If you were among the many who extended the holiday vacation all the way through the short week following New Year’s Day, you may not have seen the year-end retrospective articles that I posted last week, including my list of the Top Ten D&O Stories in 2012 (here), and my year-end analysis of 2012 securities class action lawsuit filings (here). As it turns out, I am not the only one to have posted year-in-retrospective posts over the last several days. Several other bloggers and commentators have done the same. Here is a quick tour through several of the noteworthy year- end retrospectives.
First, over at the Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog, Francis Pileggi and his colleague Kevin Brady (both of the Eckert Seamans law firm) have posted their list of the “Key Delaware Corporate and Commercial Decisions of 2012” (here). The post begins with the authors’ selection of the top five cases from 2012 and includes both the authors’ list of the top Delaware Supreme Court decisions and Court of Chancery decisions for the year. The authors helpfully link to their own prior posts on the key cases as well as to the decisions themselves. I should add that the Delaware Corporate and Commercial Litigation Blog is one of the top blogs out there, one that truly is indispensable.
By way of interesting contrast, readers may want to refer to Professor Jay Brown’s Race to the Bottom Blog, where the Professor and his blog colleagues are running an interesting series on the topic of “Delaware’s Five Worst Shareholder Decisions of 2012”(refer here).
Andrew Trask has a couple of year-end posts on his Class Action Countermeasures blog. On January 2, 2013, Trask posted his list of the ten most significant class action cases of 2012 (here), and then on January 3, 2013, he added his list of the “Ten (Most) Interesting Class Action Articles of 2012” (here). In the latter post, Trask noted (in bold letters, no less) there “there just wasn’t that much that merited the title ‘interesting’ in class action scholarship” in 2012.
On the Conflict of Interest Blog (here), author Jeff Kaplan has posted his list of the top ten largest federal corporate criminal fines, noting that “what is interesting is that fully half of the ten largest federal corporate criminal fines in history were imposed or agreed to in 2012. I cannot recall a year with so many new cases on the list.” The list is led by BP’s massive $1.286 fine in connection with the Deepwater Horizon environmental disaster. (The list does not include the recent Libor scandal settlements, as the list is limited just to DoJ criminal fines.)
Over at The FCPA Blog, Dick Cassin has posted his 2012 Enforcement Index (here). Cassin reports that twelve companies settled FCPA enforcement actions in 2012, paying a total of $259.4 million. None of the 2012 enforcement settlements were sufficient to make The FCPA Blog’s all-time top ten FCPA criminal fines list but Pfizer’s $45.2 million disgorgement did make the blog’s top ten FCPA disgorgements list.
On his Drug and Device Law Blog, Jim Beck has listed “The Best Prescription Drug/Medical Device Decisions of 2012” (here). The post lists the authors’ top ten favorite judicial decisions involving drugs, medical devices and vaccines in 2012.
And in the world of accounting, Francine McKenna has listed top 20 posts from her own re: The Auditors blog (here). She helpfully embedded into the post a video of The Kinks’ classic hit “Tired of Waiting” (as an explanation of why has included a list of her own blog posts – that is, because she is tired of writing. Francine, I can relate!).
On a more entertaining note, you can find Inside Counsel’s list of the “10 Strangest Law Suits of 2012” here.
And finally, no post on this blog ever really feels complete without a video interlude, so here’s a link to YouTube’s Top Ten Viral Videos of 2012. There were some very amusing videos this year, many of which we have previously embedded on this site. In a salute to the videos, here’s a link to one that we haven’t previously included on this site. Enjoy.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=316AzLYfAzw