Posts on ‘January 16th, 2009’

Sparked by a wave of litigation against financial services companies,
the number of federal class action suits filed last year grew 19
percent, according to a recent report. One expert suggested that
litigation against the financial sector may be slowing because attorneys
are running out of defendants to sue, but other observers say that
market volatility during the wild fourth quarter of 2008 may have been
so extreme that investors, attorneys and potential defendants are still
coming to grips with events.

SharePoint guru Mark Gerow uses JavaScript to create a custom search form to allow your users to easily search by client and matter number. With slight modification, the solution he develops can be used to search any combination of document properties exposed by the search engine.

When is a settlement not a settlement? That’s the issue in a dispute between China-based foundry Semiconductor Manufacturing International and its rival, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing International. Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati’s David Steuer, who’s heading the trial team for SMIC, grilled TSMC in-house luminary Dick Thurston on Tuesday on who signed a 2005 trade secret settlement, whether it was changed after the fact, and whether SMIC’s GC at the time really had the authority to settle the case.

The stark reality of facing the worst economic decline since the Great Depression has left many of us devoid of the optimistic energy usually generated by the New Year. Indeed, the typical resolutions have been replaced with growing concerns about losing jobs and stopping foreclosures. So what, if anything, can a lawyer do to prevent being laid off, or at least to minimize such a risk? Two of the most important things are to become visible and flexible, says Fass & Greenberg’s Florence M. Fass.

National security issues dominated the first day of Eric Holder Jr.’s confirmation hearings, defying expectations that Republicans would bludgeon the AG nominee with the past. Though several senators nipped at the Covington & Burling partner for his role in the clemency grants of fugitive financier Marc Rich and 16 members of the Puerto Rican nationalist group FALN, much of the back-and-forth focused on torture, the USA Patriot Act, the fate of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, and detention and interrogation polices.

Disgraced attorney Marc Dreier has given full cooperation to the
receiver charged with identifying and securing his assets, his attorney
said Thursday. Fighting to get his client released on bail while he
awaits trial on accusations that he looted escrow accounts and sold or
tried to sell more than $100 million in phony promissory notes to hedge
funds, attorney Gerald Shargel said Dreier has no hidden assets in the
U.S. or abroad. Papers submitted by Shargel offer a glimpse into what
happened to all the money.

Eli Lilly & Co. will pay a combined $1.42 billion — including the largest criminal fine in history, $515 million — to settle charges that it illegally marketed the anti-psychotic drug Zyprexa for off-label use, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. Zyprexa was approved by the FDA only as a treatment for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder, prosecutors said, but Lilly allegedly set out to market the drug to elderly patients for such conditions as dementia, agitation and generalized sleep disorder.

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.