Posts on ‘January 7th, 2009’

Republican Norm Coleman filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging Democrat Al Franken’s apparent recount victory in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race, delaying a resolution of the contest for weeks or months. Coleman shrugged off the idea that he might concede the election to avoid a protracted fight that could leave Minnesota with only a single senator in Washington, D.C., for months. Coleman, whose term expired Saturday, led Franken by 215 votes in the Nov. 4 count but that advantage flipped during a prolonged recount.

Sen. Arlen Specter, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has begun laying out the questions he plans to ask Eric Holder Jr. next week during Holder’s confirmation hearing to be attorney general. He said he will focus on the pardon of fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich; the decision by Holder’s then-boss AG Janet Reno not to appoint a special prosecutor to look into Vice President Al Gore’s 1996 fundraising activities; and the clemency granted to a group of Puerto Rican nationalists.

About 20 lawyers at the Santa Monica, Calif.-based affiliate of Dreier LLP, called Dreier Stein Kahan Browne Woods George, have formed their own firm, while about 35 remaining attorneys are looking to merge with another firm. The moves come less than a month after Marc Dreier, founder and managing partner of Dreier LLP in New York, was charged with masterminding an investment fraud. Possible merger candidates for the remaining attorneys include Buchanan Ingersoll, Mintz Levin and Troutman Sanders.

To open its Victor diamond mine in northern Ontario, De Beers Canada had to conduct negotiations with the Attawapiskat First Nation. More Canadian businesses are finding that they have to engage in the same kind of delicate talks with aboriginal communities. Not only do aboriginal groups own a lot of land — especially in the remote places where resource companies are likely to dig mines, drill wells or build pipelines — they generally enjoy more rights than Native Americans do in the United States.

As president, Barack Obama, an admitted BlackBerry addict, will be subject to a strict records-retention law, and wireless devices also pose security risks deemed too high for the commander in chief. The question for in-house counsel: Should a chief executive officer be using one?

Is now the perfect time to start a solo practice? Yes, according to consultant Susan Cartier Liebel. With times so tough, starting a new business may seem the height of insanity, but Liebel says it is during these times that lawyers should realize that the “opportunity cost” of taking a risk, like starting a solo practice, is much lower. And for those attorneys who are able to shake off their paralysis, bad economic times may present some special opportunities for solo practitioners, Liebel says.

A federal judge acted within his authority when he denied all fees to a lawyer who won a $2.4 million medical malpractice case but failed to investigate the future needs of a child disabled at birth and overcharged his client, the 2nd Circuit ruled. The court upheld the discretion of Eastern District of New York Judge Edward Korman to refuse Steven F. Goldman’s application for $388,000 in fees. Goldman resigned from the bar in 2005 during a disciplinary investigation unrelated to the matter before Korman.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans on Tuesday upheld former Enron Corp. CEO Jeff Skilling’s convictions for his role in the energy giant’s collapse but threw out his 24-year prison term and ordered that he be resentenced. The panel found that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake improperly applied a sentencing guideline that resulted in a longer prison term for Skilling in October 2006. But legal experts still expect Skilling to get a lengthy prison term whenever he is resentenced.