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When the Internet and the First Amendment lose at the Supreme Court, it is time to stop, look and listen.

The courts continue to wrestle with how to map existing law onto the shifting terrain of computer technology. And it appears that new controversies are arising faster than judicial consensus can form. One of the latest controversies surrounds "screen scraping," a process by which a software program simulates a user's interaction with a Web site to access information stored on that site. A screen scraper not only can enter the information a human user would, but also can capture the Web site's replies. This facility may include the ability to extract substantial portions of data stored on the site ' and therein lies the beginning of the controversy.

Katy Johnson is a former Miss Vermont who operates a Web site on which she champions moral values such as abstinence from casual sex and alcohol consumption. Tucker Max is a former law student who operates a Web site on which he champions competing values, such as frequent indulgence in casual sex and excessive alcohol consumption. In the summer of 2001, Johnson and Max made brief physical contact in Boca Raton, FL.<BR>This is essentially all that the two parties agree upon. Johnson claims that the physical contact constituted common law battery by Max. Max claims that the contact was not only voluntary, but also voluntarily intimate, and that this allegedly intimate contact was only the starting point of a passionate affair.

Now entering its third decade, asbestos exposures threaten the financial stability of numerous commercial entities. Asbestos manufacturers, distributors and installers have been forced to declare bankruptcy because of these exposures. RAND Institute for Civil Justice, "Asbestos Litigation in the U.S.A.: A New Look at an Old Issue" (Aug. 2001). Even companies with only a peripheral connection to asbestos &mdash; <i>eg</i>, car manufacturers that used asbestos-lined brakes &mdash; have been sued. Asbestos claimants continue to aggressively pursue any entity that had any involvement with asbestos. Indeed, the backlog of asbestos suits in the federal and state courts doubled from about 100,000 in 1990 to 200,000 in 1999. Asbestos Compensation Act of 2000, H.R. Rep. No. 106-782, at 18 (2000). Quite simply, absent federal legislative relief, asbestos cases will continue to clog U.S. courts. Moreover, asbestos litigation has and will continue to bog down a large segment of the U.S. economy. Studies are now projecting that asbestos lawsuits will continue until at least 2030.

Highlights of the latest insurance cases from across the country.

The use of expert testimony has dramatically increased over the past two decades, and insurance litigation has not been an exception. Experts have long been used in insurance cases to help the jury determine the facts surrounding the loss, such as in arson cases. But use of experts specializing in the field of insurance itself is becoming commonplace, as are challenges to the admissibility of their testimony.

Highlights of the latest franchising cases from across the country.

The first installment of this series dealt principally with one of the issues before the Ontario Court of Appeal in <i>Shelanu v. Print Three</i>; namely, the unsuccessful attempt of the franchisor to exclude from enforceability an oral agreement made subsequent to a franchise agreement containing a comprehensive "entire agreement" clause. The other principal issue before the court was whether there was, at common law, a duty of good faith owed by a franchisor to its franchisee.

Highlights of the latest franchising news from across the country.

The goal of most franchised businesses is to achieve household name recognition on a nationwide basis. Achieving that goal through nationwide expansion, however, is easier said than done. Expansion raises a number of significant issues, not the least of which is whether the name of the franchised concept is identical or confusingly similar to the name of a similar business in the geographic areas under consideration and/or in other remote areas where the franchisor is not currently operating, but may be so doing in the future.