One of Hong Kong’s major lures as a base for international companies doing business in Asia has been recourse to its British-established common law courts. But recent Hong Kong rulings have raised the possibility that government parties may have legal immunity from claims — and in Asia it’s not always obvious which companies are controlled by governments.Visit International News

A federal judge has denied class certification in a suit over the marketing of Arizona iced tea as “100% Natural” because the plaintiff hired her lawyers seven months before buying the product.

The chairman of a new judicial pay commission has raised the possibility of incremental pay raises for New York judges — an idea that, if adopted, is considered unlikely to satisfy judges who have not had a raise since Jan.

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld confirmed Tuesday that they are engaged in “preliminary discussions” about the possibility of combining, potentially reshaping the legal landscape by creating a more than 1,800-lawyer firm with revenues of more than $1.5 billion.

The high-profile battle over California’s Proposition 8 has been touted as the case that could force the Supreme Court to face the issue of same-sex marriage. But now that Judge Vaughn Walker has ruled that Prop 8, which banned same-sex marriage in California, is unconstitutional, the possibility is real that the case might never make it on appeal all the way to the high court