Posts on ‘March 19th, 2009’

In a case that pitted Discover Bank against a defaulted credit card customer, a divided U.S. Supreme Court recently resolved a long-standing circuit split regarding parties’ ability to seek federal court assistance to compel arbitration of litigation pending in state court. Though the majority opinion was a win for the consumer, Discover can find some solace in having split the Court nearly as well as it hoped to split the customer’s state-court counterclaims, writes attorney J. Noah Hagey.

The University of California Hastings College of the Law cannot be required to recognize and fund a religious student group that discriminates in selecting members and officers, the 9th Circuit ruled Tuesday, finding that the rule prohibiting discrimination based on members’ religion or sexual orientation is “viewpoint neutral and reasonable.” Hastings’ attorney said the issue has arisen in test cases at universities across the country. The 9th Circuit decision may be in direct conflict with the 7th Circuit.

A California Superior Court judge recently awarded more than $46 million to a woman almost entirely paralyzed in a 2006 car accident and her husband. The judgment, entered Friday, came after at least one insurance company tried and failed to intervene in the case when it discovered that the defendant was not going to put up a fight. Now, Mary Alexander, the San Francisco personal-injury lawyer representing the plaintiff, faces a fight to get the insurance companies to pay.

Morris Manning has rescinded offers for six of its incoming first-year associates and canceled this year’s summer associate program due to the recession. Nationally, several firms have pushed back start dates for their 2009 first-year class and some have rescinded job offers, but Morris Manning is the first in Atlanta to do so. “We believe that our first goal should be to retain jobs for the associates who are already working for us before bringing in more associates,” said managing partner Robert Saudek.

In a case of first impression, a New Jersey appeals court on Wednesday denied a defense request for an autopsy of an asbestos-exposure plaintiff who died two days before trial. The panel, in , affirmed a trial judge’s finding that defendants Chrysler and Honeywell failed to show that examination of the dead man’s lung tissue would produce significant evidence. The ruling means that Harold St. John, whose burial had been halted while in progress, can now be laid to rest.

An attorney embroiled in a divorce proceeding cannot penalize his wife for allegedly duping him into thinking that his youngest son, the product of an affair, was his biological child, a New York state appeals court has ruled. In a pointed dissent, Justice Eugene Nardelli took a “dimmer” view of Lillian S.’s behavior, saying that she played “fast and loose” with her son’s health by concealing his true parentage from health care providers and creating “potentially life-threatening gaps” in his medical history.

It seems that Laura Pendergest-Holt, the one Stanford Financial defendant in the SEC’s civil fraud case who has a lawyer, can’t afford to pay for one. Pendergest-Holt filed a suit Tuesday against Lloyd’s of London, claiming that Stanford’s insurance policy requires Lloyd’s to foot the bill for her legal defense. The suit, filed by Pendergest-Holt’s team at Salt Lake City-based Parsons Behle & Latimer and local counsel from Sawicki & Lauten in Dallas, asks for $10 million in actual damages and $40 million in punitives.

Silicon Valley hedge fund manager Albert Hu was charged Wednesday by the U.S. Attorney and the SEC with duping investors out of millions of dollars. Part of Hu’s scheme, authorities claim, was to impress investors by telling them that his funds were represented by prominent law firms. But authorities say it was all a ruse — the law firms had nothing to do with the scheme cooked up by Hu, who allegedly promised big returns and then wouldn’t return the money when investors got suspicious.