The Corporate and Business Law Journal Forum is a companion to the Corporate and Business Law Journal. It features short responses to scholarship and comments on legal news.
We welcome submissions from professors, practitioners, judges, legislators, and law students. Submissions should be a minimum of 500 words. Each submission is subject to similar editorial standards as the articles published in the Journal.
By: Jacklyn Brandby
In 2017, a former Uber employee published an essay describing the details of her work experience as a site reliability engineer. In this essay, the employee wrote about inappropriate behavior by her manager and stated that when it was reported to human resources, the company provided no relief.
By: Nicholas Beatty
On November 6, 2019, Plaintiff Gerald Lovoi, derivatively on behalf of Netflix, Inc. (“Netflix”), brought a stockholder derivative complaint against the company’s board of directors (the “Board”) and executive officers.
By: Noah Schultz-Rathbun
Alex Morgan, Megan Rapinoe, and the rest of the U.S. Senior Women’s National Soccer Team (“WNT”) notched another major victory in early November. Morgan and Rapinoe, along with teammates Carli Lloyd and Becky Sauerbrunn, were named class representatives for the rest of the team by U.S. District Court Judge R. Gary Klausner in his November 8 order granting their motion for class certification.
By: Jada Allender
Altitude Express, Inc. v. Zarda is currently before the Supreme Court to determine whether discrimination based on sexual orientation is prohibited by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1 1964. Oral argument was heard on October 8, 2019 and a decision is expected in 2020.
By: Olivia Stitz
Gone are the days where companies are forced to decipher and interpret the Department of Justice’s (“DOJ”) published declination letters. After supplementing Title 18 Sentencing Guidelines with its April 2019 Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs, the DOJ left a gaping hole in how they would evaluate Inability-to-Pay claims.
By: Alexa Weber
In The Federal Trade Commission (“FTC”) has sued Match Group, Inc. (“Match”) for allegedly tricking individuals to subscribe to Match.com, an online dating service, through fraudulent advertising, deceptive business practices, and unfair denial of access to subscriber accounts. Match controls about one-quarter of the online dating market and owns approximately 45 separate online dating services, including Match.com, OKCupid, Tinder, and PlentyOfFish.
By: Adina Weisberg
BigLaw has been slow on improving diversity; top law firms will not even be close to mirroring law school classes until 2057 (for gender diversity) and 2084 (for racial diversity). To address this issue, five firms will work with Diversity Lab, through its Move the Needle Fund (“MTN”), on incorporating experimental methods based on research and data.
By: Zachary Rapp
On September 9, 2019, the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice filed notice outlining the arbitration process associated with their challenge of the proposed acquisition of Aleris Corporation (“Aleris”) by Novelis Inc. (“Novelis”).
By: William Anderson
Purdue Pharma filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on September 15 as part of a settlement deal to end several lawsuits alleging the company’s responsibility for the opioid crisis.
By: Matthew Bartley
On August 21, 2019, a Delaware Chancery Court ruled that a fully executed written agreement—signed by relatively sophisticated parties—can be deemed unenforceable if uncertainty exists in the agreement’s formation. In Kotler v. Shipman Associates, LLC, C.A. No. 2017-0457-JRC (Del. Ch. Aug. 21, 2019, corrected (typo on page four) Aug. 27, 2019), the court ruled that an equity warrant agreement between an employee and her former employer was unenforceable because it did not codify the required objective intent of both parties to be bound by its provisions.
