Posts on ‘July 1st, 2009’

Vicki Freimann will be taking over today as managing partner of Carroll, Burdick & McDonough, making her the second woman to lead the 66-member firm. The firm’s first female managing partner, Angela Bradstreet, left in 2007 to become California’s labor commissioner. Bradstreet said Freimann has “that perfect combination” of business acumen, client service and people skills to lead a firm. Freimann will oversee the firm’s expansion beyond California and internationally, partner Rodney Eshelman said.

Balancing the risks and rewards of using alternative billing, such as fixed or contingent fees, is a strategy many firms are employing in today’s uncertain economy, based on responses from the 74 firms that completed Texas Lawyer’s 2009 Salary & Billing Survey. Other strategies include holding hourly billing rates stable and requiring higher front-end retainers from new clients. The survey shows that average billing rates and employee salaries rose less than 4 percent when compared to 2008 figures.

In a landmark opinion that recognizes a new category of lawsuits, the 3rd Circuit has ruled that the Federal Nursing Home Reform Amendments give residents of county-run nursing homes the right to bring civil rights claims under Section 1983 to challenge the quality of their treatment. The ruling revives a suit brought by the estate of an 80-year-old mother of eight who died in a nursing home as a result of neglect, malnourishment and bed sores that were so severe they led to a fatal case of sepsis.

The New York State Bar Association on Monday became the latest bar group to protest new Federal Trade Commission rules requiring lawyers to become involved in preventing identity theft, calling the move unauthorized, unnecessary and destructive to the attorney-client relationship. The State Bar’s objections follow those submitted last week by the ABA and the New York County Lawyers’ Association. The ABA denounced the rules as imposing “an undue burden on law firms, especially solo practitioners.”

Nearly 150 prominent attorneys of all political stripes have banded together to support one of their own who went to D.C. to serve as a government watchdog, only to be dismissed by the Obama administration in the wake of a report that he was “disoriented” at a meeting. Though the attorneys are unanimous in affirming Gerald Walpin’s “integrity and competence,” they have stopped short of calling for a formal investigation of his dismissal, which has prompted bloggers to accuse the White House of partisanship.

Famed plaintiffs lawyer Willie Gary, having shaken off the racketeering charges in a suit claiming he raped his former secretary, is back to litigating his own cases. On Tuesday, Gary’s firm announced that it would be co-counsel in a suit on behalf of two victims of last week’s catastrophic metro rail crash in Washington, D.C., that killed nine people. Gary claims that Ivey Epps and her mother were “victims of negligent inspection” by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority.

Womble Carlyle is facing a legal malpractice suit from a Catholic radio broadcaster and education group that alleges mistakes by the firm cost it millions of dollars. The North American Catholic Educational Programming Foundation alleges that Womble missed crucial deadlines and made other mistakes that caused the foundation to lose its bids for several telecommunications channels and new broadcast licenses. The foundation’s complaint names Womble and former Womble attorney Howard Barr as defendants.

A former Bingham McCutchen associate has slapped the firm with a civil suit, seeking damages for allegedly being drugged at a holiday party by a Bingham staffer. The woman alleges she was drugged with Tegretol — an anti-seizure medication that causes memory loss when mixed with alcohol — while attending a lunch party with about 100 other Bingham employees in 2007. She also claims that at least one other female associate was drugged and raped by a Bingham employee the previous year.

Jan Schlichtmann didn’t violate state law when he sued his fellow plaintiffs lawyers in a fee fight, a Massachusetts court ruled Monday. But the ruling isn’t likely to help him recover any money. The lawyer, known for his role in the case that inspired the book “A Civil Action,” had sued to try to recover $9 million in lost legal fees. He claimed he lost the money when Nestle backed out of a settlement to prevent a lawsuit against it for allegedly making fraudulent claims about the purity of its water.

Wall Street brokerage firms are battling a new breed of discrimination lawsuits: retention bonus discrimination against female and African-American brokers. Stowell & Friedman, a Chicago-based employee-rights firm, is pursuing two class actions — one in New York, the other in Illinois — on behalf of female and African-American brokers who claim that they were offered lower retention bonuses than white male counterparts when Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch last year.