Against the backdrop of today’s tightening initial public offering and credit markets, private equity firms are finding it increasingly difficult to exit their investments using traditional vehicles.

On September 12, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) proposed Senate Bill 2041 to amend the federal False Claims Act (“FCA”) in ways which would directly impact qui tam suits initiated against health care providers.

Section 546 of the Bankruptcy Code expressly provides certain limitations on the avoiding powers of a trustee in a bankruptcy case.

On October 22, 2004, President Bush signed the American Jobs Creation Act. Tucked away in the corporate tax bill is the Civil Rights Tax Relief Act, a significant piece of legislation eliminating the double taxation of attorneys’ fees awarded to plaintiffs in discrimination lawsuits. A diverse coalition of business and civil rights groups backed the legislation to remedy inequities in the tax treatment of employment awards.

The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, signed into law on December 20, 2006, amended the Internal Revenue Code to provide more incentives for private citizens to blow the whistle on tax evaders. Generally, the new legislation requires the IRS to award to the whistleblower at least 15%, but not more than 30%, of the collected proceeds resulting from the information provided by the whistleblower.

At a recent meeting sponsored by the D.C. Bar Association, an IRS representative announced a plan to monitor excess benefit transactions involving tax-exempt organizations subject to section 4958 of the Internal Revenue Code (the "Code")

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO), an arm of Congress, testified before the U.S. Senate on June 16 that a study of government contractors shows that as many as 33,000 civilian contractors owe the Government more than $3 billion in unpaid taxes. GAO matched government contractor records with files of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to identify the contractors

On June 28, 2007, in Leegin Creative Leather Products, Inc. v. PSKS, Inc., 550 U.S. ___, (2007), overruling Dr. Miles Medical Co. v. John D. Park & Sons, 220 U.S. 373 (1911), the Supreme Court overruled a nearly 100 year old antitrust decision by holding that vertical agreements to institute minimum resale price maintenance ("RPM") are not per se illegal.

On April 12, 2006, the SEC’s Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies maintained the recommendations included in its draft final report to provide Sarbanes-Oxley Act Section 404 relief to smaller public companies.

As we warned in our March Client Alert, the cap for new H-1B petitions has been reached. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (CIS) just announced that the H-1B cap for fiscal year 2007 has been exhausted, effective retroactively as of May 26, 2006, less than two months after filings began.

On June 16, 2008, the United States Supreme Court decided the case of “Florida Department of Revenue v. Piccadilly Cafeterias, Inc.”, 128 S.Ct. 2326 (2008), which is an important decision for all chapter 11 debtors seeking to sell their assets under Section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code.

The Supreme Court of Georgia confirmed the limited scope of the “intracorporate publication” defense to defamation claims.

U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services ("CIS") announced that, as of August 4, 2004, it had received 40,000 H-1B filings subject to the cap for fiscal year 2005 (October 1, 2004 to September 30, 2005). If filings continue at this same rate, the cap is expected to be reached by the end of October, leaving almost a full year in which no new H-1B numbers are available.

The IRS recently issued Notice 2005-45 (the "Notice"), which explains how to apply the limitations enacted under the American Jobs Creation Act (Pub. L. No. 108-357) (the "AJCA") on the costs that a company may deduct when an executive uses the company's aircraft for entertainment travel.

On March 1, 2007, the Internal Revenue Service released its report on the Exempt Organizations Executive Compensation Compliance Project.

On March 20, 2006, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission issued an order delaying the implementation of the Southwest Power Pool’s real-time energy imbalance market until October 1, 2006, subject to certain conditions. SPP had filed a proposal on January 4, 2006, requesting an effective date of May 1, 2006.

On June 8, 2005, several U.S. Congressmen introduced a patent reform bill (H.R. 2795) in theHouse of Representatives. The bill proposes sweeping and controversial changes to the existing U.S. Patent Act

Effective January 1, 2006, each taxpayer’s federal estate tax (and generation skipping tax) exemption will increase from the current $1.5 million to $2 million. This is a result of the 2001 Tax Act, which provided for gradual increases in the exemption for a number of years. The next scheduled increase will be in 2009, when the exemption increases to $3.5 million.

Both the Senate Committee on Finance ("the Finance Committee") and the House Committee on Ways and Means (the "House Committee") held hearings this month to evaluate the state of tax-exempt accountability, governance, and oversight.

Two recently issued decisions may make it more difficult for a preference defendant to establish the ordinary course of business defense when the defendant revises credit terms with a customer having financial difficulty on the eve of the customer’s bankruptcy.