Attorney Jason Scoby of O’Neil Cannon was recently reappointed to serve as Chair of the Corporate, Banking and Business Section of the Milwaukee Bar Association (“MBA”). In this role, Attorney Scoby focuses on providing continuing legal education presentations and resources, as well as networking opportunities for attorneys and other professionals in the corporate, banking, and business field.

Some of the topics to be addressed in upcoming presentations may include:

• Choice of Business Entity and the Associated Business and Tax Implications
• Various Subjects in Mergers and Acquisitions
• Lending Issues
• Ethical Issues Involved in Business Transactions
• Contract Drafting

If you would like further information regarding an upcoming MBA event, or if you are interested in making a presentation for the MBA’s Corporate, Banking and Business Section, please contact Jason at jason.scoby@wilaw.com.

Attorney Scoby is an associate at O’Neil Cannon, where he assists clients on a wide variety of corporate and business-related issues, including commercial transactions, mergers and acquisitions, general corporate law, franchising, contract preparation and negotiation, business entity selection, and regulatory compliance.

O’Neil Cannon, founded in Milwaukee in 1973, is a full-service legal practice that primarily focuses on providing business law and civil litigation services to closely-held businesses and their owners. The firm represents corporations, institutions and partnerships at all stages of the business life cycle, helping them start, grow and transition from one generation to the next. We also assist business owners with their personal legal needs including tax and estate planning, family law and litigation-including personal injury litigation.

Best Lawyers®, the oldest and most respected peer-review publication in the legal profession, has named Dean P. Laing as the “Best Lawyers 2012 Milwaukee Personal Injury Litigation Lawyer of the Year.

After more than a quarter of a century in publication, Best Lawyers is designating “Lawyers of the Year” in high-profile legal specialties in large legal communities. Only a single lawyer in each specialty in each community is being honored as the “Lawyer of the Year.”

Best Lawyers compiles its lists of outstanding attorneys by conducting exhaustive peer-review surveys in which thousands of leading lawyers confidentially evaluate their professional peers. The current, 18th edition of The Best Lawyers in America (2012) is based on more than 3.9 million detailed evaluations of lawyers by other lawyers.

The lawyers being honored as “Lawyers of the Year” have received particularly high ratings in our surveys by earning a high level of respect among their peers for their abilities, professionalism, and integrity.

Attorney Dean P. Laing has been with the law firm of O’Neil Cannon for 28 years and leads the Firm’s litigation practice. In addition to representing Fortune 500 companies and other companies in their business litigation needs, he represents severely injured persons in prosecuting their personal injury claims.

Throughout his legal career, Mr. Laing has been frequently recognized by members of the Wisconsin bar and judiciary as one of the top trial attorneys in Wisconsin. He is board certified as a Civil Trial Specialist by the National Board of Trial Advocacy and a frequent author and speaker on various legal issues.

Attorney Megan Eisch recently joined the Firm’s Business Law and Banking and Creditors’ Groups. She assists secured and unsecured corporate or individual creditors and other entities with the work out of loans, leases and other obligations. Eisch also regularly represents receivers in state Chapter 128 Receivership proceedings, real estate foreclosures, the wind-up of corporations, collection matters, and with the acquisition or disposition of business assets. She is a recent graduate of the University of Wisconsin Law School, J.D., cum laude, and is the senior Articles Editor of the Wisconsin International Law Journal.

O’Neil Cannon, founded in Milwaukee in 1973, is a full-service legal practice that primarily focuses on providing business law and civil litigation services to closely-held businesses and their owners. The firm represents corporations, institutions and partnerships at all stages of the business life cycle, helping them start, grow and transition from one generation to the next. We also assist business owners with their personal legal needs including tax and estate planning, family law and litigation—including personal injury litigation.

The 2011 edition of the Annual Survey of Wisconsin Law published by the State Bar of Wisconsin CLE Books has recently been released for circulation and this year’s work includes another contribution by Attorneys Dean P. Laing and Patrick G. McBride in the area of evidence. The Annual Survey reviews significant Wisconsin judicial and legislative developments from 2010 and is organized by individual chapters addressing recent developments in a specific area of law. Attorney Laing has been the author or co-author of the “Evidence” chapter of the Annual Survey for the past 23 years and Attorney McBride has been the co-author for the past 10 years.

This year’s chapter on evidence addresses issues regarding the use of expert testimony, including whether the statutory prohibition to the admission of preliminary breath test results was trumped when the results were used as a basis for an expert’s opinion, and whether expert testimony was required at summary judgment in a breach of contract action regarding a computer-services agreement. The Wisconsin courts also determined whether the state could play an edited portion of a child’s video statement during closing argument in a sexual-assault trial without making the child available for cross-examination after showing the video, and whether the state needed to preserve apparently exculpatory evidence consisting of threatening cell-phone voice messages for use by the defendant in establishing the self-defense standard in a homicide trial. In a civil action, the court of appeals considered whether an affiant demonstrated the requisite personal knowledge to establish the admissibility of account statements under the hearsay exception for records of regularly conducted activity.

The “Evidence” chapter summarizes these decisions and others as they impact the development of the law of evidence in Wisconsin. A full copy of the “Evidence” chapter appearing in the Annual Survey can be found here. A copy of the Annual Survey of Wisconsin Law can be obtained through the State Bar of Wisconsin CLE Books at www.wisbar.org

Attorney Claude Krawczyk was the guest speaker on the “Business Solutions” program hosted by Diane Chamness” on Saturday May 21, 2011 on WISN 1130 AM radio. Claude discussed basic intellectual property issues to include trademark and copyright registration, patents and trade secrets. In case you missed it live, click here to listen to the full broadcast.

The Waukesha County Circuit Court appointed Attorney Seth Dizard as receiver of Tri-Star Tool and Machine Inc. Dizard will oversee the business and sell the 20,000 square foot facility located in the Sussex Corporate Center. Read article here.

The Wisconsin Health Care Quality Improvement Act (“WHCQIA”), part of Wisconsin’s recently enacted tort reform bill, has revised Wis. Stat. § 146.38 to broaden peer review protections for health care providers. Section 146.38, which provides for the confidentiality of information generated or obtained during peer review or evaluation, has been expanded by WHCQIA to apply confidentiality protections to a wider range of providers, communications and proceedings.

Under WHCQIA, Section 146.38 now expressly provides that various related entities participating in those peer review processes will be afforded confidentiality protections. These statutory protections now expressly encompass peer review-related communications involving the many types of persons and entities defined as “health care providers” elsewhere in Wisconsin Statutes (Wis. Stat. § 146.81), but also authorized peer review disclosures of those providers’ employers or the parent, subsidiary or affiliate organizations of those providers or their employers.

WHCQIA has also added a defined term of “incident or occurrence report” to Section 146.38 to clarify that written and oral statements and reports related to an incident, practice or situation at issue in a review or evaluation are expressly covered by the statute’s peer review protections. (It is also worth noting that newly created Wis. Stat. § 904.16 provides similar confidentiality protections with respect to reports that providers are required to submit to certain regulatory agencies).

WHCQIA has not only broadened the scope of peer review protections with respect to the types individuals and entities and communications covered, but also the kinds of proceedings to which those protections apply. Whereas prior to WHCQIA’s enactment, Section 146.38 only provided peer review protections barring the introduction of covered communications and information as evidence in personal injury actions, the statute now prohibits the use of such information in any civil or criminal action.

A complete copy of WHCQIA can be found here.

On Friday, April 8th, Attorney Dizard, as the court appointed receiver of Meadowbrook Country Club, received court approval to sell the 83 year old, 150 acre private country club to a group of local investors for $1.425 million. The sale was essentially the culmination of the receivership of Meadowbrook Country Club which was initially filed in November of 2010 in the Racine County Circuit Court.

Read the full article here.

Jason Scoby was recently quoted in the Wisconsin Law Journal in an article about the proposed Bucyrus-Caterpillar merger. The article, titled “Bucyrus Clears Hurdle in Merger Lawsuits,” describes the Jan. 19 decision by Judge Charles Clevert Jr. of the Eastern District Court of Wisconsin in which he denied plaintiff shareholders’ motion for a preliminary injunction seeking to prevent the shareholder vote to approve the merger. The excerpt containing Jason’s quote reads:

• Attorney Jason Scoby, chairman of the Business, Banking and Corporate Law Section of the Milwaukee Bar Association, pointed out that under relevant case law, the plaintiffs needed to satisfy three requirements: irreparable harm, inadequate traditional legal remedies and a likelihood of success on the merits.
• Scoby, of O’Neil, Cannon, Hollman, DeJong and Laing SC, Milwaukee, said the court clearly explained why the plaintiffs failed to satisfy any of the three requirements.
• “The court could’ve denied the plaintiffs’ motion based on the fact that they couldn’t satisfy the first requirement, that they faced irreparable harm if the injunction was not granted,” he said. “However, the court took care to also hold that the plaintiffs failed to satisfy the other two requirements.”
• In arriving at its decision, the court alluded to the Business Judgment Rule, Scoby said. That rule provides that a court will rarely substitute its own judgment for that of the corporation’s board when the board engaged in sufficient due diligence prior to arriving at its decision.

Read the full article here. The case is City of Sterling Heights Police and Fire Retirement System v. Bucyrus International, Inc., et. al., Case No. 10-CV-1106.

Jason advises individuals and closely held businesses on a variety of corporate and business-related issues, including mergers and acquisitions, commercial transactions, corporate issues, franchising, contract negotiation and preparation, and business entity selection and formation.

O’Neil Cannon, founded in Milwaukee in 1973, is a full-service legal practice that primarily focuses on providing business law and civil litigation services to closely-held businesses and their owners. The firm represents corporations, institutions and partnerships at all stages of the business life cycle, helping them start, grow and transition from one generation to the next. We also assist business owners with their personal legal needs including tax and estate planning, family law and litigation—including personal injury litigation.

Attorney Joseph D. Newbold has joined the litigation practice at the downtown Milwaukee law firm of O’Neil Cannon He will bring with him extensive experience in complex commercial and intellectual property litigation and has significant experience in trial and appellate matters in both the state and federal courts.

Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Newbold was an associate in the Chicago law firm of Freeborn and Peters LLP. While at Freeborn and Peters, Mr. Newbold worked extensively on a wide variety of matters, including representing industry leading patent holders before the Court of Appeals for the U.S. Federal Circuit and individuals standing up against large real estate developers before the Illinois Supreme Court. Mr. Newbold is a former clerk to United States District Judge Joe Billy McDade, United States Magistrate Judge Donald Wilkerson, and former United States Magistrate Judge Gerald Cohn.

O’Neil Cannon, founded in Milwaukee in 1973, is a full-service legal practice that primarily focuses on providing business law and civil litigation services to closely-held businesses and their owners. The firm represents corporations, institutions and partnerships at all stages of the business life cycle, helping them start, grow and transition from one generation to the next. We also assist business owners with their personal legal needs including tax and estate planning, family law and litigation – including personal injury litigation.