California Corporate & Securities Law

Notes on the Facebook fairness hearing

One might not expect that filing a registration statement on Form S-8 could result in a criminal conviction. However, that is what happened to the CEO and CFO of a small public company. They were both convicted of selling securities without...

Nancy Wojtas at Cooley LLP alerted me to an interesting ruling case decided last week by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York, Gardner v. Major Auto. Cos., 2012 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 118191 (E.D. N.Y. Aug. 21, 2012).

Employers like covenants not to compete; California doesn't.  Anyone who doubts these two propositions should read the opinion issued last Friday by the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Fillpoint, LLC v. Maas, 2012 Cal. App. LEXIS 914 (Aug. 24,...

As discussed in this earlier post, Facebook, Inc. has requested a fairness hearing before the California Department of Corporations. Technically, the hearing is being held pursuant to Corporations Code Section 25142 in connection with Facebook's...

In May 2011, I wrote about U.S. District Court Judge Susan Illston's decision allowing a purchaser of auction rate securities to pursue claims under the California Corporations Code against Deutsche Bank Securities Inc.  Anschutz Corp. v. Merrill...

An Illinois corporation hires an employee, leases office space in California. A dispute then arises between the corporation and its California employee. The employee sues and the corporation counterclaims. The employee moves to dismiss the...

This month's issue of California Lawyer magazine includes this long piece discussing the case of Dimitrious P. Biller, a former in-house attorney. In 2011, an arbitrator order Mr. Biller to pay his former employer $2.6 million in damages and...

In 1941, Robert Noble, Ellis O. Jones and several other individuals were indicted for violating California's Subversive Organization Registration Law. The defendants were active in a pro-German group called the Friends of Progress. Eventually, they...