Business Law

In United States Dep’t of Agriculture v. Hopper (In re Colusa Reg’l Med. Ctr.), 604 B.R. 839 (9th Cir. BAP 2019), the U.S. Bankruptcy Appellate Panel of the Ninth Circuit vacated a bankruptcy court's order surcharging a secured creditor for a substantial portion of the attorneys’ fees, and the entire statutory fee, of a chapter 7 trustee. The basis for the decision was that the bankruptcy court failed to correctly apply either the objective test for surcharge adopted by the Ninth Circuit (that the funds were expended directly, specifically and primarily for the benefit of the secured creditor) or the subjective test for surcharge (that the secured creditor consented to the expenditure). Read more

The following is a profile of the Honorable Margaret M. Mann, Chief Judge of the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of California. Read more

In In re Rosenberg (Rosenberg v. N.Y. State Higher Education Services Corp., et al.), No. 18-09023, 2020 WL 130302, 2020 Bankr. LEXIS 73 (Bankr. S.D.N.Y., Jan. 7, 2020), Chief Judge Cecelia Morris of the United States Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York, in a decision to be published, granted Kevin Rosenberg’s summary judgment motion, finding that his student loan obligations were dischargeable pursuant to 11 U.S.C. § 523(a)(8). A Notice of Appeal and Memorandum For Leave to Appeal Interlocutory Order seeking District Court review were filed in the bankruptcy case on January 17, 2020. The bankruptcy court entered the Order Granting Leave to Appeal on January 17, 2020. Read more

This one-hour webinar will discuss some of the issues the CCPA will raise for the blockchain/crypto industry.  Read more

The objective of this program is to give attorneys the tools they need to ethically identify and eliminate bias in the legal profession. Unconscious bias plays a role in how we organize and interpret the world, but if left unchecked, such biases can—and do—have significant consequences in the practice of law. Read more

Why is the dissolution of a limited liability company such a big deal? Or is it? Read more

The Agribusiness Committee of the California Lawyers Association’s Business Law Section will kick off its 2020 Agriculture Tour series with the California Farm Bureau Federation’s Ag Issues Update Meeting, to be held in Sacramento on Friday, February 21, 2020. The program is a unique opportunity for practitioners to hear the perspectives of Farm Bureau’s legal staff on recent judicial opinions, pending court cases, and key legislative and regulatory developments affecting agribusiness throughout California. Read more

In Glasser v. Hilton Grand Vacations Company, LLC., No. 18-1449 (2020), the Eleventh Circuit ruled that the TCPA’s definition of an auto-dialer requires random or sequential number generation. This decision aligns with the Third Circuit and certain district courts that are split with the Ninth. In Marks v. Crunch San Diego, LLC, 904 F.3d 1041 (2018), the Ninth Circuit broadly construed the definition to include equipment that dials automatically from a stored list. Glasser adopts a significantly narrower definition. Read more

On January 23, 2020, the California Court of Appeal, First Appellate District, in the case of Jensen v. iShares Trust, 2020 Cal. App. LEXIS 61, affirmed a lower court ruling that individual investors who purchased shares in exchange-traded funds (“ETFs”) through the secondary market and then incurred losses lacked standing to pursue their claims for violations of various provisions of the federal Securities Act of 1933 (the “Securities Act”) against the issuer and associated entities principally because the investors purchased… Read more

The program will focus on three key areas: (1) the fundamental basis of the statute, how it is structured, and additional rights that it creates for consumers; (2) who is covered by the statute, including who qualifies for protection, what businesses the act applies to and how it will affect them, and organizations that are exempt; and (3) enforcement mechanisms under the statute, including what penalties and private rights of action are available, and how the potential claims/liabilities may generate class action litigation for certain data breaches that result from violations of a business’s duty to implement and maintain reasonable security practices and procedures appropriate to the risk arising from existing California law. Read more