Law Blog

PHOENIX, Ariz. (2/23/2018) –  Carissa Seidl was appointed to the Executive Board for the Maricopa County Bar Association Family Law Section for a two-year term. The board is responsible for organizing and facilitating educational as well as social events for family law professionals.  Additionally, it is an important forum for the exchange of ideas an...

Imagine this scenario: Your company is in Arizona and one of your sales representatives goes to work for a competitor. He knows all about your pricing and bidding practices, so he helps your competitor undercut your prices. He then calls all of your customers and offers discounted pricing while telling them about the many flaws in your organization. After successfu...

The Award In McClure v. CC Services Inc. & Country Life Insurance Company dba Country Life Financial, an Arizona insurance bad faith case arising from a disability claim, a jury awarded $1.29 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages. The Takeaway Although Arizona has a reputation for conservative juries—particularly Ph...

On June 19, 2017, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the disparagement clause of the Lanham Act (15 U.S.C. § 1051 et seq.) in Matal v. Tam (137 S. Ct. 1744), holding that it violates the First Amendment’s free speech clause. Before the Matal v. Tam decision, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) relied on the disparageme...

When the heat is on, how do you perform? Can you remain calm? Can you focus on the task at hand? Or do you crack under pressure? Or maybe you take out your stress on those around you? If so, you need to find ideas and tools to remain calm and focus, like Shaun White did last night.  On February 13th, I watched him win his third Olympic gold medal in the snowboard...

Believing in yourself sounds easy, but we all have our own insecurities to overcome in given situations. Sometimes the easiest road is to fold and not move forward. Taking the easy way generally is the path to things staying the same or getting worse, but we all say we want to do better and be successful. I think part of the reason is persistence. Some people have ...

Recently, the Arizona Court of Appeals clarified that only one parent is required to file a motion to modify legal decision-making or parenting time. In Sundstrom v. Flatt, Mother exercised sole legal decision-making authority and shared equal parenting time with Father. She filed a petition to retain sole legal decision-making, reduce Father’s parenting time or ...

Congress enacted the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (“BBA”) under which existing partnership audit rules have been replaced. The new BBA audit rules are broad and complex and effective for partnership tax returns filed for tax years beginning in 2018. Under the prior audit rules, the tax liability flowed through to each partner. Under the new audit r...

Question: I know my spouse’s passwords to their social media accounts, bank accounts and/or financial accounts, can I log into their account and get the information we need to help win my case? Answer: While this might sound like a really good idea, the answer is no. In doing so, you would likely be breaking a number of federal laws. These laws include the Store...

Celebrity kitty Tardar Sauce aka “Grumpy Cat” (or, rather, the entity that owns rights to the GRUMPY CAT brand) has prevailed on its claims of breach of contract and trademark and copyright infringement against a beverage company for exceeding the scope of its license to use the brand to produce and market coffee products. In 2013, Grumpy Cat Limited (“GCL�...