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Investors in a Texas self-storage facility believed they had suffered about $10 million in damages because of the behavior of the guy who put the deal together, and were understandably upset.   But that didn’t give them the right to recover more than $30 million by slipping in a claim for punitive damages just 24 hours before the case went to arbitration, an appellate ruling has held.

Despite what a university, its lawyers and a Superior Court thought, an appellate court ruling has confirmed that 12 months really means 12 months.

Some do it for strategic reasons. Others may just like the publicity. But it’s certainly not unusual today for lawyers involved in lawsuits to argue the merits of their cases on TV or radio, or to a newspaper reporter. What are the limits of these attempts to prevail in the court of public opinion?

What are the limits of a trustee’s obligations to the beneficiaries of a trust? When an unhappy beneficiary lost her home to foreclosure, she sued the administrators of a trust set up by her father for her and her siblings, alleging the trustees had breached their fiduciary duty.

What happens when a young woman, brain-damaged and memory-impaired as a result of drug abuse and alcoholism, inherits a large sum of money and falls under the influence of a man who seems more interested in her money than caring for her?

Let’s say you are a minority shareholder in a closely held business, where you own a bit more than a third of the shares, and the other two shareholders each own just under a third. There’s a major squabble, and you just want out. What happens to your shares, and as a minority interest in a closely held company, what are they worth?