Posts on ‘October 16th, 2008’

Do a series of letters between YouTube and John McCain’s campaign suggest how the senator will deal with copyright enforcement if he’s elected president? That’s the question after a back-and-forth this week between lawyers at YouTube and the campaign’s general counsel, Caplin & Drysdale partner Trevor Potter. The exchange began when Potter wrote to complain about what he saw as an excessive number of requests by TV networks for the Web site to take down videos that the campaign posted.

Broadcom co-founder Henry Samueli and federal prosecutors in the company’s criminal backdating case have refused to withdraw a plea agreement that the federal judge overseeing the case has said would give the perception that “justice is for sale.” Samueli had agreed to serve five years probation, pay a $250,000 fine and make a $12 million payment to the U.S. Treasury. He also admitted he made a false statement to the SEC in a related case regarding his role in the granting of backdated stock options.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard argument in two habeas cases involving state court jury instructions, both on appeal from the 9th Circuit. The first case involved the standard for reviewing a state court’s interpretation of jury instructions based on state law governing accomplice liability. In the second case, the justices considered the standard of review for erroneous jury instructions that were presented as alternate theories of liability in a murder case.

The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review a punitive damages award against FedEx, which had argued that adoption of a compliance policy and an internal grievance policy for handling employee complaints showed, as a matter of law, that it acted in good faith to comply with the ADA. The high court left in place a jury award of $100,000 in punitive damages and $8,000 in compensatory damages for the company’s failure to reasonably accommodate a profoundly deaf employee.

Across Silicon Valley, from Menlo Park to Mountain View, the question is: Whither the deals? Even venture capital lawyers, who the last anyone heard were chugging along just fine while Wall Street imploded, are getting worried. Capital markets deal makers — who take companies public or arrange for big debt financings — are witness to a market that’s deader than Lehman Brothers, and they don’t expect any life for at least three quarters.

British bank Barclays is set to introduce a new loan product to help law firms meet New Year expenses, as firms begin to feel the pinch from the prolonged credit squeeze. The bank, one of the U.K.’s leading lenders to law firms, is looking at introducing a short-term debt product to help firms struggling with their cash flow to pay their VAT and professional indemnity fees, which are due in January.

Google has appealed two court decisions that could ban it and other search engines from operating image searches in Germany. Last month a district court in Hamburg ruled in favor of two men who claim search engines that pull pictures from their Web sites infringe on their copyrights. Google believes its image search is entirely legal, citing other European courts that have supported Google’s right to display thumbnail images from other Web sites as search result.

With a full-firm merger increasingly unlikely, Thelen has begun looking to other firms to pick up practices or offices, a current partner confirmed this week. A core group at Thelen may choose to stick together, and partners are meeting on a weekly basis to discuss their options, said the partner, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Even though Thelen is not in late-stage discussions with any firms, things could change quickly, said a source familiar with the situation.

A handful of top executives from AIG Inc. spent thousands of dollars during a recent hunting trip, even as the insurer asked for an additional $37.8 billion loan from the Federal Reserve. The news comes as New York AG Andrew Cuomo on Wednesday told the insurance giant to do away with golden parachutes for executives, golf outings and parties while taking government money to stay afloat. Cuomo said he has the power to review and possibly rescind any inappropriate AIG spending.

It appears that not all bloggers in the legal community are fans of hard-boiled detectives. Dissenting from the denial of review in a drug case, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. included an introduction that recited the facts of the case in a classic noir style. But some bloggers have criticized Roberts’ tone, which they see as dismissive. The defendant’s own attorney called the dissent “an interesting read,” but objected to an “implication” that a street transaction is necessarily a drug deal.