Posts on ‘July 7th, 2009’

Attorneys who represent customers of mortgage-modification companies are at risk of losing their law licenses if they split fees with the financiers, two New Jersey Supreme Court committees say. In a joint opinion, the committees state that accepting legal fees from such a company, or dividing with the company a fee paid by a homeowner, constitutes impermissible fee-sharing, and an attorney who engages in such a practice “imperils his or her license to practice law.”

The California Supreme Court on Thursday held that juvenile adjudications can be used to increase adults’ criminal sentences, reversing an appellate ruling that had stunned the prosecutorial community. Justice Marvin Baxter, writing for the 6-1 court, ruled that enhancements are permissible “where the juvenile proceedings included all the constitutional protections applicable to such matters, even though these protections do not include the right to jury trial.”

Pennsylvania attorney John P. Karoly Jr. pleaded guilty Monday to charges of dodging $1.9 million in federal taxes by hiding more than $5 million in income. In return, prosecutors agreed to drop all charges relating to an alleged fraud scheme in which Karoly was accused of fabricating wills after his brother and sister-in-law died in a plane crash. The deal came on the day that jury selection was set to begin in the first of two trials.

Patton Boggs’ Michael Richman tells The Am Law Daily that the group of bondholders who oppose the plan to sell General Motors out of bankruptcy will not appeal a judge’s ruling Sunday approving that sale. With that, there may be no remaining obstacles to the controversial plan to sell most of GM to a consortium backed by the U.S. Treasury, which will take a 60 percent stake in the new company. Richman said the bondholders simply lacked the resources to continue fighting the case.