I am quoted extensively in this week’s Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly in the article “Businesses increasingly assert patents for strategic reasons,” which discusses companies bringing patent infringement claims against their competitors as a business tactic, and whether recent Supreme Court decisions making it theoretically easier to obtain an award of attorney’s fees will reduce the
More on the Golf Course RFP
Susan Mangiero, one of my favorite experts on financial deals and transactions, was kind enough to post on my presentation to the Boston Regional Office of the Department of Labor, where I spoke on common mistakes by plan sponsors. I spoke as part of a day long training program that Susan presented at as
Why Commonality is Relatively Easy to Prove in ERISA Class Actions
One should never underestimate the fundamental role that procedural and related tactical issues play in a case, and how they impact the very question of whether a plaintiff will ever be able to have a judge or jury rule on the merits of a case. Procedural barriers to prosecuting particular claims can be the end
Clamping Down on Patent Litigation as a Business Tactic Among Competitors
In the years leading up to the Wall Street collapse of 2008, I spent a fair amount of my time defending smaller tech and similar companies against intellectual property suits, including patent suits and preliminary injunction proceedings, often involving infringement claims that were, in my book, specious at best. Interestingly to me at the time
What if Trust Law Cannot Support the Moench Presumption?
The “stock drop” presumption of Moench, now before the Supreme Court in Fifth Third Bancorp, is best understood as a judicial attempt to balance the sometimes conflicting demands placed on corporate insiders by, on the one hand, the securities laws and, on the other, ERISA, when it comes to employee stock plans in
Fifth Third Bancorp and the Lack of a Historical Foundation for the Existence of a “Coach Class Trustee”
This is an interesting point, to me anyway, and a point that, for me, falls in that odd space between too short for a good blog post but too long for a tweet. I have written before that, because I seldom use blog posts to simply pass on others’ work and instead usually post substantive
Can You Avoid Being Investigated by the Department of Labor?
I think pretty highly of the Department of Labor when it comes to ERISA governed plans, and feel they do a pretty good job across the board. That doesn’t mean, though, that you want to be investigated by them if you are a plan sponsor. It’s a little like being audited by the IRS &ndash
Ayres is Wrong, and Hecker is Wrong: Establishing a Fiduciary Breach Through Excessive Fees
A further thought on Ayres’ focus on what he calls dominated funds, namely funds with higher than necessary fees that nonetheless contain a disproportionate amount of a 401k plan’s assets, and whether their inclusion by a plan sponsor should be seen as a fiduciary breach. As I discussed in a recent post, it’s
Tussey v. ABB – Opening Up New Avenues for Excessive Fee Litigation and Putting the Final Nail in the Coffin of Hecker v. Deere
This Forbes opinion piece by Yale Professor Ian Ayres is interesting for two things, one of broader relevance and one of interest perhaps to me alone. In it, he argues that our analysis of excessive fees as a potential fiduciary breach should not be based solely on fees in general, but also on an analysis
The First Circuit’s Wary Relationship to the Moench Presumption
By the way, speaking of Fifth Third Bancorp, I take exception at the assertion (see here, for instance) that every circuit to consider the issue has effectively adopted the Moench presumption, although with some dispute over how and when to apply it. The First Circuit, which tends to favor fact specific resolutions of complex