Posts on ‘January 7th, 2009’

Victims of Palestinian terrorist attacks have filed suit against U.S. companies that allegedly paid kickbacks to Saddam Hussein during the Iraqi Oil For Food Program, alleging that by doing business with the dictator, the corporations indirectly financed terrorist organizations such as Hamas. The suit seeks an unspecified award from Texan oil executives Oscar Wyatt and David Chalmers, their companies, NuCoastal Corp. and Bayoil Inc., as well as several of their subsidiaries.

A House panel on Monday heard tales of woe from investors who placed their savings with Wall Street financier Bernard Madoff, whose alleged fraud could amount to $50 billion. Inspector General H. David Kotz, said at the hearing that he is so concerned about the SEC’s failure to uncover Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme that he is expanding the inquiry called for last month by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. Cox had placed the blame on the SEC’s career staff for failing to detect what Madoff was doing.

A former partner in Holland & Knight’s Miami office is suing the firm after efforts to arbitrate a dispute over his 2002 termination broke down. R. Thomas Farrar was one of 60 attorneys and 170 other employees cut by the firm in April 2002. Farrar, who had worked for the firm since 1981, alleges Holland & Knight violated his partnership agreement by terminating him and wrongfully depriving him of his right to retirement benefits.

A trial that could change the face of Hispanic television got under way in federal court in Los Angeles on Tuesday as Grupo Televisa, Mexico’s largest media company, pressed claims for over $100 million in damages from Univision, the leading Spanish-language broadcaster in the U.S. The suit concerns a 16-year-old programming agreement that grants the network exclusive rights to air Grupo Televisa’s enormously popular telenovelas in the U.S. Univision has turned to star litigator John Keker as trial counsel.

The federal appeals court opinion that upheld the constitutionality of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board was a disastrous decision that undermines the president’s ability to supervise federal officers, say Jones Day lawyers who want the Supreme Court to review the case. The lawyers are urging the Court to review a split decision in which a D.C. Circuit judge wrote a 58-page dissent, calling the case the most important separation-of-powers litigation to reach the courts in more than 20 years.

In an opinion piece in the current issue of magazine, Evan Chesler, the presiding partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, calls for the end of the billable hour. The essay is the latest entry in a growing conversation about the prospects for change in the way big firms do business. In an interview, Chesler said that he’s been raising this issue with clients and in private talks for the last few years, but he notes that “there’s a lot of inertia, a lot of ‘the devil you know’ in this area.”