The dust is still settling after the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in the Dukes v. Wal-Mart case. In its decision, the Court held that 1.5 million women could not be certified as a class against the retailer. Federal Civil Procedure Rule 23(a) requires that any party seeking class action certification must demonstrate [...]
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Epilogue: Dukes v. Wal-Mart
August 17, 2011FL-GA Legal Studies Research Conference
June 13, 2011Welcome to the informational site for the upcoming FL-GA Legal Studies Research Conference. This inaugural conference will be hosted by The College of Business at Florida State University in October, 2011. After that, the conference will rotate among the three other founding and participating institutions: The University of Georgia, The University of Florida and The [...]
A perspective on contract terms
January 15, 2011After teaching contracts for several years, I’m fairly convinced that the following axiom applies whenever anyone enters into a contract: Any agreed upon and legally binding contract terms will either work in your favor, or against you. Contrary to popular belief, contract terms are never neutral. Instead, they will either further your goals and interests, [...]
Letter or Spirit?
January 6, 2011Business Insider posted a story recently about Facebook and the news the company has made working with Goldman Sachs to obtain significant capital investment without going public. The story boils down to Facebook wanting to trade stock for a capital infusion. There is no shortage of people wanting to invest in Facebook stock. A thorny [...]
2010 in review
January 2, 2011The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health: The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads This blog is doing awesome!. Crunchy numbers A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 3,000 times in 2010. That’s about [...]
Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart – Part II
December 22, 2010In the prior post, I mentioned the case of Dukes vs. Wal-Mart, where the trial and appellate courts certified more than a million women in a class-action lawsuit alleging employment discrimination at Wal-Mart stores across the United States. If you are the defendant corporation, you now face the scenario in which millions of individuals allege [...]
Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart – Part I
December 15, 2010Can 1.5 million women stand together in a class-action suit to sue Wal-Mart for employment discrimination? That’s the narrow legal issue that the U.S. Supreme Court recently agreed to decide by reviewing the Ninth Circuit appellate case Betty Dukes v. Wal-Mart. This specific issue gets to the heart of what is known as a class-action [...]
New inquiries
December 6, 2010Dear Readers: It’s been more than 100 days since I last updated. The last time I added an entry, I was living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan enjoying 70 degree weather, clear summer days and sunsets at 9:00 p.m. in the evening. There is much to say in favor of the far north. Now, [...]
Independent Designers: Here’s a Powerful Tool to Combat Knock-Offs
June 19, 2010I’m always troubled when I hear stories about independent designers who are ripped off by knock-off artists, large retail chains and unscrupulous exporters who take advantage of low-cost manufacturing costs to catch a free ride from a designer’s work. Reporter Christina Binkley wrote an interesting article on this very topic in The Wall Street Journal [...]
Hot Packaging Gets Trademarked
February 13, 2010As I walked down the aisle in the supermarket shopping for a particular brand of hot sauce, I realized the price differences among the more popular varieties. When I looked at the more expensive hot sauce brands I noticed something peculiar: the premium hot sauces have more distinctively shaped bottles. So I developed an intellectual [...]
