Posts on ‘June 5th, 2009’

The April 17 decision by a Swedish court to jail the four founders of the popular file-sharing Web site The Pirate Bay and to fine them $3.6 million for copyright infringement has had a galvanizing effect, especially among young people, sparking demonstrations across Sweden and attracting sympathizers around the world. That’s despite the characterization by lawyer Peter Danowsky, who represented plaintiffs in the case, that the decision essentially equated the defendants’ activities with organized crime.

The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, an organization of the World Bank specializing in disputes between foreign investors and governments, has awarded $133 million to two Italian clients of King & Spalding in a long-running dispute with the Egyptian government over the expropriation of a 161-acre resort property on the Gulf of Aqaba on the Red Sea. The award, issued June 1, is the largest ever granted to individual claimants by the ICSID.

Law firms have certainly upped the ante when it comes to lateral hiring standards, and that’s accentuated the differences between open- versus closed-compensation systems, when it comes to firms getting partner buy-in for picking up new recruits. Recruiters and firm leaders alike say firms with a closed-compensation model have a clear advantage in the ability to bring on lateral partners in the midst of this recession, largely because that model protects the egos of both existing partners and new recruits.

Attorney Christina M. Storm founded Lawyers Without Borders to connect attorneys with pro bono projects in Africa and elsewhere. The group now coordinates international projects geared toward protecting the integrity of the legal process abroad. Storm, a partner in three-lawyer Byrne & Storm, says about half of the group’s projects are geared toward individual attorneys and half are projects for law firm groups. And due to the economy, there’s a long list of deferred associates and other lawyers looking to help out.

A federal judge in New Jersey has narrowly construed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act as extending workers’ time to sue only for claims based on pay bias — not other acts of bias, such as failure to hire. “While the Act certainly contains expansive language … it … does not save otherwise untimely claims outside the discriminatory compensation context,” she wrote. Issues related to the reach of the act, which was passed in response to a 2007 U.S. Supreme Court decision, have been dividing the courts.

Nine months after he secured an $18.3 million award for a man paralyzed in the 2003 Staten Island Ferry crash, attorney Evan Torgan returned to federal court Wednesday to defend the propriety of his retainer agreement and to seek the reinstatement of his full fee. In September, a judge cut Torgan’s fee from 33 percent, or about $6 million, to 20 percent, or about $3.6 million. The emotional high point of the unusual hearing came when the plaintiff in the underlying case took the stand on behalf of Torgan.

Jack Abramoff is back in the news. The former lobbyist, who logged stints at Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig, has been in prison since 2006 after pleading guilty to fraud, tax evasion and conspiracy to bribe public officials. The Justice Department is now attempting to change Abramoff’s restitution order so that his family will be blocked from spending a $500,000 tax refund. The DOJ’s filing contains some added information of interest to legal readers: details of payments to Abramoff’s lawyers.

Sonnenschein partner Paul Glad is being sued over a March auto accident that resulted in a woman losing part of her leg. The suit alleges Glad was under the influence of OxyContin when he pulled into the handicapped space of a California store, began getting out of the car without putting it in park and rammed a group of parents and girls selling Girl Scout cookies, pinning one mother against a wall. A county deputy DA said the office expects to decide whether to file criminal charges within the next week.

Reach back into the Enron era and you may recall Jack Grubman, Salomon Barney’s star telecom analyst. When the telecom market collapsed, Grubman resigned as regulators examined his ties to fraud-ridden WorldCom. His touting of WorldCom stock helped lead Salomon’s parent, Citigroup, to pay $2.65 billion to settle claims from WorldCom investors in 2004. Now, Grubman’s back, as the 2nd Circuit revives a $200 million suit, filed by an investor group that opted out of the Citi deal five years ago.

Influential U.S. wine critic Robert M. Parker has been ordered to stand trial in France next month for allegedly defaming a former assistant, a judicial official said Friday. The case centers on former assistant Hanna Agostini, who co-authored a book in France with a title that translates as “Robert Parker: Anatomy of a Myth.” Agostini herself faces preliminary charges in Bordeaux involving alleged forgery in a wine-trafficking affair centering on Belgian wine trader Geens.