Posts on ‘December 1st, 2008’

A group of 19 former Thelen construction and real estate attorneys is joining Duane Morris. The group — with nine partners and 10 associates and special counsel — will be part of Duane Morris’ 60-attorney construction group and will work in the firm’s New York office.

A federal judge has questioned the foundation of the government’s case against Miami criminal defense attorney Ben Kuehne. U.S. District Judge Marcia Cooke told prosecutors that an exception in federal money laundering statutes appears to allow lawyers to be paid legal fees without fear of prosecution as the defense argued. Kuehne is charged with money laundering and wire fraud after he vetted $5.2 million in legal fees paid by Colombian drug kingpin Fabio Ochoa to retain defense attorney Roy Black.

A California appeals court affirmed sanctions of almost $44,000 against an IP lawyer last week for informing her client that trade secrets, which the opposing party intended to be filed under seal, were in the court’s public file. The court ruled that attorney Joanna Mendoza should have known she was violating a protective order even though the document was publicly available, noting that 250 of the document’s 800 pages were marked confidential and the front page said it was filed under seal.

Washington Supreme Court Judge Richard Sanders has admitted that he was the one who stood up and yelled “tyrant!” at U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey during a speech in which Mukasey later fainted. At a black-tie dinner on Nov. 20, the AG defended the Bush administration’s war on terror. Sanders, who said he felt compelled to voice his disagreement with those policies, said he had already left the event before Mukasey’s collapse, and did not learn of it until the next day.

When the attorneys general of Kansas and Colorado argue before the Supreme Court in what is likely the final chapter of a 23-year dispute over diversion of water from the Arkansas river, missing in the courtroom will be Arthur Littleworth, who has been the Court’s special master in the case since 1987. Littleworth had a stroke earlier this year and can’t attend. “My recovery is slow but steady,” the 85-year-old attorney told in an e-mail.

The ’s Second Annual Law Firm Climate Change Survey confirms that there’s a strong movement from the sidelines to the playing field of climate change, for law firms and their clients. Though climate change is no gold rush yet, firms are positioning themselves for growth. Nearly half of survey respondents said they were considering either adding attorneys or opening new offices next year to focus on climate-change-related business.

Lawyers may back out of a home purchase agreement on behalf of their clients for any reason, or for no reason at all, under the “attorney approval contingency” clause common to most residential sales contracts written in upstate New York, the New York Court of Appeals ruled on Nov. 25.

A federal judge has refused to overturn an arbitrator’s award in favor of a former Halliburton worker who claimed he was fired from a job in Iraq because of a sexual harassment complaint against him that the company never investigated. The arbitrator’s ruling had concluded that if the company’s investigation had been “fairly and properly conducted,” the employee would “most likely have been found innocent of the harassment charge … and would quite likely have remained in his job.”

The House Financial Services Committee is investigating whether the IRS and other law enforcement agencies used the Patriot Act as a political weapon against Democratic New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer, who resigned following revelations about his use of an escort service. Officials have said a number of unusual money transfers by the governor triggered a banking system “suspicious activity report,” which ultimately led to a full-blown criminal investigation of Spitzer.