 2001-2003 cycle of amendments. Since its formation, the Subcommittee has identified several issues that may necessitate changes to Rule 23 and is now ...

Over the course of the past two years, litigants have faced significant changes to Federal Rules of Civil Procedure that are critical to navigating the federal litigation landscape, include rules governing subpoenas, discovery, case management, and preservation of electronically stored information (“ESI”). We previously discussed the long-awaited changes to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 45 that were implemented on December 1, 2013 to streamline the use of subpoenas in federal civil actions (read our Rule 45 post). The wider reaching August 2013 Proposed Amendments ...

Last week, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (“SEC”) announced that it expects to pay the largest whistleblower reward pursuant to Section 922 of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (“Dodd-Frank”) that the agency has paid to date – “more than $30 million” to a foreign whistleblower.  The SEC’s announcement of this record award came shortly after Attorney General Holder reportedly urged Congress to increase the $1.6 million limit on whistleblower awards for information related to financial crimes provided for under the ...

On September 17, 2014, the House Judiciary Committee approved the bi-partisan federal Trade Secrets Protection Act of 2014, H.R. 5233, which we previously wrote about when introduced in July, 2014 by North Carolina Representative George Holding.  H.R. 5233 seeks to amend the Economic Espionage Act of 1996 to create a federal civil remedy for trade secret misappropriation.  Regarding the importance of the Act, Rep. Holding and other supporters noted that “[a]s of 2009, the value of trade secrets owned by U.S. companies was estimated to be nearly $5 trillion.  While current federal ...

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals recently noted in Killion et al. v. KeHE Distrib., LLC, Nos. 13-3357/4340 (6th Cir. Jul. 30, 2014) that it was the first appellate court to tackle head on the question of whether a collective action waiver in the context of Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) claims can survive in the absence of an agreement requiring individual arbitration.  The collective action waiver before the Sixth Circuit was included in a severance agreement signed by several of the defendant’s employees upon termination, and required that they not consent to be part ...

North Carolina continues to be cultivated into increasingly fertile ground in which sophisticated and complex businesses can flourish. Governor McCrory recently signed into law SL2014-102 (SB 853) (the “Act”), an act which began as an effort to modernize the procedures for complex business cases handled by the North Carolina Business Court, and which ultimately expanded to provide for internal corporate reorganizations using holding companies in a manner that has been compared to favorable provisions of Delaware law. The Act was introduced in May 2014 by Senators ...

The House Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts, Intellectual Property and the Internet recently held hearings targeted at further exploring intellectual property laws and policy.  On July 24, the Subcommittee held another hearing in its series that is examining federal copyright laws, this time focusing on remedies for copyright infringement provided under Chapter 5 of Title 17.  This was a follow-up to a previous hearing that focused on the notice and take down provisions of Section 512.  Issues addressed in the July 24 hearing include the creation of a small claims ...

On July 29, 2014, North Carolina Congressman George Holding introduced the Trade Secrets Protection Act of 2014, H.R. 5233, which seeks to create a private federal remedy for victims of trade secret theft.  Representative Holding introduced the bill with five co-sponsors from both sides of the aisle, affirming in his statement the importance of protecting businesses from the damage caused by the loss of trade secrets:

American businesses face relentless cyber security threats every day, costing our economy billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs each year.  As a way to help ...

The House Energy & Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade considered and approved the Targeting Rogue and Opaque Letters Act of 2014 (“TROL Act”) with a 13-6 vote.  The purpose of the TROL Act is to establish that certain bad faith communications made in connection with the assertion of a United States patent are considered unfair or deceptive acts or practices under section 5(a)(1) of the Federal Trade Commission Act (15 U.S.C. 45(a)(1)).  The Act was passed with minor amendment to the provision that establishes an affirmative defense that ...

In a recent post, we discussed the D.C. Circuit’s consideration of the District Court’s decision in U.S. ex.rel Barko v. Halliburton Co. et al., Case No. 05-01276 (D.D.C. 2014), which provided an alarming perspective on the applicability of the attorney-client privilege and work product doctrine to internal investigations conducted pursuant to government regulatory compliance requirements.  The District Court had ruled that the privilege and work product doctrine did not apply to communications generated during the course of an internal investigation, because the ...