Posts on ‘October 15th, 2008’

The Supreme Court on Tuesday considered a case involving the effect of
districting decisions on dilution of minority group votes, and a Fourth
Amendment suit that asks whether consenting to allow a confidential
police informant to enter a home is the same as consenting to entry by
police officers. A third case revisited the Court’s Sixth Amendment
jurisprudence in the context of a judge’s fact-finding to determine
whether a defendant should serve concurrent or consecutive sentences.

A federal judge has slammed the use of statistics on racial differences in life expectancy to determine damages for a catastrophically injured black man. James McMillan was awarded $18.3 million after being rendered a quadriplegic in the 2003 crash of a New York ferry. The city had sought to limit McMillan’s damages, but Judge Jack B. Weinstein, referring to the Supreme Court’s infamous decision, said consideration of statistical differences would be discriminatory and unconstitutional.

Is Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. already getting bored with traditional opinion-writing? Or, as one mystery writer and former attorney speculates, could he have lost a bet to Justice Antonin Scalia? In an extraordinary dissent from a Supreme Court denial of review issued in a fairly routine drug arrest case, Roberts starts off with two paragraphs that hark back to the best, or worst, of the hard-boiled mystery genre. Just one of the more memorable passages: “The neighborhood? Tough as a three-dollar steak.”

Someone could be stealing data from you right now. What do you do? Where do you turn? How do you know for sure? Consultants Ken Stasiak and Dave Kennedy have three steps to help discover whether your suspicions are correct and gather enough evidence to have an open-and-shut case.

Increasing numbers of employers and employees are finding themselves affected by the protections of the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act of 1994. Employees who seek to vindicate their rights under USERRA, however, are finding themselves at the center of a conflict among federal courts concerning whether USERRA claims may be subject to their employers’ mandatory arbitration clauses. Attorneys Howard S. Suskin and Benjamin J. Wimmer address the current division on this issue.

As the economy slows, law students have every reason to be worried about their job hunt. So consultant Ari Kaplan advises students to create opportunities that connect them with prospective employers or future clients and make them memorable. “Intangible factors can make a difference, especially if the academic credentials are not as strong,” says Robert Cote, managing partner of McKool Smith’s New York office. Kaplan lists some strategies students can try in order to make a lasting impression.

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft is set to lose a restructuring partner in London, the third lateral departure since the firm laid off 96 lawyers in July. Jackson Taylor, who made partner a month before the layoffs, is leaving for Latham & Watkins’ London office, a person familiar with the situation says. Taylor, 36, made partner in June, and the firm touted him and another promotee in a press release.

Lawyers representing a group of tobacco companies on appeal urged the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to reject the “grotesque” expansion of RICO laws that a federal judge applied to Big Tobacco in a landmark decision in 2006. The survival of that decision, which held that the tobacco industry conspired to mislead consumers for decades about the health risks of smoking, could be in jeopardy. A three-judge panel questioned key elements of federal Judge Gladys Kessler’s nearly 1,700-page decision.

Clifford Chance has laid off 20 U.S. litigation associates, citing “sluggishness” in the practice and stressing that the layoffs weren’t performance-related. The cutback affects 17 associates in New York and three in Washington, D.C. Most of the recent layoffs by law firms have been in practices tied to the hard-hit market for mortgage-backed securities. But Clifford Chance’s global litigation chair said the litigation layoffs were necessary largely because an uptick expected in that area had not arisen.

The 2nd Circuit has thrown out the bribery and racketeering convictions of former corporate attorney Charles B. Spadoni, holding that prosecutors suppressed “exculpatory and impeaching” evidence. Spadoni, who worked for a private equity firm, was found guilty of steering $2 million in sham contracts to former Connecticut Treasurer Paul Silvester’s associates. The court found that the evidence at issue could have been used to call into question Silvester’s trial testimony against Spadoni.