Posts on ‘January 21st, 2009’

Clothing company Liz Claiborne should be sanctioned for a “persistent refusal” to comply with discovery orders stemming from ongoing trademark infringement litigation with a smaller competitor, a federal magistrate judge has determined. New York Magistrate Judge Michael H. Dolinger concluded that Liz Claiborne fell “seriously short of what the discovery rules require” in litigation between jeans-maker Lucky Brand, one of Liz Claiborne’s flagship clothing brands, and Marcel Fashion Group.

The dismissal of a derivative class action suit over alleged stock options backdating at Bed Bath & Beyond has been upheld by a New York appeals court, which found that shareholders failed to show that demanding action from the company’s board of directors would have been futile. The decision was the second in a little over four months to consider the circumstances in which shareholders can file a derivative action against company directors.

Jeffrey Skilling’s attorneys filed a new round of appeals Tuesday in their efforts to overturn the former Enron CEO’s convictions for his role in the once-mighty energy giant’s collapse. The latest motions come two weeks after a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Skilling’s convictions. The panel disagreed with Skilling’s claims that his convictions were invalid because of incorrect legal theory, faulty jury instructions, a biased jury and prosecutorial misconduct.

A prosecutor in Kansas has failed to block the suspension of his law license by arguing that his alleged Asperger’s syndrome played a part in his decision to show sexually explicit photos of drunken teens at a party to their parents to demonstrate the dangers of teenage drinking. The Supreme Court of Kansas concluded that Frederick Campbell violated attorney ethics rules and suspended him from practice for six months. Campbell said he agreed with the decision. “I don’t relate well to other people,” he said.

Invoking French philosopher Rene Descartes, a New York Family Court judge has specially tailored an oath for a doctor who took the stand and maintained that “there is no such thing as the truth.” Dr. Bruce Kokernot gave that reply after he was called as an expert in a neglect proceeding and was asked, in standard fashion, if he could “swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Up next: a courtroom back-and-forth over the essence of “truthiness.”

Thanks in part to a push by Walt Disney Co., Jenner & Block Chairman Anton Valukas, a former federal prosecutor, has been appointed by a bankruptcy judge to investigate the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings. Disney is concerned that Lehman may have violated its sales agreement with Barclays by selling assets it wasn’t authorized to sell. Creditors have also long been concerned over $8 billion that Lehman moved from its London operation to its New York headquarters hours before its Chapter 11 filing.

A federal appeals court threw out a lawsuit Tuesday by Geoffrey Fieger, who claims his criticism of Michigan judges is protected by the First Amendment. The 6th Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, overturned a significant ruling that had gone in Fieger’s favor in a long-running clash between the outspoken and often unbridled trial lawyer and the Michigan judiciary. Fieger got in trouble in 1999 after he likened three judges, who reversed his $15 million malpractice verdict, to Nazi leaders.

About 45,000 sick smokers have been approved for payments from a $580 million fund that sprouted from an overturned tobacco negligence verdict, but questions about federal tax liability and Medicare liens still have not been answered. About $405 million has been distributed in individual checks of $9,000, but supplemental checks have been held up while lawyers figure out what to do with the claims asserted by the federal government, said court-appointed fund administrator Miles McGrane of McGrane Nosich & Ganz in Coral Gables, Fla.

The first lawsuit tied to the recent salmonella outbreak in certain brands of peanut butter was filed on Tuesday against a supplier to Kellogg Co., which has recalled several of its products in recent weeks. So far, six people have died and more than 470 were sickened in 43 states. This month, the disease was traced to peanut butter that originated in a Georgia plant owned by Peanut Corporation of America, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

Hundreds of people rallied in the Chechen capital Tuesday to protest the slaying of a lawyer who opposed the early release of a Russian army officer convicted of strangling an 18-year-old Chechen woman. A crowd of about 1,500 in Grozny demanded justice following the killing of Stanislav Markelov, a prominent Russian human rights lawyer who had worked with the investigative journalist and Kremlin critic Anna Politkovskaya. She was gunned down in Moscow in 2006.