Posts on ‘December 24th, 2008’

A defense attorney’s statements during closing arguments that a plaintiffs lawyer and her doctors operated as a “team” and his implications they withheld information in a personal injury case were “undoubtedly aggressive and argumentative,” but not grounds for a new trial, a judge has found. The plaintiff — a topless dancer and flight attendant rear-ended by a sanitation truck — was caught misleading the jury about her activities after the accident but challenged the verdict on the basis of proximate cause.

A Chinese court has declared bankrupt the company at the center of a scandal over tainted milk — blamed for killing six children and sickening almost 300,000 more. New Zealand’s Fonterra Group said that a court in Shijiazhuang, in China’s Hebei province, had issued a bankruptcy order against Sanlu Group Co, in which it owns a stake. At least a dozen individual lawsuits have been filed against state-owned Sanlu, but they are in legal limbo because the courts have neither accepted nor refused the cases.

Steven Gursky and lawyers from the Gursky Group — which had been the trademark, copyright and unfair competition arm of the beleaguered Dreier law firm — are departing for New York’s Olshan Grundman Frome Rosenzweig & Wolosky. The midsize Manhattan law firm announced the move, which it said would expand its own IP, litigation and real estate practices. The founder of the New York-based Dreier firm, Marc Dreier, has been accused of scamming hedge funds and other investors out of $380 million.

Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s largest retailer, said Tuesday it will pay between $352 million and $640 million to settle 63 wage-and-hour abuse lawsuits against the company. The discount retailer, which has more than 1.4 million employees, said the total amount to be paid depends on the number of claims submitted by those who are eligible. Each of the settlements must be approved by a trial court.

Sullivan & Cromwell and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz were busy Wednesday, as shareholders approved two of the biggest crisis-related banking takeovers of the last few months. About 76 percent of Wachovia’s voting shareholders approved the bank’s takeover by Wells Fargo late Tuesday. The deal, originally valued between $15 billion and $16 billion, is now worth just under $12 billion. Sullivan is advising Wachovia, with Wachtell representing Wells.

U.S. antitrust lawyers are helping global companies comply with strict European Union antitrust scrutiny in the wake of the European Commission’s first published enforcement guidance that follows on the heels of contradictory U.S. Department of Justice and FTC reports about their different philosophies concerning monopolistic conduct by individual companies. The diverging agendas create additional antitrust minefields for lawyers to avoid as they evaluate corporate policies and market actions.

San Francisco’s Hastings College of the Law is forgoing some raises and scaling back on hiring, and has asked department heads to shave 5 percent from current operating budgets. As the state of California wrestles with one of the biggest financial disasters in its history, Hastings administrators are anticipating an unstable state budget for the current fiscal year and likely more budget cuts next year. Like Hastings, higher education institutions across the country are reporting salary and hiring freezes.

In e-discovery, sometimes the lawsuit is the first sign of trouble that forces you to immediately choose which fires to fight. Don’t be paralyzed by fear of failure or confusion about where to begin. Trial lawyer Craig Ball suggests eight steps to take before the ESI experts arrive.

In a Q&A with Tony Mauro, law professor and leading constitutional scholar Jonathan Turley explains why top Bush administration officials should be held to account over detainee treatment and warrantless surveillance. Says Turley: “Despite the effort to pretend that there is some ambiguity … on these crimes, the law is quite clear.” Turley also asserts that if Eric Holder Jr., President-elect Obama’s nominee to be attorney general, declines to view waterboarding as a crime, the Senate should not confirm him.

Broker Kosta Kovachev, who allegedly helped disgraced attorney Marc
Dreier market millions of dollars in bogus promissory notes to hedge
funds, was arrested Monday night. There may be more charges to come as
the criminal complaint unsealed Tuesday says Kovachev joined the
conspiracy with Dreier and “others known and unknown.” On Tuesday,
Dreier was suspended from the practice of law, effective immediately,
“on the basis of uncontroverted evidence of serious professional
misconduct.”