Posts on ‘June 9th, 2009’

Iraq’s current government cannot be sued for the actions of Saddam Hussein’s regime, the U.S. Supreme Court said Monday as it threw out lawsuits filed by Americans who were held by the government of the now-deceased dictator. Foreign nations usually are immune from lawsuits in U.S. courts, but federal law strips that protection from countries that support terrorism. The Iraqi government argued that the U.S.-led invasion that deposed Saddam and a 2003 federal law restored Iraq’s immunity to suits in American courts.

A federal judge in Los Angeles has tossed a substantial portion of a criminal case against Pierce O’Donnell, the lead attorney representing Hurricane Katrina victims in litigation against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. On Monday, the judge granted O’Donnell’s motion to dismiss charges that he allegedly reimbursed employees of his law firm and others for giving $26,000 in campaign contributions to a committee supporting a presidential candidate, believed to be former Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C.

Shartsis Friese squared off against JP Morgan Retirement Services in court Monday over who was responsible for six years of miscalculated contributions to the firm’s deferred compensation and profit-sharing plan. The firm says its plan contributions didn’t meet IRS rules because of bad advice from its benefits consultant at CCA Strategies, since acquired by JP Morgan. The counsel for JP Morgan says she’ll prove that Shartsis Friese’s “very informal, loose structure” led the law firm to make the funding error.

A key Senate vote Monday put Congress in sight of fulfilling a decade-old quest to put the content and marketing of tobacco products under the control of the federal government. The legislation would for the first time give the Food and Drug Administration legal authority to regulate cigarettes and other tobacco products. Similar measures have passed the House in recent years, but did not survive strong opposition from industry and the George W. Bush administration.

Seyfarth Shaw attorneys representing staffing firm Robert Half International Inc. asked a Massachusetts federal judge to disqualify the plaintiffs’ law firm on an overtime case because a former Seyfarth associate is now a contract lawyer for the plaintiffs’ firm. Ian O’Donnell, a former staffing manager at Robert Half, and two other former managers, filed the purported class action in 2004, claiming Robert Half failed to pay statutorily mandated wages.

On the eve of trial, Royal Dutch Shell on Monday agreed to pay $15.5 million to settle claims that the company, a subsidiary and the head of the company’s Nigerian operations were complicit in the 1995 abuse and hanging of writer Ken Saro-Wiwa and other activists protesting the environmental impact of oil drilling in the Ogoni region of the Niger Delta. The funds will compensate the 10 individual plaintiffs; set up a trust intended to benefit the Ogoni people; and cover part of plaintiffs’ legal fees and costs.

Members of Congress are moving quickly to force a convicted federal judge from Texas out of office so they can avoid paying his annual salary while he serves time in prison. A task force formed by the House Judiciary Committee scheduled a meeting for Tuesday morning to begin considering what articles of impeachment — essentially charges — they want to recommend against U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent, the first sitting judge to have faced sex crime charges.

Davis Polk & Wardwell will close its 18-year-old Frankfurt office, effective August 31. The German office has long focused on cross-border securities and M&A work. The move was prompted by the imminent retirement of the office’s longtime resident partner, Patrick Kenadjian. Also, Harald Halbhuber, a London-based lawyer designated as Kenadjian’s successor, announced his intention to leave the firm for personal reasons, according to managing partner John Ettinger.

When it comes to wage-and-hour laws, strippers are no different from pizza delivery drivers or waitresses. That’s what plaintiffs attorney E. Michelle Drake of Minneapolis-based Nichols Kaster claims in a wage-and-hour class action recently filed against a strip club in suburban Minneapolis. The suit claims that the King of Diamonds club is violating state and federal wage-and-hour laws by intentionally misclassifying entertainers as independent contractors and requiring them to pay fees to come to work.

Tom Sager, GC for E. I. du Pont de Nemours, likes alternative fee arrangements, and he’s made sure his outside counsel know it. With the economic downturn forcing cost cutting across America, Sager’s not alone. Making such agreements work for both the company and its law firms takes more than an innovative proposal and a solid pitch. The success of any alternative fee arrangement depends on mutual trust, said lawyers from DuPont’s legal network who attended a conference last week hosted by the company.