Posts on ‘March 24th, 2009’

The Supreme Court on Monday considered whether collateral estoppel under
the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment bars government
prosecutors from retrying a former Enron executive on financial fraud
charges when the jury at his first trial acquitted him of some counts
but could not reach a verdict on others. Several of the justices
discussed whether an indictment with a large number of counts resulted
in an “exhausted” and “confused” jury — and ultimately put the
government at an advantage.

Ohio federal Judge Solomon Olivier Jr. has ruled that one class of state law tort claims against drug makers is still pre-empted by federal law, even after the Supreme Court’s ruling. Olivier was considering a case involving the Wyeth drug Redux. In 2008 he dismissed the plaintiff’s case in its entirety, finding that her liability and negligence claims were pre-empted. The plaintiff asked the judge to reconsider in light of . He did — and he upheld his previous ruling.

A New York federal judge has ordered the Food and Drug Administration to allow the manufacturers of Plan B to make the emergency contraceptive available to 17-year-olds without a prescription. The judge also ordered the FDA to reconsider whether adolescents younger than 17 should be able to purchase the drug over the counter. The FDA’s decisions limiting access to the drug were tainted by improper political influence and departures from the agency’s own policies, the judge wrote.

A federal judge has turned down a request for more than $2 million in fees and sanctioned a plaintiffs lawyer $25,000 for submitting false fee applications in civil rights litigation against FedEx. Judge Susan Illston also forbade Waukeen McCoy from filing any more FedEx-related fee petitions, calling his actions regarding the petitions “among the most egregious that this court has seen in almost 14 years on the bench.” The fee fight began after McCoy won jury verdicts against FedEx for workplace discrimination.

During AIG chief Edward Liddy’s testimony last week before a congressional committee, Liddy and several committee members repeatedly mentioned that AIG checked with its lawyers before concluding it was obligated to pay some $200 million in bonuses despite receiving $200 billion in bailout money. The company on Monday confirmed to The Am Law Daily that those lawyers are from Paul, Hastings, Janofsky & Walker. The firm concluded that failure to pay the bonuses would expose AIG to major liability in Connecticut courts.

A $60 billion lawsuit brought by Citigroup in the wake of its failed bid to buy Wachovia’s banking assets for some $2.1 billion will be heard in state court, a federal judge in Manhattan has ruled. Citigroup brought the action in state Supreme Court, claiming that Wachovia “flagrantly” violated an exclusivity agreement it signed with Citigroup in late September. Wells Fargo agreed to purchase Wachovia for approximately $15 billion the following month.

At least two high-profile plaintiffs attorneys are considering filing lawsuits over the recent controversies surrounding $165 million in retention bonuses that AIG paid to its executives. In a March 19 letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Coughlin Stoia’s Darren Robbins said several of the firm’s pension fund clients have directed him to “advise the Treasury Department of our mandate to take appropriate steps on behalf of AIG against the members of AIG’s board of directors.”

A two-year-old IP battle over network storage systems between two Silicon Valley mainstays — Sun Microsystems and NetApp — could affect merger talks between Sun and the world’s top provider of computer products and services, IBM. Represented by Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based NetApp filed suit against Sun in district court in San Francisco in September 2007. The litigation has grown to three cases covering nearly 40 different patents.

Saul Ewing has continued to trim its ranks because of the downturn in the economy. The firm said Monday that it cut seven associates across a variety of practice areas in the Philadelphia and D.C. offices. Seven staff members were also laid off for economic reasons. This is the second round of cuts the firm has made since early January, when it let go of 12 staff members. The initial staff cut comprised about 4 percent of the firm’s overall staff headcount.