Posted by Michael Villafana.

You may notice a new safety measure when attending a Major League Baseball game this summer. Extra safety nets will be added to several Major League ballparks starting during the 2016 season, due to several class action lawsuits filed by many baseball fans. Most recently, Gail Payne filed a class-action lawsuit against Major League Baseball seeking to get the league to act on installing better protection for fans. She also filed an amendment claiming the injuries she suffered when she was struck by a foul ball. According to the lawsuit, it states that around 90 fans have been injured since the initial lawsuit was filed. Two other fans joined Payne’s lawsuit, with one claiming that she sustained broken ribs and a partially collapsed lung when being struck by a foul ball.

In the lawsuit, all 32 teams are named as defendants. However, Major League teams have denied any liabilities for injuries, as they clearly have printed on their tickets liability waivers in which you “sign” to when you purchase your tickets. The MLB has recommended to all 30 teams to extend their foul ball safety nets beyond the end of the dugouts. In addition, the MLB has recommended that they educate their fans better on fan safety and ways to prevent injuries. However, the law firm that filed the class-action lawsuit for Mrs. Payne believes the safety upgrades must be required, and not just recommended.

The MLB has done its due diligence of research on this concerning trend. During their Fall League exhibition games, they studied the direction of foul balls, if a fan was hit or in danger, and the exit velocity off the bat to see how fast the ball was coming at a fan. The latter is what concerns Major League Baseball, which is the most occurrences, with more and more pitchers throwing in the high 90s, leading to faster exit velocity off the bats of batters.

Though some fans may oppose this safety precaution because it ruins the experience of the game, Major League teams are closely exploring the option of adding extra netting. Most notably, the Minnesota Twins were the first team to add extra netting extending beyond the end of the dugouts.

Look for more teams to follow the Twins’ lead so they don’t face any class-action lawsuits by their fans.

Michael is a sports management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Ashley Hellmers.

The New York Times published an article reporting that the Supreme Court has decided to hear Samsung’s appeal over how must be compensated for the replication of Apple’s designs.  Samsung violated Apple’s design patents for the iPhone in the creation of their S7 smartphones. Design patents are created to protect how a product looks, while a utility patent is created to protect how a product operates. Utility patents are much more common than design patents especially in this technological age. This case is monumental because the Supreme Court has not heard a case surrounding design patents in the last hundred years. The key question the Supreme Court will determine is “Where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, should an award of infringer’s profits be limited to those profits attributable to the component?”

Originally, Apple was to be awarded $548 million dollars by Samsung’s due to their infringement on Apple’s design patents. Three elements were declared to have been replicated from Apple’s iPhone: “a particular black rectangular round-cornered front face”; “a substantially similar rectangular round-cornered front face plus the surrounding rim”; and “a particular colorful grid of sixteen icons.” If a design patent is infringed upon, all profits made by the infringing company for the product are to be granted to the patent’s owner. According to the article, “even if the patented features contributed to 1 percent of the value of Samsung’s phone, Apple gets 100 percent of Samsung’s profits.”

Samsung is appealing to the Supreme Court because they believe design patents and this profit rule should not be applicable in this technological era. Many companies, such as Google and Facebook, are speaking out on the side of Samsung that the design patents are out of touch with the digital era. In terms of technology, a products function is more important and more profitable than its design. Therefore, Samsung believes that the profit rule associated with design patents is outdated. Samsung is seeking to pay only $149 million to Apple after the appeal. Apple was pushing for the Supreme Court not to hear the case.

Ashley is a marketing major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Michael Villafana.

Ten years ago from this June, the life of Koua Fong Lee changed forever, as well as those who were in the car who Lee crashed into. Koua Fong Lee was entering onto an entrance ramp in his home state of Minnesota, when all of a sudden his Toyota Camry sped up, instead of slowing down at the upcoming stoplight. His Camry crashed into the back of another car, killing two instantly including a 9-year-old child, and a 7-year-child later in the hospital. Lee was charged with criminal vehicular homicide in a Minnesota court where he testified that he attempted to break but his car would not slow down. Toyota, on the other hand, testified that Lee indeed tried to break, but he was actually stepping on the gas pedal instead of the break. Lee was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison.

In 2009, Toyota issued a recall on some of its models over acceleration issues. This prompted Lee’s legal team to revisit the case. However, it was not Lee’s team that filed a lawsuit against Toyota. It was the passengers in the car that was hit from behind by Lee. Lee joined the lawsuit claiming that his 1996 Camry inexplicably accelerated. Toyota had already settled several lawsuits over this issue, but the Lee case was one of their biggest to date.

The lawsuit went to court, where jurors heard expert testimony from both sides. Lee’s attorney used the help of an automobile expert John Stilson to help prove that every time Lee stepped on the gas, the speed would increase and would stick at that speed. Ultimately, the expert testimony given by Stilson and others led Lee’s team to a court victory. The jury ruled in favor of Lee’s team resulting in a huge compensatory pay for the victims. Toyota was ordered to pay $10.9 million in damages, being split between the victims of the crash and the Lee family. Koua Fong Lee was released from prison in 2010, after wrongly being placed there. After being released from prison, Lee stated “My life and my family is not the same anymore. So they [Toyota] are responsible for that.”

Michael is a sports management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Kyle Beck.

When someone is looking for an easy target to steal money from, they do not usually decide pick the US military. That is not the case for Alex Wisidagama, the global manager of Glenn Defense Marine Asia, who overbilled the maritime branch of the US military by more than $34 million. He, along with his cousin Leonard Glenn Francis who is the top executive of GDMA, and ten other naval officers have been charged in the case and “all but one has pleaded guilty.” Wisidagama has been sentenced to five years while his lawyer argues that he should only be given thirty months.

The naval officers pleaded guilty to bribery and “diverting ships to Asian ports where the company owned the port or the port had lax oversight, allowing GDMA to inflate prices.”

While GSMA has done business with US naval ships in Asia for 25 years, investigators are still looking into how long the maritime branch has been getting overcharged. Investigators are currently focused on Francis, because he admitted to providing “an exhaustive list of gifts, including payments for prostitutes, concert tickets and luxury hotel stays for Naval officers in exchange for classified information that helped his company carry out the scheme.” This comes as a huge problem for Wisidagama because, according to his lawyer, no one in Wisidagama’s position after this case would be able to pay off the charges, because he is not allowed to ever work on government contracts.

Kyle is an economics major in the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2018.

Posted by Kyle Chapman.

Hillary Clinton was accused of using a personal email account out of her home for her official email communication while she was Secretary of State. She used her family’s private email server, instead of using the official State Department email account maintained on federal government servers. Government officials argue that the use of a private server, private messaging system software, and deleting almost 32,000 emails has violated State Department procedures and federal laws of recordkeeping requirements. Some of these emails are deemed to be “Top Secret” and confidential information. In my opinion, this is a violation of federal law.

After a CNN interview, a new opportunity has shown some light for Hillary. Hillary stated, “Everything I did was permitted. There was no law. There was no regulation.” To clarify, the legal requirement to immediately preserve emails from a nongovernment email account was not put into law until two years after she stepped down as Secretary of State. She claims that she has done nothing wrong because there was no law enforced when she committed the act. Hillary stated that other Secretaries of State did the same thing, but there are no records of other secretaries setting up a private email server for all of their government communications. In addition, while Hillary was Secretary of State, she sent a cable containing her signature warning employees to avoid handling official business from a personal email account.

Therefore, Hillary was well informed of her actions. Even though there was not a specific law enforcing to preserve emails from nongovernment accounts, Clinton knew what she was doing. In that case, I find Hillary guilty for her actions.

This whole controversy started when officials were unable to locate emails in the investigation of the 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya. It looks like as if she was covering her tracks by deleting those emails on her private server. Not only did this interfere with the investigation, but a hacker attempted to hack into her email server.

Mishandling top secret government information is a federal crime. In conclusion, I find Hillary guilty for the use of mishandling government information by using her own private email server.

Kyle is a management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Brooke Sabol.

Gucci America, Inc. sought default judgement, an award of statutory damages, costs of the suit and a permanent injunction against defendant Wang Huoqing. The hearing on the motion was on October 8, 2010. Gucci became aware that Wang was selling fake products bearing the Gucci name and trademark on the internet to U.S residents. Gucci ended up suing Wang. The court needed to decide if Gucci had jurisdiction over Wang before it could enter default judgement.

The court granted default judgement against defendant Wang on false designation. The court awarded statutory damages to Gucci America, Bottega Veneta International S.A.R.L, Balenciaga S.A. Gucci America was awarded $440,000, Bottega Veneta International S.A.R.L was awarded $4,000, and lastly Balenciaga S.A. was awarded $8,000. For prejudgment interest Gucci was awarded $12,768.92, Bottega Venteta was awarded $116.08, and Balenciaga S.A $232.16. Lastly they were each awarded $233.33 on the basis of defendant’s trademark infringement.

In my opinion, I believe the default judgment order was fair. Wang was at fault by illegally copyrighting Gucci’s trademark.

Brooke Sabol is a marketing major at Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Luis Ferreira, Jr.

Volkswagen, who recently met the goal of becoming the world’s biggest car making company, has gotten themselves into some legal troubles. The accusations stem from excessive amounts of pollutants caused by their cars and using emission cheating software to cover it up. The company has installed the software into 11 million engines worldwide. The software is supposed to limit the amount of a toxic nitrogen oxide that is released from the car, however, the company’s device instead lets the vehicle release pollutants about 40 more times the legal amount. Volkswagen did this because it lets the car have better acceleration and fuel economy. This device is illegal in the United States and in many other countries.

The court gave the company until April 21, 2016 to fix all of their cars. The court told the German car company that if the cars were not fixed by this specific date, then they would a breach trial. The company is also getting fined in all of the countries it sold the cars in and facing many legal suits from car owners that are very upset over this dispute. Everything, including cars fixed, payments to unpleased customers, and timing, must be resolved by April 21^st or the company will be going to trial.

Volkswagen has said they are “’committed to resolving the US regulatory investigation into the diesel emissions matter as quickly as possible and to implementing a solution for affected vehicles.’”

The company has said they are going to follow all of the orders by the judge to be able to avoid trial and get the company out of these legal troubles.

Luis is a business law student at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University.

Posted by Kyle Chapman.

On January 18, 2015, the New England Patriots played the Indianapolis Colts in the AFC Championship. The Patriots would go on to win the game, but a massive legal controversy would follow in the aftermath of the game. Reports arose after the game that the Patriots had used footballs inflated below regulation towards their advantage during the game. Using footballs against regulation is a very consequential action and the National Football League was not happy with the reports one bit. A massive investigation and legal battle between the Patriots and the NFL would ensue.

A few days later, the NFL assigned Manhattan attorney, Ted Wells, to get to the bottom of the situation. The case was receiving heavy media coverage and had the Patriots’ public image in hot water. Nobody from the organization admitted to being aware of the apparent cheating and denied any involvement. The investigation was completed on May 6, 2015 with a 243 page investigative report known as “The Wells Report.”

The Wells Report appeared to have the Patriots caught red-handed. A very important aspect of the report came from scientific analysis provided by Exponent, which claimed that no set of environmental or physical factors could’ve accounted for the air loss shown in the balls. This meant that the air loss were the actions of people, and accused locker-room attendant Jim McNally and equipment assistant John Jastremski as the culprits. There were several text messages between that reference inflation, deflation, and needles. The texts suggest that Patriots quarterback, Tom Brady, was aware of their actions, but the coaching staff was unaware. The investigation concluded that it was “more probable than not,” that the Patriots equipment personnel had broken the rules.

The NFL decided to suspend Tom Brady for four games and give the Patriots a $1 million fine while stripping them of draft picks. Brady pursued an appeal on his suspension and began a long legal battle with the NFL. He felt falsely accused and very harshly punished. After a long battle, on September 3, 2015, a settlement was reached and the suspension was taken away, with a claim that Brady had a lack of fair due process.

I think the situation could’ve been handled much better than it was. For starters, the media had completely scrutinized the scandal and blew it out of proportion. I think it pinned Brady and the Patriots in guilty before proven innocent image, even though there wasn’t much evidence at all that showed their involvement in the scandal. There were also leaks of false evidence early on that made the Patriots appear guilty.

The NFL has been in hot water lately with legal situations and I think this whole case hurt their image.

Kyle is a management major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Ismail Surakat.

This is a case between Southern District of Georgia and Vania Lee Allen, a native of Jamaica, who committed a fraud and falsely impersonating a United Sates FBI special agent in connection with an international lottery fraud arrangement based in Jamaica. According to the indictment, 30-year-old Vania Lee Allen was charged for conspiracy to commit wire fraud and also, impersonating United States employee. Allen and her co-conspirator from Jamaica illegitimately enriched themselves through fraudulent lottery plan, targeting elderly residents of Evans, Georgia.

According to this case, Allen traveled from Jamaica to United States in May 2015 and presented herself as an FBI special agent in order to convince her victim. Though, before getting to this stage, Allen had made some movement such as informing the victim by phone that they had won money in a lottery game and instructed them to make some certain payments to her co-conspirator in Jamaica for them to collect their lump sum winnings. She also discussed with a co-conspirator in Jamaica on how to impersonate an FBI using a fake law enforcement badge with the “FBI” logo and the words, “Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Upon arrival at the victim’s place, Allen presented as an FBI special agent and asked the victim to speak on-line with her co-conspirator in Jamaica. All of this was made to look real; no doubt elderly citizens can fall victim to this type of  fraudulent act.

The case was investigated by the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Columbia County Georgia Sherriff’s Office, and is being prosecuted as well by Trial Attorney Clint Narver of the Civil Division’s Consumer Protection Branch and Assistant U.S.  Attorney Troy Clark of the Southern District of Georgia.

If Allen is eventually convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison for the wire fraud, five years for the conspiracy count, as well as, up to three years for the false impersonation count.

Ismail Surakat is a pre business major at Seton Hall University, Class of 2019.

Posted by Jose L. Diaz.

Imagine having a potential life-ending disease or illness that you depend on medication for to survive. Money is tight, and most of your savings goes towards purchasing the medication in order to survive. Suddenly, just overnight, the price of this drug not only increases, but it increases by 5000%. While it sounds absolutely absurd, this actually happened when Turing Pharmaceuticals, a startup company being run by a former hedge fund manager, increased the price of their drug called Daraprim, from $13.50 a tablet to $750 a tablet overnight. That is not $750 a prescription–it is $750 per tablet. This brought the annual cost of treatment for some patients to over a hundred thousand dollars.

Martin Shkreli, CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, claims that the drug is so rarely used that the price increase would not have a significant effect on the health system. He claims that the money earned from the price increase would go towards developing better treatments for toxoplasmosis, the disease that is treated by Daraprim. However, the price increase will make it almost impossible for private insurers like Medicare and patients in hospitals to attain. The fact that the drug is so expensive and hard to attain now, it makes it harder for other companies to make samples of the drug and replicate it. Overall, the drug is the leading treatment for the life-threatening parasitic infection toxoplasmosis. The increase in price seems to be an only profit-driven choice.

Jose is finance and accounting major at the Stillman School of Business, Seton Hall University.