Setting aside a trust on the ground of mistake--In the Matter of the DSL Remuneration Trust: DSL Remuneration Trust [2007] JRC 251

This case concerned a remuneration trust which had been establishedby a company called DSL in April 2000. The beneficiaries ofthe Trust were named as the past, present and future employeesof DSL and their families. The shares in DSL were owned by acouple, Mr and Mrs L, who were also the two directors of DSL.The Trust assets comprised the proceeds of sale of the businessof DSL and its interest in two retail shops, and representedthe bulk of the assets of Mr and Mrs L and their family. The terms of the Trust prevented any outright distribution orpayments being made or any benefits     

Some empirical evidence on rent-seeking

We tested for the capture of net gains by winners in rent-seeking competitions, using the most prominent announcements of government favors in the Canadian economy over a twelve-year period. Stockholders' returns were not significantly different from zero. One possible explanation is that government assists firms only when assistance creates political gains. Refusing to transfer economic rents to firms maximmizes the resources available to serve political purposes. This kind of behavior by government officials would imply that government has market power, which is consistent with several well-known theories of government.     

"Insuring" the continued solvency of pharmaceutical companies in the face of product liability class actions

Costly product liability lawsuits continue to plague the pharmaceutical industry, and insurance to cover these losses is severely inadequate. Furthermore, questionable regulation of drugs exists once a pharmaceutical has passed FDA approval. This article describes a plan that uses a capitalistic, rather than a governmental, approach to solve both the insurance and the quality control problems. Although the proposed plan has never been used to insure pharmaceutical companies, different permutations of it have been used to insure other litigation-prone industries. Success from the proposed insurance entity results from the combined knowledge of scientists and actuaries to provide both protection from product liability lawsuits for the pharmaceutical industry and enhanced post-market surveillance of pharmaceuticals.     

Supreme Court Preview:Reed v. Town of Gilbert to Address Content Neutrality in Sign Regulation

Abstract

For the first time in two decades, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled in the 2014–2015 term to review the thorny planning and legal subject of local government regulation of outdoor signs and billboards and the core First Amendment requirement that regulations of speech be ”content neutral“. In basic terms, the content‐neutrality doctrine prohibits the government from regulating a speaker's content or message–including messages on outdoor signs. In Reed v. Town of Gilbert, the Court will be asked to decide whether Gilbert, Arizona's sign code, which distinguishes among several categories of signs, including religious, political, and ideological signs, meets the content neutrality requirement. In so doing, the Court may provide direction on how far local governments can go in regulating speech based on message, and the Court can resolve a longstanding division among the federal appellate courts over the meaning of content neutrality