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Consider this scenario: A young couple entrusts you, an experienced real estate attorney, to assist them in the purchase of their first home. Days before closing, your unsecured email account gets hacked and your client receives an email, which to all appearances is from you, telling them to wire funds to a third-party account instead of bringing the cash to closing. You only find out about “your” email to your client after the transfer has been made and your clients’ savings, accumulated over many years, is gone. What exactly do you think you can say to your clients to make it better?
Continue Reading The Proof Is in the Password!

The past several years have seen a slew of high-profile excessive force cases against law enforcement officers, often highlighted by cell phone video. These cases have placed increasing pressure on local police departments, which continue to struggle with balancing the public interest in community safety against the individual rights of suspects on the street. At the highest level of the legal landscape, however, the United States Supreme Court recently issued a decision that arguably expands the qualified immunity defense, at least in certain kinds of deadly force cases.
Continue Reading Qualified Immunity and Deadly Car Chases: Is the Pendulum Heading the Other Way?

designprofessionalsDesign and other professionals often incorporate their practices in an effort to avoid individual liability. They also add well-crafted limitations of liability and indemnification clauses in their form services contracts to avoid responsibility for problems that arise in the execution of the plans. These strategies are especially important for practitioners in jurisdictions where a design professional may be exposed to liability disproportionate to the limited scope of services, such as where codefendants have no insurance coverage or are underinsured. It is also common for plaintiffs to sue the professional individually to attempt to circumvent favorable clauses in the professional corporation’s standard contract for services.

Continue Reading When Less Is More: The pitfalls of saying too much in professional contracts

151002-Professional-Liability-BlogImagev3Quasi Tort Reform in Nursing Home Litigation Is on the Way!

Last fall, I posted a blog about the national trend of including arbitration provisions in nursing home admission agreements. This trend peaked following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Marmet Health Care Center v. Brown, 132 S.Ct. 1201 (2012), in which the Court determined that the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) preempts any state law or public policy limiting arbitration, holding that the language in the Act did not limit its application to non–personal injury disputes. The only remaining issue is whether contracts requiring arbitration, like any other contracts, are procedurally and substantively enforceable under New York contract laws. Continue Reading Arbitration of Nursing Home Suits: Take Two

Magnifying glass keyboard_TS_147860345In the most recent “North America Top Technology Initiatives Survey Results,” CPAs responding to the poll ranked “securing the IT environment” as the number-one priority, followed by “managing and retaining data,” “ensuring privacy,” “managing IT risks and compliance,” and “preventing and responding to computer fraud.” The top five poll results all relate to securing, managing or protecting the information entrusted to CPAs. The poll results are largely consistent with prior years and not particularly surprising in a world where data breaches routinely make national headlines, and CPAs receive and store large amounts of highly personal and confidential data. What is surprising and potentially alarming is the seemingly low levels of confidence the poll respondents had in their ability to protect data.

Continue Reading CPAs Need to Sharpen Awareness of IT Threats