Associate, Ropes & Gray
Peter has significant experience in representing mutual funds, private equity funds, hedge funds, corporations and individuals in complex securities and corporate litigation matters, including the representation of the directors and officers of several public companies in securities class actions and breach of fiduciary duty actions. Peter also is experienced in litigating contested merger transactions, including strategic, financial and going private transactions. Peter has been involved in advising committees of directors at several large corporations concerning corporate governance and related issues in the context of mergers and acquisitions and other strategic alternatives, as well as related-party transactions, internal investigations and litigation. Peter currently serves as the Chairman of the Directors and Officers Liability Litigation Committee of the American Bar Association and is a member of the ABA Business Law Section's Task Force on Director and Officer Liability.
Peter also has significant experience, as both a litigator and adviser, in representing directors and officers of public and private corporations, as well as principals of private equity and hedge funds, in connection with their indemnification and director and officer insurance programs. Peter was involved in the successful representation of the outside directors of the Enron Corporation in litigation involving Enron's $450 million director and officer insurance program.
Peter has represented several public companies and investment advisers in connection with investigations conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission and has also represented public companies and an investment advisor in connection with criminal investigations conducted by the Department of Justice.
Peter also represents clients in the health care industry in enforcement and litigation matters. Peter has helped to represent a large health care company in investigations conducted by the federal government, including by the Department of Justice, and by state enforcement authorities.
In 2004, Peter served as a Special Assistant District Attorney in Middlesex County. Peter prosecuted some fifteen jury and bench trials and argued legal and evidentiary motions on a daily basis.
Publius comes from the pen name Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay used when they wrote 85 publicly printed letters now known as the Federalist Papers. Hamilton chose “Publius” as a name that would represent friends of the newly proposed American republic - Publius Valeria Publicola was a Roman general who helped to found the Roman Republic. The Federalist Society continues the tradition of publishing things under the name Publius in celebration of our constitutional roots and recognition that author credit is not always necessary.
Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History at Northwestern University School of Law
Stephen Presser is a leading American legal historian and expert on shareholder liability for corporate debts. He is frequently an invited witness before committees of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives on issues of constitutional law. He holds a joint appointment with the J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and also teaches in Northwestern's history department.
Shareholder, Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart
Chris Murray is Co-Chair of the firm’s Arbitration and Alternative Dispute Resolution Practice Group. In this role, he assists attorneys throughout the firm and clients nationwide to create, roll out, and enforce effective employment arbitration agreements and other ADR programs. Mr. Murray has extensive experience with class/collective action waivers in employment arbitration. Mr. Murray was part of the Ogletree team that successfully defended the use of such waivers in the Fifth Circuit’s landmark decision in D.R. Horton, Inc. v. N.L.R.B. Since then, he has successfully defended the enforceability of class action waivers in numerous subsequent cases and submitted an amicus brief on the subject on behalf of several major employers’ associations in the Supreme Court’s Murphy Oil case. Mr. Murray assists clients and the Firm’s attorneys to draft or revise arbitration programs focused on a client’s specific needs and goals and in light of changing law and evolving best practices.
Founder & Partner, John L. Dodd and Associates
John L. Dodd has been in private practice for over 20 years, is a former staff attorney at the California Court of Appeal, and has handled over 1,000 appellate matters, including several landmark parental rights and adoption cases decided by the California Supreme Court. He has served as a member of the Orange County Bar Association Board of Directors, the California Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation and has Chaired the Committee of Bar Examiners of the State of California.
Mark Pulliam, a longtime member of the Federalist Society (and former President of the San Diego Lawyers Chapter), is a lawyer and writer in Austin, Texas. He is a contributing editor of Law and Liberty, and also writes for a variety of publications, including his blog, Misrule of Law.
Paula Stannard is a former deputy general counsel and acting general counsel of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), where she oversaw the Food and Drug, Civil Rights and Legislation divisions of the 450-attorney HHS Office of the General Counsel and provided legal advice and counsel to senior HHS officials, including the Secretary of the department, on the issues arising in their respective areas.
At Alston & Bird, Paula advises clients on regulatory questions that arise out of the on-going health care reform effort and focuses her practice on HIPAA and health information technology (including certified EHR and meaningful use issues), food and drug and other regulatory issues in the health care sector. Her HHS experience provides clients substantive knowledge of, and experience in, FDA, HIPAA, e-health and health IT, federal health insurance regulation, patient safety, and public health preparedness and emergency response issues.
Paula received her J.D. from Stanford Law School in 1990, where she was an executive editor of the Stanford Law Review, and her B.A., magna cum laude, in political science and Latin from Amherst College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She clerked for the Honorable J.L. Edmondson of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit.
Stanford University
(J.D., 1990)
Amherst College
(B.A., 1987)
Nusbaum Professor of Law and Business, New York University School of Law
Professor William Allen moved to New York University School of Law in 1997, following twelve years as Chancellor of the Court of Chancery of the State of Delaware, widely considered the leading trial court in the US for questions of business and corporation law. At the NYU, Allen is the Nusbaum Professor of Law & Business and serves on both the Law School faculty and as Clinical Professor of Business in the Finance Department of the Stern School of Business. At NYU he founded the Pollack Center for Law & Business to serve as a bridge between the students and faculty of the Law School and the Stern School of Business. See www.stern.nyu.edu/clb.
The author of various articles on corporate law and corporate governance, Allen teaches Corporation Law, Corporate Governance, Law and Business of Corporate Transactions, and Mergers and Acquisitions at both the Law School and Stern. He organizes a seminar series on Law & Finance at the Stern School in the Spring. Through the Pollack Center for Law & Business Allen originated the Advanged Professional Certificate in Law & Business, a summer program to enable law students to get graduate level training in business; organizes a speaker series in which senior business and legal professionals come to campus, and, jointly with the University of Pennsylvania organizes an annual academic conference on topics in Law & Finance.
Allen also has an academic and professional interest in international commercial arbitration. He serves as counsel to the New York law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, with whom he consults concerning questions of corporate law and governance.
Retired Edgar S. Woolard, Jr. Chair in Corporate Governance, University of Delaware
Professor Elson is the Edgar S. Woolard, Jr., Chair in Corporate Governance and the Director of the John L. Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware. He is also "Of Counsel" to the law firm of Holland & Knight. He formerly served as a Professor of Law at Stetson University College of Law in St. Petersburg, Florida from 1990 until 2001. His fields of expertise include corporations, securities regulation and corporate governance. He is a graduate of Harvard College and the University of Virginia Law School, and has served as a law clerk to Judges J. Harvie Wilkinson III and Elbert P. Tuttle of the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth and Eleventh Circuits. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of Illinois College of Law, the Cornell Law School, and the University of Maryland School of Law, and is a Salvatori Fellow at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. and a member of the American Law Institute. Professor Elson has written extensively on the subject of boards of directors. He is a frequent contributor on corporate governance issues to various scholarly and popular publications. He served on the National Association of Corporate Directors' Commissions on Director Compensation, Director Professionalism, CEO Succession, Audit Committees, Strategic Planning and Director Evaluation, was a member of its Best Practices Council on Coping With Fraud and Other Illegal Activity, and presently serves on that organization’s Advisory Council. He is Vice Chairman of the ABA Business Law Section’s Committee on Corporate Governance and a member of its Committee on Corporate Laws. Additionally, Professor Elson served as an adviser and consultant to Towers Perrin, the international human resource management consultants, a director of Circon Corporation, a medical products maker; Sunbeam Corporation, the consumer products manufacturer; Nuevo Energy Company, an independent oil and natural gas producer, the Investor Responsibility Research Center, a non-profit corporate governance research organization, Alderwoods Group, an international death care services provider and is presently, a member of the Board of Directors of AutoZone, Inc., the national automobile parts retailer, HealthSouth Corporation, a healthcare services provider.
Business Judgment Rule on the Line: Tower Air, IT Group, and Notice Pleading in Federal Court
Randall W. Bodner, Peter L. Welsh
The business judgment rule has long been a cornerstone of corporate law and business practice...
Mass Torts in Mississippi
Paige Jones, Terry Williamson
Introduction The landscape for the litigation of mass tort claims in Mississippi has undergone a...
Recent Developments in State Corporate Criminalization
Publius
Following the recent spate of corporate accounting scandals, popular attention has focused on legislative responses...
The Case for Judicial Appointments
Stephen B. Presser, Christopher C. Murray, John L. Dodd, Mark S. Pulliam, Alfred W. Putnam, Paula M. Stannard
Views expressed in this paper are those of the authors only, and do not necessarily...
Recent Developments
Engle Court Paves Way for Record Punitive Award A Florida trial court has paved the...
Corporate Responsiblity, Business Ethics, and Professional Responsiblity
Edward Labaton, Frank Newman, Anthony J. Horan, William T. Allen, Charles Elson
Following are excerpts from a panel discussion on corporate governance from the Fourth Annual Conference on...
Taking Stock of Shareholders' Rights
Joel Friedlander
In several contests for corporate control during the last year, several courts ruling in favor...