Posts on ‘December 8th, 2008’

In the past six months, financier turned hockey team owner William Del Biaggio, who founded a venture firm in his late 20s, has been sued at least half a dozen times for bilking banks and investors. Last week, more legal trouble hit: The SEC and federal prosecutors both charged the financier with violating securities laws by defrauding investors and banks out of millions of dollars using a scheme that involved scissors and some old-fashioned cutting and pasting.

The Justice Department is readying indictments that could send Blackwater Worldwide guards to prison for at least 30 years for their involvement in the 2007 Baghdad shootings of 17 Iraqi civilians, say those close to the case. Though drugs were not involved in the Blackwater shooting, the Justice Department is pondering the use of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988, which calls for 30-year prison terms for using machine guns to commit violent crimes of any kind, whether drug-related or not.

The Supreme Court announced Friday it has granted review in , the next in a series of landmark cases testing the constitutionality of Bush administration detention policies in the war on terror. With argument likely in spring and a decision by late June, the announcement guarantees those policies will remain in the spotlight well into the Obama administration. How the new administration handles the case will also be closely watched.

Clifford Chance has become the latest firm to cut back bonuses for U.S. associates, with the announcement that it is to halve its year-end payouts. The U.S. arm of the Magic Circle firm will award bonuses ranging from a prorated $17,500 for first-year associates to $32,500 for eighth-year associates — a significant decrease from last year, when the firm awarded bonuses ranging from $35,000 to $65,000.

In one of the first decisions to interpret a new rule of evidence that governs “inadvertent disclosure” of privileged documents, a federal judge has held that if the “reasonableness” of the accidental disclosure remains in dispute, courts should continue to apply the traditional five-factor test to determine whether privilege has been waived. The ruling comes in a case in which plaintiffs lawyers accidentally turned over some 800 privileged e-mails when they provided the defense with copies of 78,000 e-mails.

Smith & Downey name partner Barry Downey may be a convicted felon, but an unprecedented ruling by the D.C. Court of Appeals says he should be allowed to continue practicing law, at least for now. Downey, a co-founder of online alternative payment company e-gold Ltd., pleaded guilty to operating a money-transmitting business without a license after it was found that e-gold lacked the oversight to keep out investment scam operators. On Nov. 20, he was sentenced to three years probation and $2,600 in fines.

It doesn’t look as if Christmas is going to be any merrier this year for Joseph Collins, the Mayer Brown partner indicted last December for allegedly helping client Refco perpetrate a massive fraud. On Thursday, federal prosecutors announced more charges, accusing Collins of helping Refco evade covenants in its revolving lines of credit from 1998 and 2003 to defraud a group of banks led by JPMorgan Chase. Collins is on leave from Mayer Brown, which itself faces suits because of its Refco ties.

A high-ranking federal judge who recused himself in an obscenity trial earlier this year because of sexually explicit images on his personal Web site also regularly e-mailed raunchy jokes to a group of legal luminaries, according to a report published Monday by the . Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Chief Judge Alex Kozinski for years operated the “Easy Rider Gag List,” sending e-mails to new members warning that a host of tasteless humor was forthcoming.

The New York City office of 250-lawyer Dreier LLP was in turmoil last
week following the arrest of its founder, Marc S. Dreier, in Toronto on
an impersonation charge. After three days in jail, Dreier posted
$100,000 bail Friday, according to a spokesman for the Canadian Ministry
of the Attorney General. Meanwhile, three Wilson Sonsini Goodrich &
Rosati lawyers have been retained by a “substantial group of partners
and associates at the firm” to examine firm operations and finances.

Five men charged with plotting the Sept. 11 attacks told a military judge Monday that they want to confess at their war-crimes tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, setting up likely guilty pleas and their possible executions. The five said they decided to abandon all efforts to defend themselves against the capital charges on Nov. 4, the day Barack Obama was elected to the White House. It was as if they wanted to rush toward convictions before Obama — who has vowed to end the war-crimes trials — takes office.