I have been a Crain's Detroit Business reporter since May 2007 for law, defense, non-automotive manufacturing, Oakland and Macomb counties.
06/10/13
Now that Detroit's judges have been set straight by the
Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals about regulating bus advertising, Southeast Michigan transit authorities could face thorny new legal questions about ads from nonprofits with political messages. I'm referring, of course, to the
Ann Arbor Transportation Authority's big win last week before U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith, who previously found the authority's policies violated the First Amendment but
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05/31/13
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan will appeal a federal court judgment of more than $5.1 million — in the first case to reach trial among more than 25 lawsuits brought by
Varnum LLP — on behalf of self-insured employers alleging they were charged hidden fees over many years for use of the Blues' network.
Hi-Lex Controls Inc., a Litchfield-based maker of window regulators with an automotive design center in Rochester Hills, on
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05/21/13
Mark Brewer, the former
Michigan Democratic Party chairman of 18 years who stepped down in February to end a contentious battle for leadership with Lon Johnson, will blend political consulting with his labor law practice roots at Southfield-based
Goodman Acker PC. Yes, that's the personal injury, medical malpractice, professional and premises liability law firm Goodman Acker, perhaps best known since 2007 for the ongoing local TV advertisements featuring
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04/21/13
The
Innovation Factory, a fledgling design studio and prototyping service for area university researchers and entrepreneurs, expects to hear word soon on a possible second-year funding grant from the
New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan. The program, part of the nonprofit
Sustainable Water Works, is housed at Detroit's
TechTown incubator at
Wayne State University. It was co-founded in 2011 by former
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04/17/13
People — or in some cases, lack of people and the bureaucratic trappings they create — provide the opportunities for the corporate counsel who harbors CEO ambitions to broaden his or her skill set and buck for promotion. That was the consensus of at least three former general counsel-turned-CEO panelists at the third annual General & In-House Counsel Awards and Summit Tuesday at the Westin Book Cadillac in Detroit.
Crain's organized the event in collaboration
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04/05/13
Detroit — a name that usually belongs to a city or a metropolitan statistical area market for business, but in this case seems to reference two law firms — is on an expansion push into growing legal markets via mergers so far in 2013, according to
Altman Weil Inc. The Pennsylvania-based legal management consulting firm reported this week that Detroit-based
Clark Hill PLC and
Dickinson Wright PLLC together absorbed 142 of the 318
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04/01/13
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan was "arbitrary and capricious" in denying reimbursement to a class of insured families for an aggressive form of autism therapy, on the grounds that it was "experimental or investigative," a federal court judge ruled over the weekend. U.S. District Judge Stephen Murphy in a 22-page written ruling ordered that all denied claims for coverage by insured people who obtained applied behavioral analysis therapy for children with autism spectrum
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03/26/13
McLean, Va.-based
Hilton Worldwide Inc. and developer company
MCP Development LLC are quietly settling a lawsuit by the family of a young woman slain in 2010 at the
Doubletree Fort Shelby hotel and apartment building, by the son of
Powerhouse Gyms International founder Norman Dabish. The parents, grandmother and brother of the late Diana DeMayo each collect an undisclosed share of a settlement to dismiss the 2011 lawsuit
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03/11/13
It took federal investigators years of work to bring Kwame Kilpatrick into custody Monday, and Detroit's top federal prosecutor has suggested perhaps it should take Kilpatrick even longer to get out again. Barbara McQuade, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan whose office indicted and prosecuted the so-called "Kilpatrick enterprise," said it was hard to specify just how much work went into the case, though some of the work put in by agents and attorneys goes back more than seven
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03/04/13
ImageSoft Inc. could complete an initial phase of implementing its TrueFiling software platform for the
State Court Administrative Office in 30 days — a preliminary step toward launching a new electronic case filing services for most courts around the state, the company plans to announce this week. Southfield-based ImageSoft, which has already installed a similar e-filing records service for trial courts in Ottawa, Grand Traverse, Leelanau and
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