Mayer Brown, a leading global law firm, announced today that Ayela Semerdjian & Associates, a law firm dedicated to litigation and headed by Christophe Ayela and Renaud Semerdjian, has merged with Mayer Brown’s Paris office.
Scenario:A large company is defending itself in a breach of contract lawsuit. In order to prepare its defense, the company requests documents from the plaintiff that include electronically stored information (ESI). The company believes that plaintiff possesses certain emails and drafts of the contract that may refute plaintiff’s interpretation of the contract.
Scenario: A large, publicly traded manufacturing company is sued by a class of shareholders claiming various securities law violations as well as a failure to disclose the declining sales of one of the company’s manufactured items. The plaintiff class issues a subpoena for documents to a key supplier of the manufactured item at issue.
Scenario: A series of privileged communications between in-house counsel and the board of directors was unintentionally produced to the opposing side during the pre-deposition discovery period in a federal action. During the deposition of one of the board members, the opposing side submits the set of privileged documents as an exhibit. There is no agreement or court order on file in the case dealing with the inadvertent production of privileged documents.
The Federal Arbitration Act (FAA), the primary arbitration statute in the United States, provides four narrow grounds for vacating an arbitration award—a party’s procurement of the award through fraud; evident partiality on the part of the arbitrators; miscon¬duct by the arbitrators; and where the arbitrators exceeded their authority.
In a landmark decision, the European Court of Justice (the “ECJ”) has decided that courts in countries within the European Union cannot prevent parties from issuing court proceedings in other Member States simply on the basis that the dispute arises under a contract which includes an arbitration agreement.
One of the most important advantages of arbitration, when compared to litigation, is supposed to be speed. However, there is growing criticism that in recent years commercial arbitration has become too lengthy and, as a result, too expensive.
Following the recent establishment of the LCIA-DIFC Centre at the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), Dubai now has two international arbitration centres. This reflects the increasing acceptance of arbitration in the Middle East and the progress made in developing arbitration in Dubai.
For a number of years, Hong Kong has battled with Singapore and other regional centres to be the dominant arbitration centre in Asia. Hong Kong’s position has benefited from a number of occurrences, such as the establishment by the ICC of a secretariat there.
Scenario: A whistleblower alerts authorities that brokers in a large brokerage firm may have violated a number of regulations regarding communications. The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) commences an investigation regarding whether one broker “tweeted” about a pending hostile takeover on his Twitter account and whether another broker received insider information about the takeover on his “wall” after a client “blogged” about it on Facebook.
A company is sued by a class of investors. The investors issue a discovery request for a large number of data files that are only tangentially related to their claim.
12 June 2009 - Mayer Brown LLP, a leading global law firm, announced today that 124 of its attorneys are ranked in the 2009 edition of Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, including 32 who achieved top-band ranking or higher in 26 national and/or state categories.
A multinational corporation is a defendant in a products liability action in a US federal court. During discovery, the plaintiffs request production of relevant emails from employees of an overseas affiliate of the defendant who are stationed in the Netherlands, France and Germany.
A large company is involved in a commercial litigation dispute that requires the collection and production of electronically stored information (ESI) maintained by its offices in the United States, Europe and Asia. During the Rule 26(f) conference, the parties discuss a variety of topics but do not discuss the fact that the large company intends to use keywords to search its servers for responsive ESI.
Scenario: A manufacturing company is sued by a class of consumers each of whom alleges to have suffered damage from a manufactured item. Information about the research and development, marketing and sales of this manufactured item is kept on a number of relational databases maintained by the company.
Does a foreign arbitral award have to be challenged in its state of origin in order to preserve objections in the domestic recognition and enforcement proceedings?
March 2009 - Dany Khayat, a member of the international arbitration team in Mayer Brown’s Paris office, recently co-authored (with Julien Fouret) Recueil des Commentaires des Décisions du CIRDI (2002-2007) as part of the Éditions Bruylant’s Droit et Mondialisation collection, under the supervision of Professor François Crépeau,
January 2009 - Remediation of legacy data is becoming an increasingly important component of effective information management policies and procedures. Legacy data generally consists of data that was retained outside an organization's routine records retention schedule and beyond any useful business purpose it once may have had, and yet continues to be retained due to fear that some small part of it might be relevant to pending or threatened litigation.
October 2008 - In Hall Street Associates, L.L.C. v. Mattel, Inc., the U.S. Supreme Court held that, under the Federal Arbitration Act, parties to an arbitration agreement may not contract for broader judicial review of arbitral awards than the grounds provided for in the FAA itself.
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