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It may sound more like a tongue twister than a legal ruling:  if employees agree to submit disputes to binding arbitration, then decide the agreement is unfair, the dispute about dispute arbitration should be arbitrated by an arbitrator. 

That is what the U.S. Court of Appeals decided in a case brought by two Uber drivers against the ride-hailing company. 

We all know that life insurance can be an important part of our estate plans. It can provide immediate cash at the time of death to provide for our family’s needs – which for affluent families may include paying estate taxes.  Less well known, however, are why it may make sense for a high net worth individual to put a policy into a life insurance trust.

A tenant in an office building hired a janitorial service to clean its carpets. An employee of the cleaning service carried a bucket of soapy water up the stairs, spilled it and fell, suffering serious injuries. The worker sued the tenant, who in turn sued the landlord. Who should pay the worker’s medical bills?

  Entrepreneurs who launch successful new ventures, and the investors who fund these startup companies, can now really ring the economic bell upon a liquidity event, thanks to a recent change in the tax code.

With California’s crowded court calendars, there can be a substantial time lag between the filing of a lawsuit in a business dispute and the eventual ruling by a court on that dispute.  Not surprisingly, plaintiffs who win their cases want to collect not only the original amount due to them, but interest on that amount for the months or years the case was in court – what lawyers call “prejudgment interest.”

For lawyers, litigation is our bread and butter. For almost any business executive, however, a lawsuit is a costly, time-consuming and frustrating distraction. It is hardly surprising that litigation has been compared to trench warfare, with each side digging in and lobbing legal documents at each other for months or years, while the billable hours steadily rise.