Delaware Supreme Court Establishes Rules Facilitating Dismissal of Board Advisors from M&A Litigation

In recent years, entrepreneurial plaintiffs’ lawyers representing stockholders in litigation challenging mergers and acquisitions have increasingly asserted aiding and abetting claims against financial and other advisors to corporate boards of directors, perceiving the investment banks and law firms that serve in these roles as potential defendants with deep pockets.  This trend likely will reverse itself

2016 HIPAA Settlements Demonstrate HIPAA Compliance Challenges in a Mobile Society

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) has been actively enforcing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”) in 2016. As of August, covered entities and business associates (the organizations who are subject to HIPAA) have paid OCR more than $20 million to resolve allegations of

Business Beware: U.S. Department of Labor Signs Agreement to Address Worker Misclassification in Pennsylvania

PA Worker Misclassification

Wage-and-hour actions under the Fair Labor Standards Act (“FLSA”) are one of the largest growing types of litigation, and have been for over a decade. Pennsylvania businesses may soon experience an increase in FLSA-related litigation, as the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (DLI) and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) signed a “Memorandum of

SCOTUS Raises the Bar on Materiality in False Claims Act Lawsuits

FCA

The implied false certification theory of liability under the False Claims Act (FCA) is premised on the notion that a person who does business with the federal government, by the very act of submitting a claim for payment, has impliedly certified compliance with the often numerous statutes, regulations, and contract terms that govern the contractual

Lessons Learned from the Staples/Office Depot Merger Challenge

Kathleen Mullen

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia recently granted the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC’s) motion to preliminarily enjoin the merger of Staples and Office Depot, the country’s two largest brick-and-mortar retailers and distributors of office supplies.[1] The injunction caused the companies to abandon the merger. Background Interestingly, the FTC’s theory was not based