Philip S. Magaram to Speak in Jewish Community Foundation Speaker Series

Senior Tax and & Wealth Planning partner, Philip S. Magaram, will be a featured speaker at the upcoming seminar series presented by the Jewish Community Foundation, Los Angeles.  The series will focus on Tax Planning and Charitable Giving and provide attendees with information on various topics, including benefit corporations, charitable trusts, charitable gifts, ethical challenges of estate planning and administration and recent developments in these practice areas.

Mr. Magaram’s presentation, entitled “Portability or Exemption Trust – Which is Better?,” will take place on June 13, 2012 in Beverly Hills and June 20, 2012 in Woodland Hills.  Both presentations are from 7:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m.  For more information on the series or to register, visit the Jewish Community Foundation website at www.jewishfoundationla.org/2012PASS.

Contact Philip Magaram

Michael R. Morris to Moderate at 2012 Entertainment Industry Conference

Michael Morris will moderate the 2012 California Entertainment Industry Conference’s “Music Industry Updates” portion of the daylong event. The Conference will highlight the path to fraud prevention, sports and sports media rights, trends in new media, music industry updates, copyright terminations, entertainment tax and current trends in film. The annual Entertainment Industry Conference is presented by the California CPA Education Foundation and will be held on June 13, 2012 at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills.

 
“The purpose of the Music Industry Updates presentation is to keep CPAs and other financial and business professionals in the entertainment industry apprised of the present state of the music industry.  This includes current trends in recording and music publishing agreements, artist branding and related revenue streams, and developments in concert promotion and touring,” said Mr. Morris.  “There have been important business and legal developments that music industry representatives must be aware of to better serve their clients.”

For more information or to register, click here.

Contact Michael Morris

The Rule 26 Amendments: One Year Later

John Keith

Louis Kempinsky

by Louis E. Kempinsky 
and John C. Keith

Originally published by the American Bar Association, April 30, 2012

On December  1, 2010, several amendments to Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 26 took effect.  The primary thrust of the 2010 amendments was to address the “undesirable  effects” of the 1993 amendments to Rule 26, which had provided for “routine  discovery into attorney-expert communications and draft reports.” 2010 amends.,  advisory committee’s notes. The four main changes were

• generally  narrowing the subject-matter of a testifying expert’s disclosure, Fed. R. Civ.  P. 26(a)(2)(B);
• extending  work-product protection to draft expert reports, Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(4)(B);
• providing  new work-product protection to attorney-expert communications, Fed. R. Civ. P.  26(b)(4)(C); and
• clarifying  which testifying experts are required to provide written reports, Fed. R. Civ.  P. 26(a)(2)(B) and (C).

The 2010  amendments have been in effect for just over a year, and they have not been  applied in all cases. The 2010 amendments apply to cases pending as of December  1, 2010, only “when just and practicable.” Order Amending Federal Rules of  Civil Procedure, Apr. 28, 2010. As is not surprising in light of the standard,  cases examining whether it would be “just and practicable” to apply the new  version of the rule are highly fact-driven and have come down on both sides. Case  law interpreting the amendments is still in an early stage of development.  Nonetheless, a number of potentially significant issues have already emerged.

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