Posts on ‘January 6th, 2009’

Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton has picked up a trio of white-collar partners from Mayer Brown. Bryan Daly, Charles Kreindler and Peter Morris joined the L.A. office as equity partners last week. They were joined by Barbara Taylor and Melissa Eaves, who made the move as special counsel. Separately, Sheppard Mullin picked up former Mayer Brown IP partner Michael Molano in Silicon Valley. A legal recruiter called the moves “a significant blow to Mayer Brown’s growth objectives in the white-collar arena.”

A North Carolina law firm is merging with a South Carolina firm that wants a location in North Carolina’s capital city. Sanford Holshouser of Raleigh, N.C., will merge with the Columbia, S.C., firm Nexsen Pruet.

A self-described student who was present at the birth of a stillborn child cannot use the “Good Samaritan” defense in her attempt to persuade the court to dismiss a medical malpractice claim against her, a New York state judge has ruled. Supreme Court Justice William R. LaMarca held that there was sufficient evidence to raise a question of fact as to Julia Chachere’s “claim of lack of involvement.” Chachere, a registered nurse, argued that she was simply a “lay student observer.”

New Haven, Conn., solo Eric R. Gaynor faces a mandatory minimum sentence of five years in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to receipt of child pornography. Gaynor was indicted for allegedly offering, through a Web site that authorities say he owned, to sell or rent videos of young nude males, some of whom were engaged in sexual activity. The maximum term that Gaynor could get at his April sentencing is 20 years and a $250,000 fine.

Federal Judge Denny Chin slashed Dewey & LeBoeuf’s fees for work as receiver in a securities fraud case by more than $400,000 last week. He noted that Dewey had provided “outstanding” services but found unreasonable the hours billed and the number of people on the case. Chin wrote, “In this economy … surely there would have been qualified law firms willing to perform these services at rates substantially lower than $850 or $950 per hour for partners and $605 per hour for associates six years out of law school.”

A federal prosecutor argued before a magistrate judge Monday that Bernard Madoff’s bail should be revoked because he and his wife mailed more than $1 million in valuables late last month, despite a court order in a related civil case requiring the accused mastermind of a multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme not to dissipate assets. The magistrate judge instructed both sides to brief the issue of whether Madoff’s actions qualified as a basis for finding he posed a harm to the community under the Bail Reform Act.

Sponsors of California’s voter-approved gay marriage ban accused Attorney General Jerry Brown on Monday of advancing a far-fetched legal theory to justify overturning it. In papers submitted to the state Supreme Court, lawyers for the Protect Marriage coalition argued that Brown had “invented an entirely new theory” by asking the justices to trump the electorate, which approved Proposition 8 to amend the state constitution to limit marriage to a man and a woman.

A federal judge on Monday cleared the way for a groundbreaking suit that would let lawyers peek behind the curtain of the Bush administration’s warrantless electronic surveillance program. Northern District of California Chief Judge Vaughn Walker ruled that lawyers for Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation can access material long held secret by the government. But he also wrote that the press and the public must now be kept largely in the dark.

There are usually two options in patent litigation: Fight or settle. But RPX, a company that buys and licenses patents for paying members, has presented a third option in a case between patent holder Acacia Research and 20 defendants. Acacia announced on Friday that a subsidiary has reached a licensing deal with RPX, which says that defendants who sign up with RPX get a license to the Acacia patent, letting them out of the suit. Observers and those involved in the fight call this a first in patent litigation.

The struggle to stay on top of litigation in 2009 could get worse before it gets better for corporate legal departments. Fortunately, there are ways that in-house counsel can proactively prepare for litigation and regulatory and compliance issues, easing the burden of discovery while increasing the defensibility of their processes and procedures. Developing a data map of an organization’s information flow is one important step, says Brett Tarr, general counsel for eMag Solutions.