Posts on ‘November 24th, 2008’

Prominent Hollywood attorney Terry Christensen was sentenced Monday to three years in prison in a wiretapping scheme that targeted the former wife of MGM mogul Kirk Kerkorian to disprove her claims that he was the father of her young daughter. Christensen was sentenced by U.S. District Judge Dale S. Fischer after being convicted of one count each of conspiracy to commit wiretapping and aiding and abetting a wiretap.

A federal magistrate judge in New York has ruled that a former prosecutor representing herself in a wrongful termination case does not deserve the usual latitude afforded pro se plaintiffs. The judge wrote that M. Cameron Kenny was bound by the decisions of her former counsel when she took over her own case. “Here, the ‘incoming counsel’ is the plaintiff, who is herself a lawyer. As such, she cannot expect ‘the special allowances [courts] sometimes make for pro se litigants,’” he wrote.

A federal judge has ruled that a Mississippi court, not a federal one, should hear a dispute over a state settlement with MCI in which $14 million in legal fees is at stake and political charges and countercharges have been flying for years. Before last year’s statewide elections, the dispute was shaping up as a political and legal battle over a practice in which Mississippi attorneys general hire private lawyers — often their supporters — to sue companies on behalf of the state.

Menachem E. Lifshitz, a former partner at Bernstein, Liebhard & Lifshitz, pleaded guilty to a felony charge of falsifying his 2005 income tax return and paid $4.8 million in back taxes and interest Thursday. In exchange for the guilty plea and payment, Lifshitz will not receive any jail time but has agreed to resign from the bar.

For a read on how serious the 9th Circuit will be about putting the screws to its enviro-friendly judges, keep an eye on . A split panel on Thursday blocked oil drilling in Alaska’s Beaufort Sea, but a similar panel in a logging case was reversed en banc last summer. If the court takes up the case en banc — and reverses — it would send another strong message about a changing balance of environmental power on the circuit.

Six amici lined up Friday to argue that the 2nd Circuit should reset the calculus on vicarious employer liability for the criminal acts of employees. Under the doctrine of respondeat superior, an employer is responsible for the actions of an employee. But an unusual coalition of organizations, including the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, claim it’s time to redress an inequity in the criminal law. The 2nd Circuit panel seemed to offer little encouragement.

Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy confirmed on Friday that it had let go between seven and eight associates, along with some legal assistants and paralegals. Layoffs in the financial services market, which provides the 220-lawyer firm with many employment immigration matters, precipitated the move. Heading into next year, Chairman Austin Fragomen Jr. says the firm will likely curtail hiring until the cloudy economic forecast clears.

McKesson, the largest drug distributor in the U.S., has agreed to pay $350 million to settle a class action alleging it fraudulently hiked the price of more than 400 medications, including Lipitor, ranked by some indices as the world’s top-selling drug as of September. A class of consumers and health and welfare funds sued in 2005, alleging violations of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act for allegedly falsely inflating the average wholesale price of the popular prescription medications.

Cravath, Swaine & Moore announced sharp cuts in end-of-year associate bonuses in a memo to the firm’s staff late Thursday. In an interview with the Am Law Daily, Cravath’s presiding partner said the “principal driver is what’s happening to our clients. Every day we’re seeing them laying off people. Our conclusion was we needed to be as sensitive as we could be.” Cravath’s memo follows Skadden’s announcement last week that it would pay the same base bonuses as 2007.