Posts on ‘December 22nd, 2008’

Giving a novel twist to the government takings debate, a New Jersey town is trying to condemn property half a mile beyond its border. Cliffside Park is trying to gain ownership of a private property in Fairview to create a joint Department of Public Works facility. The property owner and Fairview concede that extra-territorial condemnation is permitted by law, but claim the practice is restricted to limited circumstances, and only with the permission of the town where the property is located.

Two weeks after an Eastern District of New York judge held that the government may use a pen register to track a cell phone holder’s movements, a magistrate judge from the same courthouse has held the government to a higher standard when seeking permission to employ such devices. The decision marks the second foray in less than a month by an Eastern District judge into the nascent realm of pen registers, which are used by investigators to record information sent by electronic devices such as cell phones.

Pennsylvania’s high court has ruled that the testimony of a medical malpractice litigant’s spouse may be sufficient to help prove the litigant’s claim when the litigant is capable of testifying but does not testify. The court said that a plaintiff-patient can rely solely upon circumstantial evidence like a spouse’s testimony to show to a jury or a trial judge that a physician failed to disclose information that would have been a substantial factor in the patient’s decision to agree to a medical procedure.

An investor’s malpractice suit claiming that the Herrick Feinstein firm had botched the handling of an $18 million arbitration claim was properly dismissed because an arbitration panel had correctly measured damages from the time of the breach rather than the value at the time of the offering, a unanimous New York appeals court ruled Thursday. The appeals panel found that, whatever the claim’s merits, there was no legal basis upon which to attack the level of the $344,000 award.

The Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University announced Thursday that release of the next batch of papers in the collection of the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist has been postponed from the scheduled date of Jan. 5. No explanation was given, nor any hint of when the release would be rescheduled. Scholars are eagerly awaiting the next group of papers, which includes correspondence, copies of opinions and manuscripts of the four non-fiction books Rehnquist wrote while on the Court.

The government will no longer electronically track the travels of Arent Fox’s Joseph Price, domestic partner Victor Zaborsky and roommate Dylan Ward, all three of whom are charged with obstructing a police investigation of the death of Robert Wone in 2006. Police say Wone, GC for Radio Free Asia, was restrained, sexually assaulted and fatally stabbed in the home of Price and Zaborsky. D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick Weisberg also eliminated the three men’s 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. curfew.

Amid talk of a merger or possible dissolution, Thacher Proffitt & Wood’s litigation head has quietly decamped to DLA Piper. Richard Hans, who joined Thacher two years ago from DLA Piper and became head of litigation in January, declined to say whether others would follow him. Hans’ return to DLA Piper comes as chatter swirls about the possible collapse of Thacher Proffitt, a heavy hitter in securitization that saw profits fall and partners leave with the collapse of the real estate and credit markets.

Polaroid Corp. is back in bankruptcy for the second time this decade, and they are blaming their financial troubles this time not on the digital camera revolution but on the late September arrest of their parent company’s owner, Tom Petters, on massive fraud charges. The interesting question now is: Which firm is going to get the bankruptcy work for the Minnetonka, Minn.-based company?

The criminal wiretapping convictions of private investigator Anthony Pellicano and lawyer Terry Christensen have re-energized related civil lawsuits filed against five Los Angeles law firms. At least 15 lawsuits related to Pellicano, who was convicted on charges related to illegal wiretapping, have been consolidated in Los Angeles Superior Court. Much of the litigation has been on hold pending completion of two criminal trials against Pellicano, who was sentenced last week to 15 years in federal prison.