Business/Corporate Law

“The argument for settling at something lower is that litigation is expensive,” Professor Adam Badawi says of Musk’s effort to back out of his $44 billion deal to buy the social media network. “And this thing is so messy that it might not be worth it.”

Adam Sterling, executive director of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business, predicts an eventual court settlement that allows both sides to save face. “Twitter has an obligation to fight Musk on this, which they’d need to do because they have a fiduciary duty to do what’s best for shareholders and salvage the deal,” he says. 

Lecturer Shanin Specter, who won many of the pre-pandemic verdicts against Johnson & Johnson, cautions against assuming jurors’ mindsets have shifted. “Our experience was that good cases were bringing good verdicts, and bad cases were bringing bad verdicts,” he says. “I see absolutely no between the juries now or during the pandemic, or before the pandemic.”

One reason the case is so important to airlines is that they are likely to get a more pro-business outcome in the Supreme Court than with California’s lawmakers, Professor Catherine Fisk says. “The usual way of dealing with a policy disagreement is to get the legislature to enact a law,” she says. “What’s significant here is apparently the airlines couldn’t persuade the California legislature.”

Professor David Oppenheimer, faculty director of the Berkeley Center on Comparative Equality & Anti-Discrimination Law, says the lawsuit was the “largest verdict in an individual race discrimination in employment case.”

Professor Frank Partnoy discusses why he helped start the nonpartisan, nonprofit International Institute of Law and Finance, which promotes academic research with an eye on influencing government agency rulemaking. “There’s a gap in terms of academics connecting with policymakers,” he says. 

Professor Frank Partnoy’s 2012 interview with the New York Times exploring the moral responsibility we have to care for future generations, is cited

Professor Adam Badawi says Elon Musk would need to prove the true number of bots and the amount Twitter disclosed in its SEC filings rises to the level of a ‘material adverse effect’ in order for him to renege on his offer

Professor Peter Menell, with Dennis Aftergut of Lawyers Defending American Democracy, writes Sen. Hawley appears ready not only to undo property and free speech rights, but also to bust a foundation of America’s international trade

Dean Erwin Chemerinsky and NYU Professor Burt Neuborne write the core principle underlying the First Amendment is that government cannot punish speech because it disagrees with its viewpoint, but that is exactly what Governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Legislature have done to the Disney corporation for having dared to oppose legislation limiting discussion of gay issues in Florida’s public schools