On July 24, 2013, the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Sun Capital Partners III LP v. New England Teamsters & Trucking Industry Pension Fund, held that a private equity fund was a “trade or business” under the controlled group rules of ERISA, and, as a result, could be held jointly and severally liable for the pension obligations of a bankrupt portfolio company.

It has long been held that the English court has power to grant a freezing injunction against a third party (against whom no claim lay), provided that it is ancillary and incidental to a good arguable claim against a defendant (TSB Private Bank International SA v Chabra [1992] 2 All ER 245).

In a written statement to Parliament on 26 July 2010, the government announced its intention to consult in the autumn on implementing a number of the recommendations in Lord Justice Jackson's final report on civil litigation costs, published on 14 January 2010.

A number of recent cases have signalled a change in approach by the courts when analysing non-reliance provisions in entire agreement clauses. Previously, these provisions were commonly regarded as capable of giving rise to an evidential estoppel (also known as an estoppel by representation). However, it was not always possible to establish this estoppel where it could be shown that the estoppel did not reflect the underlying factual position.

The turmoil in recent years in economic markets has not surprisingly resulted in a number of court cases concerning complex financial transactions, often with cross-border elements. Those transactions are commonly documented in a number of related agreements, whether entered into contemporaneously or over a period of time. Not uncommonly, by accident or design, those agreements contain different jurisdiction clauses. Which court has jurisdiction in these circumstances?

In recent months we have seen a number of interesting judgments relating to Part 36 of the Civil Procedure Rules. Part 36 encourages parties to settle their litigation by imposing unfavourable costs and interest consequences in the event that a party (whether claimant or defendant) refuses its opponent's Part 36 offer to settle but then fails to achieve a better result at trial. The most significant of these, in the joined appeals of Gibbon v Manchester City Council and LG Blower Specialist Bricklayer Limited v Reeves [2010] EWCA Civ 726, was handed down on 25 June.

A new Practice Direction (PD) and questionnaire will apply to the disclosure of electronic documents in multi-track cases started in the High Court on or after 1 October 2010. The new rules have developed out of a concern that existing provisions are not effective in forcing parties to litigation to address and correctly disclose electronic documents in evidence.

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act represents one of the most comprehensive legislative overhauls of financial institution regulations in U.S. history, affecting a wide range of providers of financial products and services as well as business and consumer customers. In a webcast interview for The Wall Street Journal, Dechert partner Thomas P.

Poor performance, failure to meet deadlines, and failure to pay on time may all amount to breaches of contract. However, not all breaches of contract entitle the non-breaching party to treat the contract as terminated. In fact, doing so may, in itself, be a repudiatory breach entitling the other party to terminate and sue for damages. In this the ninth part of our 'before you charge in' series, we provide a guide to repudiatory breaches and relying on such a breach to treat the contract as at an end.