Posts on ‘March 23rd, 2009’

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has turned to the Ohio Supreme Court for guidance on a 2002 Ohio law that attempts to shield minors from obscene material, dubbed an Internet censorship regime by opponents. Ohio’s high court was asked Thursday to respond to two questions about whether the law exempts private e-mail, chat rooms and public Web sites from liability, as the state attorney general has argued. A procedure known as “certification of a question” passed the constitutional problem to the Ohio court.

A team of lawyers representing Hogan & Hartson filed a motion Friday to dismiss a suit that alleges the firm committed legal malpractice, breach of contract and breach of fiduciary duty. Prestige Brands sued the law firm, claiming Hogan lawyers used attorney-client communication to help a competitor bring a product to market quicker than it could have without Hogan’s representation.

Boston Scientific Corp. said Friday it will pay $50 million to settle a yearslong dispute with an inventor who claimed the company’s drug-coated stent infringed on his patent. In July a federal judge rejected a request by Boston Scientific for a new trial against Dr. Bruce Saffran that ended with a $501 million judgment in his favor. The company had argued that Saffran’s patent differed in design from its Taxus stent.

A New Jersey appeals court on Friday ordered lawyer Bruce Nagel, who had sued his adversary in a wrongful-death case over her intense questioning of his client about the death of the client’s baby girl, to pay the opposing lawyer $11,630 in counsel fees. However, the appeals court said that Nagel didn’t deserve to be hit with $2,500 in sanctions that a trial judge had imposed.

A Pennsylvania lawyer already under indictment for allegedly faking his brother’s will is now facing charges of dodging taxes on more than $5 million in income and concocting a scheme to get a $500,000 tax deduction for charity by laundering money through a church. The new charges against John P. Karoly Jr. came two days after Karoly and his lawyer lodged their own accusations, alleging prosecutors improperly used a client of Karoly’s to secretly record a conversation revealing Karoly’s defense strategy.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled Friday in a split decision that the Patent and Trademark Office did not overstep its authority in adopting a set of new rules that some intellectual property lawyers say fundamentally alter patent practice and threaten innovation. Lawyers for the PTO say the four new PTO rules, issued in 2007, were constructed to reduce a backlog of unexamined patent applications by, among other things, limiting the number of claims per application.

An appeals court has ruled that a major Washington, D.C., law firm did not commit malpractice when it represented a client found liable for $20 million in punitive damages — and just $520 in actual damages. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals determined that intellectual property law firm Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner’s decision not to initially appeal the punitive damages award was a reasonable, tactical litigation strategy involving an unsettled point of law.

Troutman Sanders said Friday the firm will lay off associates and offer staff a voluntary buyout, which will likely be followed by a layoff. The 778-lawyer firm also has pushed back the start date for its 2009 first-year associates to January and shaved two weeks off its summer associate program. The buyout offer is for all 876 staff members, according to the firm chairman, and includes severance pay and health insurance pegged to length of employment. Staff with sufficient seniority also will get a lump sum payment.

Law firms aren’t the only ones pushing attorneys out the door to shrink costs. U.S. companies, both large and small and across varied industries, are dismissing attorneys as they retool their law departments to cut costs and adapt to slowing U.S. economic activity. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s membership has dropped this year, declining by almost 6 percent to 23,396 this month after average 10 percent annual increases.

At a time when law firms are more openly announcing and discussing layoff decisions, one group of firms is being particularly mum about job cuts — the Texans. Layoffs hit the region later than the rest of the country, with news of cuts at firms like Baker Botts, Andrews Kurth and Gardere Wynne Sewell coming only in the past month. Yet while the firms typically have confirmed that they’ve conducted layoffs, they’ve fought to keep quiet the actual number of people affected.