Joe Babington, firm member and Vice President of the Trial Attorneys of America (TAA), was the program director and a speaker at the 45th annual TAA meeting held June 9-10, 2016 in Chicago.  TAA is a national association of leading products liability defense and commercial litigation trial attorneys.  The program included presentations on genomics, 3-D printing,  The Internet of things, techniques and technology for presenting complex evidence, use of emoticons as evidence, and other current issues.  Mr. Babington spoke on the topic “Don’t Be Blinded By Science:  Use And Abuse Of Scientific And Medical Literature To Prove Causation.”  Mr. Babington is the incoming TAA president for 2017–18 and is in charge of the program for the organization’s 2017 TAA meeting.

Casey Pipes will be one of the featured speakers at the American Law Institute’s annual course, Eminent Domain and Land Valuation Litigation, being held Thursday-Saturday, January 28-30, 2016 in Austin, Texas.   The presentation Mr. Pipes will give, along with Robert Bainbridge, MAI, will focus on highest and best use in the context of takings of convenience stores.

Firm member Joseph Babington recently participated as faculty at the Federation of Defense and Corporate Counsel’s “Deposition Boot Camp” held in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 7–8, 2015.  During this learn-by-doing seminar, Mr. Babington presented on topics including the purposes of depositions, laying foundation for cross at deposition, and deposition technology options, and also worked individually with four of the 24 students attending the Boot Camp on the basics of deposing a fact witness, a plaintiff, and an expert witness. The Boot Camp was sponsored by the FDCC, the nation’s premier defense counsel group, of which Mr. Babington is a member and for which he serves as assistant chair of the drug and medical device subcommittee.

Firm member Patrick Finnegan served on the faculty for an National Business Institute seminar titled, “Everything You Don’t Know About E-Discovery (But Wish You Did),” which was held in Mobile on December 10th.  Mr. Finnegan gave two presentations at the seminar.  One focused on federal and Alabama case law and rules of procedure concerning e-discovery, including the amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure relating to e-discovery that became effective earlier this month.  To read the paper that Mr. Finnegan prepared for this presentation, please click here.  Mr. Finnegan also gave a presentation titled, “Practical Tech Advice for the Non-Techy Attorney,” in which he addressed the technical aspects of preserving, collecting, reviewing and producing electronically stored information.

Casey Pipes is coauthor of an article appearing in the November 2015 issue of the Alabama Lawyer titled, “Alabama Enacts Major Revisions of Alabama Code 8-1-1.”  Mr. Pipes was a member of a committee convened by the Alabama Law Institute in 2011 to rewrite Section 8-1-1, Alabama’s Restrictive Covenant Act, a notoriously vague statute that had created much confusion in this area of law.  The committee, which was composed of judges, law professors and leading practitioners, completed a proposed replacement for the Act in late 2013, which was then sponsored as a bill in both houses of the Alabama Legislature.  After working its way through the legislative process, the bill was signed into law by the governor on June 11, 2015.  It will take effect on January 1, 2016.  Mr. Pipes’ coauthors on the Alabama Lawyer article are Will Hill Tankersley, Richard J.R. Raleigh, Jr., and Adam K. Israel.