Posts on ‘March 25th, 2009’

McCarter & English has poached a 12-member life sciences team — eight attorneys and four patent agents — from Boston IP boutique Lahive & Cockfield. The group will expand McCarter’s life sciences expertise in New England, said McCarter’s intellectual property/information technology practice chairman. Nine of the 12 group members leaving Lahive, which is known for its flexible work arrangements and strong record of promoting female attorneys to partnership ranks, are women.

State governments and Medicaid plan administrators have shown keen interest in a case argued before the 11th Circuit on Tuesday that could determine whether doctors or state officials get to decide how much medical care a Medicaid recipient needs. At issue is whether the state of Georgia properly reduced the number of hours of care that a young disabled girl receives in her home. The girl’s mother filed suit in 2007 after the state told her it was reducing the number of hours from 94 a week to 84.

A unanimous Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled that a convicted killer whose lawyer persuaded him not to pursue an insanity defense does not deserve a new trial. The decision overturns a 9th Circuit ruling that said the lawyer was so ineffective that his client’s first-degree murder conviction could not stand. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the lawyer, in urging his client to drop the insanity plea, “merely recommended the withdrawal of what he reasonably believed was a claim doomed to fail.”

A New Jersey federal judge has dismissed a New York Jets fan’s putative class action over the New England Patriots’ secret videotaping of rival coaches’ signals, holding that tickets carry no guarantee that teams will abide by NFL rules. New Jersey solo and Jets season ticket-holder Carl Mayer claimed the taping violated the rights of fans who “contracted for a ticket to an honest match.” The Jets themselves, though the victims of the signal-snatching, opposed the suit in an amicus curiae brief.

Yale University has sued in federal court in Connecticut to assert its ownership rights over the famous Van Gogh painting, “The Night Cafe.” It also seeks to block a descendant of the original owner from claiming it. Pierre Konowaloff is the purported great-grandson of industrialist Ivan Morozov, who owned the painting in 1918. Russia nationalized Morozov’s property and later sold the painting, which has been hanging in the Yale University Art Gallery for almost 50 years.

It’s not just U.S. and U.K. law students facing a tougher job market. According to a report from Livemint, a affiliate, India’s top law firms are also drastically scaling back their on-campus recruiting. Over the past five years, India’s leading corporate law firm hired some 200 graduates from one West Bengal school — but this year, only three. However, some schools have fared better.

A feisty 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday peppered lawyers for Wal-Mart and a gigantic class suing over gender discrimination, with neither side emerging as the clear victor. Playing to a packed house, lawyers for both sides ran into skepticism from the federal appeals court. The case, with hundreds of thousands of potential plaintiffs, has been widely watched by several sections of the business community and the bar.

HealthSouth shareholders, represented by lead counsel from Coughlin Stoia, announced a $109 million settlement Tuesday with Ernst & Young, which was the company’s accountant. The settlement is about a quarter of the size of the deal that shareholders reached some years ago with HealthSouth itself, but Patrick Coughlin said he’s pleased with the result. “As far as accountants go, this is one of the top settlements ever,” he said. The settlement comes days before a scheduled class certification hearing.

In a sign of the economic times, the total value of structured settlements — in which plaintiffs in personal injury lawsuits accept periodic payments rather than one lump sum of cash — jumped by 25 percent during the fourth quarter of 2008, compared to the previous quarter, according to statistics from Structured Financial Associates, a structured settlement brokerage firm based in Atlanta. The increase could indicate the beginning of another significant increase similar to that of previous economic downturns.

The nation’s two largest state public pension funds asked a federal court in New York to name them lead plaintiffs in a securities class action against Bank of America Corp. for its handling of the merger with Merrill Lynch & Co. The 1.6 million-member California Public Employees’ Retirement System and the 833,000-member California State Teachers’ Retirement System alleged that Bank of America management misstated or withheld important details of Merrill Lynch’s finances.