Posts from ‘June, 2009’

A Florida businessman who merged his company with a bank that later collapsed claims that auditing failures and a subsequent cover-up by accounting giant Ernst & Young cost him hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. Alan Schein contends that he relied on E&Y audits that gave Illinois-based Superior Bank a clean bill of health for more than a decade when deciding in 1998 to merge his mortgage marketing company with the bank, whose assets were $420 million lower than reported.

Speaking at the conference of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on Saturday, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. said briefs before the high court are running too long, while the justices themselves are asking too many questions at oral argument. “I think we’re getting carried away” with questioning, Roberts said. “It is a little too much domination by the bench.” He even suggested giving justices timers as in speed chess, so they can see how much time they are eating up with their questions.

Instead of bolstering its U.S. presence through a merger with a prestigious New York-based firm, Linklaters decided some time ago to build its New York office via lateral hires and recruiting — a strategy that seems to be working, says the office’s co-managing partner. The firm just hired bank regulatory partner Robin Maxwell from Goodwin Procter, the third major lateral hire Linklaters has made in the last year. The hire brings the office’s head count to about 170.

Florida-based Ruden McClosky has imposed a 9 percent pay cut on its associates and non-equity partners and informed its equity partners that they are not likely to receive the holdbacks of 18 percent of their pay. The pay cuts have caused many Ruden McClosky attorneys to look for new jobs, legal industry sources said. Ruden’s overdependence on real estate transactional work has caused it to be hit particularly hard by the economic downturn. The firm cut about 20 jobs earlier this year, including two attorneys.

A former partner at Latham & Watkins was sentenced Friday to 15 months in prison followed by three years of supervised release and ordered to pay a $10,000 fine and $350,000 in restitution to Latham for defrauding both clients and his own firm. Samuel A. Fishman, an M&A specialist in the firm’s New York office from 1993 to 2005, admitted that he had billed fraudulent expenses to clients. In addition, he obtained reimbursement from Latham for personal expenses.

Big tech companies like to complain about the glut of low-quality patents clogging up the system. Craig Opperman has a message for them: Take a look in the mirror. The Reed Smith patent lawyer says that companies are trying to file more patents than the next guy, but they’re also trying to pay less for the legal work. The consequence, according to Opperman: a backlog at the patent office and wasted money at companies where patents end up being rejected or not worth that much.

When IT pros are thrust into management, how do they make sense of all the options and standards for developing good management skills while drawing on the experience of others? This question led the International Legal Technology Association to develop a knowledge base for managers.

State attorneys general won a major turf war in the Supreme Court Monday as the justices held that states may enforce their anti-discrimination and consumer protection laws against national banks. The Court, in a 5-4 ruling, struck down a regulation issued by the chief federal regulator of national banks that pre-empted the states’ power to enforce those laws. The case was followed closely not only by the banking industry but by civil rights and consumer organizations, and public and private state regulatory groups.

Victims of Bernard Madoff broke out in cheers and applause on Monday as Southern District of New York Judge Denny Chin ordered a 150-year prison sentence for Madoff’s gigantic Ponzi scheme. “Symbolism is important,” Chin said as he hit Madoff with the maximum possible term, imposed for offenses the judge called “staggering” in size and scope. “Here, the message must be sent that Madoff’s crimes were extraordinarily evil,” the judge said.

In a dramatic ending before its summer recess, the Supreme Court on Monday ruled, 5-4, that the city of New Haven, Conn., violated the civil rights of white and Hispanic firefighters when it tossed out the results of a promotion exam after no African-Americans passed it. The ruling had a quick, if uncertain, impact on the nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, who was part of the 2nd Circuit panel that upheld New Haven’s action. The Court also bade farewell to Justice David Souter on his final day on the bench.