Posts on ‘June 26th, 2009’

One day after President Obama declared that the United States and other countries were “appalled and outraged” by the recent government crackdown in Iran, the Iranian American Lawyers Association called for the creation of an independent commission to investigate human rights violations in the aftermath of the June 12 election. California lawyer P. Patrick Ashouri, a member of the association’s board of directors, warns that hundreds of protesters and journalists could face execution under Iranian law.

Imagine paddling an 18-foot canoe almost nonstop for 97 hours. Add Texas summer heat, mosquito hordes, aggressive fish, getting knocked out of the canoe by an overhanging tree and almost no sleep. What have you got? The Texas Water Safari canoe race, recently completed by Dallas lawyers Nick Hofman and Edgar McQueen. For finishing within the 100-hour time limit, the two received patches. “Nick had one of the best quotes of the whole adventure: ‘Never have I done so much for so little,’” says McQueen.

Retiree Jacob Richard Froess thought it was safe to invest his savings through the brokerage arm of his bank, but lost $14,000 before he could get his money out. Last month, he scored a difficult victory before an arbitrator with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, with help from attorney Mark Tepper. “To me, the greatest sound in the world is the sound of Goliath falling to his knees,” says Tepper, a former New York prosecutor who moved to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and now focuses on representing investors.

Dissident bondholders are apparently not backing down from their request for their own official committee to act alongside the court-appointed committee of unsecured creditors in the General Motors bankruptcy. The co-chair of the bankruptcy practice at Patton Boggs argues that the creditors committee is not adequately representing smaller bondholders’ interests, because it appears to be going along with a plan to sell GM that could jeopardize those bonds — or wipe them out almost entirely.

After four years and tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, defense lawyers in the Fannie Mae securities fraud suit asked a federal judge Thursday to send the case to mediation. Attorneys for Fannie Mae and its former auditor, KPMG, first made the request Wednesday in a joint motion filed with Judge Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The move amounts to the two corporations’ hardest push yet to settle the hodgepodge of litigation that grew from Fannie’s 2004 accounting scandal.

A judge denied bail Thursday to a New Jersey blogger charged with threatening to assault or murder three federal judges and ordered Harold “Hal” Turner transferred to Illinois to face the charge, which carries a maximum prison term of 10 years. Attorneys on both sides had reached a tentative agreement Thursday that would have allowed Turner to be released on $200,000 bail, confined to his home and prohibited from using the Internet by monitoring software, but the judge expressed reservations with the bail package.

Three workers have filed a $200 million lawsuit against Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. for failing to pay them overtime wages under California and federal law. “They’ve got a system of white-collar peonage here,” said a plaintiffs lawyer, who said the workers are classified by the company as independent contractors to circumvent minimum wage and overtime laws. A Northwestern Mutual spokeswoman says the plaintiffs are “financial representatives” who have never been employees of the company.

In a meeting with associates Thursday, Buchanan Ingersoll CEO John A. Barbour announced that the firm is making cuts in associate compensation, in response to the recession. In information provided to The Legal Intelligencer, Barbour said the firm is reducing associate compensation by between 5 percent and 10 percent per year, effective July 1. The reductions will be determined on an individual basis and will be based on such factors as billable hours, profitability and quality of work, Barbour said.

The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service has produced a report on the opinions of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, drawing conclusions that lend support to her advocates’ assertions that she is far from an extreme liberal. “As a group, the opinions belie easy categorization along any ideological spectrum,” the report states. In her respect for precedent, it says, Sotomayor’s approach “would be in line with the judicial philosophy of Justice Souter,” the justice she is in line to replace.

A recent appeals court decision reversing the U.S. Court of Federal Claims’ denial of a vaccine injury claim highlights the widening gulf between the Federal Circuit and Federal Claims court on such cases. On June 18, the Federal Circuit reversed the Federal Claims court’s decision to deny the petitioner compensation under the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a no-fault system for injury claims from a variety of vaccines.