Posts on ‘July 10th, 2009’

Paris Hilton flew in from Dubai and wore a conservative black-and-white outfit Thursday as a trial opened in Miami federal court on a receiver’s demand that Hilton’s company pay more than $8 million for a less-than-stellar promotional campaign to introduce one of her box-office bombs. Bryan Thomas West, a Tew Cardenas partner representing the court-appointed receiver, said in his opening statement that Hilton would come up with any excuse to not fulfill her contract.

Harvard Law School professor Charles Nesson faces possible court sanctions for an Internet posting of deposition excerpts from his defense of a student facing copyright infringement charges for illegal Internet music downloads. Nesson is representing Boston University student Joel Tenenbaum in a District of Massachusetts case that several record companies and the Recording Industry Association of America filed against the students. The sanctions fight is just one of several recent setbacks for Nesson.

Citigroup Inc. is shaking up the leadership in its private banking law firm group in a move that will put more emphasis on advisory services. Citi on Wednesday said that Naz Vahid, previously tasked with overseeing services to law firms on the East Coast and in London, would take over as head of the group as a whole. She replaces Lester Pataki, who left Citi in March to become chairman of JPMorgan Chase’s rival law firm banking operation.

The Brennan Center for Justice is joining the attempts to measure quantitatively the “judicial activism” of Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, releasing a report Thursday that describes Sotomayor as in the mainstream of judges on the 2nd Circuit. Monica Youn, a lawyer in the Brennan Center’s Democracy Program and a lead author of its new report, said the center wanted to build on previous academic studies and try to have an objective standard for measuring the hotly debated topic of judicial activism.

Receiving a subpoena or a federal grand jury “target letter” is likely to prompt a company to ask many questions, not the least of which is: “Does our insurance cover this?” The frequency with which policyholders will ask this question — and the stakes raised by the answer — are likely to increase as the economic climate brings a rise in governmental investigations, say attorneys Joseph D. Jean and Rachel M. Wrightson, who outline how to ensure coverage when procuring and renewing liability policies.

Case management software is to lawyers as a point-of-sale system is to retailers. With the software being that integral to the law business, attorney Finis R. Price III is surprised that some attorneys don’t re-evaluate their systems and look at software as a service like Rocket Matter.

Are Catholic law school professors really ministers? A Michigan trial judge will decide that next week in a controversial employment dispute involving Ave Maria School of Law, which is trying to declare law professors as ministers to avoid a wrongful termination suit filed by three former professors. The school’s founder and financier filed a motion claiming that the professors are “ministerial,” and that the school is a religious institution and therefore immune from court interference into its administrative matters.

Orrick is pushing back the full-time start date for its current summer class to January 2012 and delaying the start of its on-campus recruiting season by a few months. While the typical, traditional campus recruiting season begins in August, Orrick is planning its on-campus interview process for November through March. Summer associates will also have until mid-November to accept Orrick’s job offer. The firm said it was a better option than denying offers to its summers or to law students this fall.

Threats by one juror to cut off the finger of another led the defense team for Mayer Brown partner Joseph Collins to ask Thursday for a mistrial in the Refco federal fraud case. The judge denied the motion, saying the jury “will let us know if they feel that the atmosphere is such that there’s not communication in a rational manner.” Currently on leave from Mayer Brown, Collins is charged with conspiracy, securities fraud, wire fraud, bank fraud and making a false filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Your company has just been served with a 30(b)(6) deposition notice under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, and it is your job to respond to the notice and determine who will testify on behalf of the corporation. Is there anything you can do to ensure that your company puts its best foot forward at the deposition? The answer is yes, say attorneys Lori L. Pines and Ardith Bronson, who offer strategies for selecting and preparing witnesses to participate in these depositions.