Pennsylvanians who were required to help pay for low income customers' electricity prior to deregulation of the industry are still responsible to pay those costs now, but customers who didn't have that obligation before still don't. A unanimous en banc Commonwealth Court panel has ruled that "nonbypassable" costs, as described in the state Electricity Generation Customer Choice and Competition Act, refer to costs that were paid by a customer class prior to deregulation of the electric utility industry that must still be paid by that class after deregulation, regardless of the electric generation supplier the customers in the class choose to use.

It will come as no surprise that there is a long-standing split of authorities among the courts concerning whether or not subsequent new value must remain unpaid for the purposes of § 547(c)(4). This article discusses where the courts stand today.

Three corporate guilty pleas in a long-running Justice Department antitrust investigation sent white-collar lawyers scrambling on Nov. 12 to figure out what it might portend for other companies, and for individual executives. San Francisco-based federal prosecutors joined their superiors in a Washington, D.C., press conference to announce big fines for price fixing in the LCD computer and television screen industry. South Korea's LG Display got hit hardest, agreeing to pay $400 million in what the government described as the second-biggest antitrust fine ever.

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Large corporations like the $2 billion fast food giant Burger King are finding they can have their legal services their way. The company, which spends millions on legal fees every year, has negotiated with the firms that provide their outside counsel for a variety of alternative billing methods, including fee caps, blended rates and monthly retainers. And they are not alone.

Plaintiffs who claim a conspiracy by American Express to cover up an antitrust plot with other major credit card companies on foreign currency transactions won a victory as a federal appeals court said they cannot be compelled to arbitrate. The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the plaintiffs could not be forced into arbitration because American Express was not a signatory to the MasterCard, Visa and Diners Club credit card agreements that included the arbitration clauses.

Federal law did not preclude auto manufacturer from filing unsecured deficiency claim based on state law where Chapter 13 consumer debtor proposed to surrender "910 vehicle" whose value was less than balance remaining on auto loan (applying "hanging paragraph" to cases involving surrender of 910 vehicle).

Securities Litigation Uniform Standards Act preempted state-law claims that trustee breached fiduciary duty by failing to disclose conflicts of interest in selection of nationally-traded investment securities.

In an expanding probe of investment giant UBS, the Justice Department on Wednesday announced the indictment of the Swiss bank's chairman of global wealth management, accusing him of playing a key role in a tax evasion scheme to shelter secret U.S. account holders from income tax bills and drive up bank revenue. Raoul Weil, who oversaw the Swiss bank's cross-border private banking business serving 20,000 U.S. clients, helped conceal a combined $20 billion in assets from the IRS, the indictment charged.

Most lawyers don't keep a crystal ball in their office, but if pressed, some will take a crack at forecasting the future. A selection of litigators shared their predictions about the legal and political issues that could impact their practice areas over the next four years. Regardless of which side of the political aisle they stand on, these experts agreed that the financial crisis is likely to lead to sweeping changes in bankruptcy and securities law, energy policy and financial regulation.

Yahoo's lawyers were ready to fight a government lawsuit blocking the search engine's ad-sharing deal with Google. One small problem: Google wasn't. Google general counsel David Drummond announced in a blog post Wednesday that his company wasn't willing to go to the mat with antitrust regulators to save a deal that was viewed as a lifeboat for rival Yahoo. The partnership would have outsourced some of Yahoo's search advertising to Google and brought in an estimated $800 million a year.

The $2.6 trillion municipal bond market has been brought to its knees by the loss of triple-A credit ratings on the bond insurance sold to cities, rendering the policies worthless and prompting a wave of lawsuits by California cities against their bond insurers. The litigation is almost certain to mushroom nationally, given the number of municipalities, utility districts and others hit by the public bond rating crisis, according to the attorney who has filed the California actions.

Since its establishment in 1934, the policies and practices governing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have existed under a shroud of mystery accessible only to those who previously worked at the SEC or to those who represented parties in front of the commission.

The Japanese government plans to ask European Union regulators to block the proposed merger between mining giants Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton, citing the possibility of anti-competitive pricing. Japan is taking the unusual step before the EU because its steel companies rely on Rio and BHP for about 60 percent of their iron ore. A Weil Gotshal partner says it's "extremely rare" for a government to request regulatory action from another country on behalf of its customers.

A North Carolina tobacco company said on Oct. 28 that it has sued 52 attorneys general and 19 other tobacco makers for conspiring to stifle competition with their creation of the 1998 Master Settlement Agreement. General Tobacco asked for more than $1 billion in damages. It accuses the attorneys general of violating its constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment as well as the Sherman Antitrust Act.

A federal appeals court on Oct. 24 found Tennessee's wine industry law contains unconstitutional discriminatory restrictions on winery license requirements, but sent the case back to the trial judge to fashion an appropriate remedy. In addition, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did uphold the state's prohibition on selling and shipping wine directly to Tennessee consumers, whether by in-state or out-of-state wine sellers.

The New Jersey Supreme Court's Advisory Committee on Professional Ethics has declined to place a proscription on lawyers charging a 50 percent contingency fee in consumer rights cases. The committee's opinion addressed a lawyer's inquiry on whether it is permissible to agree with a client to split evenly the net amount recovered, after disbursements, in a consumer protection case, where statutory attorney fees are available. But consumer lawyers are saying the opinion leaves some unanswered questions.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission brought 671 enforcement actions in fiscal year 2008, the second-highest total in the agency's history. The SEC also repeated last year's total of distributing more than $1 billion to investors harmed by others' actions during fiscal 2008, which ended on Sept. 30.

Former Solicitor General Theodore Olson says antitrust law has been turned on its head by a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in the

Credit card issuers Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. on Oct. 27 said they will pay up to $2.75 billion to Discover Financial Services LLC to settle an antitrust suit. Visa of San Francisco will pay $1.89 billion, and MasterCard of Purchase, N.Y., will pay $862.5 million.