Posts on ‘June 19th, 2009’

In a 2-1 split, a federal appeals court today in Washington ruled against a former Treasury Department employee who alleged sex and race discrimination in a promotion dispute with the government. Judge Janice Rogers Brown sided against Chief Judge David Sentelle and Judge Douglas Ginsburg. Myra Hendricks, according to her complaint, a former employee of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, alleged two separate instances in which supervisors failed to promote her.

Sidley Austin and Taylor Wessing are among a raft of top firms in line to win advisory roles on the ongoing Formula One crisis. Eight F1 teams — the overwhelming majority of teams in the competition — are threatening to break away and set up their own series as a result of a dispute with the motorsport’s governing body, Federation Internationale de l’Automobile, over budget capping for 2010.

Texas billionaire R. Allen Stanford, whose sprawling banking empire collapsed this year, was indicted Friday for what

prosecutors call a $7 billion scheme to defraud investors. Justice Department officials announced the charges against Stanford, who ran Stanford Financial Group, and six others at a news conference. Also indicted were executives of the company and a former Antiguan bank regulator. If convicted of all charges in the 21-count indictment, Stanford could face up to 250 years in prison.

Something less well known about American International Group’s risky credit default swap business is that the global insurer was operating under the supervision of a U.S. Department of Justice-imposed monitor, whose job was to keep the company out of securities trouble. Obviously, it didn’t work. Indeed, AIG’s fall calls into question the efficacy of the entire corporate monitor program and leaves legal experts mulling over this conundrum: Are there some companies that are just too big to watch?

When you are away from the office, if you can’t be without the resources on your computer, you can either take it with you or access it remotely via software. Law.com’s Legal Technology editor Sean Doherty reviews I’m InTouch from a remote location to test how well it keeps you connected.

Health care products company Abbott Laboratories and pharmaceutical company Dey Inc. asked a Massachusetts federal court to sanction the U.S. Department of Justice for destroying evidence in a multidistrict wholesale drug pricing case. The companies claim that the government sealed whistleblower cases for years while conducting its own investigations to determine whether to join the cases, and that the sealing of the cases prevented the companies from conducting discovery.

Brocade Communications’ pricey lawsuit to force former executives to pay up for its backdating scandal has settled — and the company didn’t get the best return on its investment. Gregory Reyes, the former CEO who was convicted criminally, has struck a deal for $12.5 million, according to sources. The other remaining civil defendants, two Brocade directors, have agreed to pay about $400,000 and $200,000 respectively, according to the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the deal is not public.

A sharply divided U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday made it more difficult for employees to prove age discrimination charges against their employers. The majority ruled that a worker cannot establish discrimination under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act by showing that age was one motivating factor for the employer’s action, but instead must show that age was the decisive factor. The practical effect of the decision, said employment lawyers, is to eliminate so-called mixed-motives cases under the ADEA.

Taking the witness stand Thursday in a fight to stay out of prison and restore his reputation, Mayer Brown partner Joseph Collins said he would have resigned from representing Refco had he known its top executives were engaged in sham transactions and other frauds. Prosecutors are trying to prove Collins played a key role in a $2.4 billion corporate swindle that defrauded banks, investors and Thomas H. Lee Partners, which bought a large stake in Refco in 2004. Refco filed for bankruptcy soon after going public in 2005.