Category Archives: Uncategorized

Comments Sought on Revisions to NY UCC

A UCC omnibus bill being introduced in the New York Legislature would revise UCC Articles 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, and 9, to embody the latest UCC Model Versions.  If you have views about particular advantages and disadvantages to adoption, or suggested revisions, Norman Silber would be interested in knowing about them.  Please email him at Norman.Silber@Hofstra.edu

Mortgage tax break up for debate in fiscal cliff talks

In the fiscal cliff negotiations, a lot is on the table. One policy formally viewed as untouchable but now up for discussion, the Washington Post reports, is the mortgage-interest deduction, which is designed to encourage home ownership but has been criticized as responsible for inflating home prices and benefiting the wealthy disproportionally. The Post story […]

United Airlines Sues Website Critical of United Airlines

by Brian Wolfman One of the nice things about the Internet is that it brings down the cost of communicating with the public, potentially democratizing free speech. At fairly low cost, consumers can establish websites that criticize big businesses. Sometimes those big businesses don't like that and sue the owners of the critical websites. Often […]

EPA Bans BP From Future Federal Contracts

As explained here, the Environmental Protection Agency has banned BP from future federal contracts in light of the company's "lack of business integrity" evidenced by its misconduct surrounding the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The ban is temporary and will be lifted when BP, according to the EPA, "can provide sufficient evidence […]

Major Ruling in Federal Tobacco Litigation

Judge Gladys Kessler of the U.S. District Court in D.C. has issued this this major opinion imposing corrective remedies in the federal government's 13-year-old RICO suit against the tobacco industry. Judge Kessler has issued a separate order mandating that the tobacco companies publish "corrective statements" on five topics "on which the Court found they had […]

What Should Be Done About Underwater Mortgages?

In case you missed it, last week the Washington Post had this interesting article describing a meeting between President Obama and seven of the world's most prominent economists. The meeting took place over 13 months ago. Nearly all of the economists told the President that the government hadn't done enough to effectively forgive the mortgage […]

Supreme Court to consider practice of “picking off” plaintiffs in FLSA collective actions

Keep an eye on this case, which raises the question whether a defendant in a wage and hour case can make an offer of judgment under Rule 68 to the named plaintiff in a putative collective action under the Fair Labor Standards Act and thereby render the case moot whether the plaintiff accepts the offer […]

Supreme Court Hands Down Per Curiam Federal Arbitration Act Decision

The Supreme Court handed down a unanimous per curiam decision this morning in Nitro-Lift Technologies v. Eddie Lee Howard. The Court ruled that an Oklahama Supreme Court's decision nixing contract provisions was a decision for an arbitrator (not the Oklahoma courts): State courts rather than federal courts are most frequently called upon to apply the […]