Posts on ‘November 3rd, 2008’

With boom times up ahead for bankruptcy lawyers, Charles Stanziale Jr. led a five-lawyer defection to McCarter & English last week. The move gives Stanziale a larger supporting cast than he had at 220-lawyer McElroy, Deutsch, Mulvaney & Carpenter. In return, 390-lawyer McCarter gets a practice group best known for its work as operating trustee and counsel to the Office of the U.S. Bankruptcy Trustee in bankruptcies of troubled companies, mostly in New Jersey and Delaware.

A federal jury in Ohio on Friday convicted the former CEO of a failed health care financing company, National Century Financial Enterprises, in a $1.9 billion fraud case that prosecutors likened to the Enron or WorldCom scandals. Lance Poulsen was accused of fabricating data, moving money between accounts to hide shortfalls and misleading investors who funded his business model. He had been on trial for the past month on charges of securities fraud and money laundering.

After weeks of dispute, and just three days before oral argument, the petitioners in the case of agreed Friday that former Solicitor General and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher partner Theodore Olson will be their advocate before the Supreme Court today. Olson’s tenacious adversary Joseph Larisa said the decision was not reached until after a dramatic phone call from the Court to the squabbling attorneys that threatened “default of oral argument,” an extraordinary scenario.

With the Wall Street meltdown and law firm closings dominating the headlines, this may be a good time to build up some good karma. For lawyers who don’t know where to start, Denver-based Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck provides one possible method. The firm has created “karma committees” for staff and attorneys to choose collective good deeds to work on, such as delivering gifts to hospitalized children on Valentine’s Day. And the firm provides everyone with time off to participate.

Prominent young lawyer Robert Wone was “restrained, incapacitated, sexually assaulted, and stabbed” in a Washington, D.C., home in 2006, police said in an arrest affidavit released Friday that sheds new light on a high-profile homicide investigation. The affidavit explores the lives of the three men living at the $1.2 million home, their friendship, their romantic relationships — and their alleged meddling in a two-year investigation into the slaying of a promising lawyer.