New England Biz Law Update

On May 4, investment banker Frank Quattrone was convicted of obstructing a grand jury investigation, obstructing SEC investigators and witness tampering. The charges carry a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment and $500,000 in fines. Quattrone’s crime? Forwarding an e-mail ...

Under certain circumstances, business considerations suggest that a company should pursue a new opportunity with one or more collaborators rather than alone. A businessperson might want to enter a new line of business or to conduct a business in a ...

For those who cannot sleep at night as they wrestle with securities disclosure issues (and I know from experience that this is not a farfetched scenario), the Security and Exchange Commission’s new 8-K rules offer no cure for insomniacs. The ...

Below are summaries of important opinions affecting in-house attorneys issued by the U.S. Supreme Court, 1st and 2nd Circuits and Delaware Court of Chancery from late April 2004 through early July 2004. Readers can access the full text of the ...

Attorney-client privilege is one of those issues we all think we know about, but we really don’t. That may be a little harsh. Maybe the more accurate description is that we often know just enough to be dangerous. Let me ...

James E. Bowers, former vice president of corporate compliance at Aetna, has joined Day, Berry & Howard to lead that firm’s new Compliance Risk Services group, an interdisciplinary group of lawyers addressing compliance programs and compliance risk management issues as ...

Robert E. Healing, soon-to-be-retired corporate counsel of General Electric Company in Fairfield, Conn., recently stepped down as chairman of the board of the Pro Bono Partnership. In 1997, Healing founded the Partnership, a nonprofit organization that provides free legal services ...

If you are the general counsel of a small or medium size company in an unregulated industry, you may think risk management is an interesting topic, but that it isn’t a critical issue in your industry. This may not be ...

In deciding whether to obtain patent protection outside the U.S., there are a number of factors a company should consider. As a preliminary matter, it is important to understand that most foreign-filed applications will eventually be published. As such, a ...

Massachusetts recently enacted a new Business Corporations Act, the first major overhaul of the law governing business since the statute was enacted over a century ago.