Posts on ‘October 23rd, 2008’

The family of the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist has decided to
donate his extensive papers from 33 years on the Supreme Court and
before to the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University. A
restriction placed on Rehnquist’s case files was that none could be
released while any justice on the Court at the time a case was
considered is alive. Because all of the justices who were on the Court
in 1973 are deceased, Rehnquist’s files on will be
made public very soon.

Every company that went against International Rectifier, a semiconductor company that had mown down the industry with its patent demands for a decade, lost or settled. But Roger Cook’s client Ixys didn’t settle, and it didn’t take a license. Ixys went into the courtroom of controversial Judge Manuel Real and lost — a lot, and for eight long years. Cook and his team lost 27 of 28 motions. But each time, Cook appealed to the Federal Circuit and won. And finally, Cook and his colleagues won for good.

Christopher Starr, director of practice technology at Wolf Block, describes the challenges and solutions that corporations and law firms need to address for managing risk, balancing costs and leveraging resources during the process and review of electronically stored information.

Levenfeld Pearlstein Chairman Bryan Schwartz swears he’s creating a viable big law firm alternative, a place where associates are happy, partners cannot run afoul of the “no jerks rule” and nonlawyer managers can end costly dead-end cases. The Chicago-based firm with 75 lawyers is determined to have a corporate model and culture that leads to profits, as well as positive attitudes for the firm’s lawyers. “I have to do what I like to do and believe in what I do, and the money will follow,” Schwartz says.

Wading into one of the most hotly contested labor issues of recent years, the California Supreme Court on Wednesday agreed to decide what employers must do to comply with state-mandated meal breaks. Review had been sought not only by a potential class of an estimated 60,000 restaurant workers, but also by a slew of amici curiae, including Attorney General Jerry Brown, four state legislators and the California Labor Federation, which represents more than 2 million workers in a variety of professions.

A federal judge in Manhattan has approved the $13 million settlement of an antitrust class action over bar exam review courses but has slashed attorney fees in the case. The suit, , was one of a number of similar actions filed in recent years against BAR/BRI. The judge denied plaintiffs lawyers’ request for a 24 percent contingent fee, or around $3.1 million, and instead approved fees of about $2.1 million — roughly 16 percent of the settlement.

A magistrate judge in Brooklyn has recommended entering a default judgment against the defendants as a sanction for the extreme measures they took to destroy and falsify electronic documents in a federal fraud and RICO action. If confirmed by a New York federal judge, the case will mark the first time a judge within the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has awarded a default judgment on the basis of tampering with electronic evidence.

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.

Police are puzzling over the death of a Long Island, N.Y., mortgage lawyer found shot in the head near a busy road in the middle of the afternoon. Police say a passing driver found the wounded man in the parking lot of a closed restaurant. James DiMartino, 44, died at a hospital some hours later.

In a federal filing this week, Disney joined a growing number of Lehman Bros. creditors calling for an investigation into what transpired in the investment house’s final days. Disney claims it was owed $92 million from a currency exchange when Lehman filed for bankruptcy Sept. 15.