Posts on ‘July 27th, 2009’

An avid rugby competitor, Georgia solo David Cox likens the action in the game — or the “scrum” where the bigger men push one another to get the ball back into play — to a calendar call in many a courtroom. Says Cox: “It seems chaotic but there really is an order to it.” During his years playing the often rough sport, Cox has broken his nose and ribs, injured his shoulder and elbows — and shown up in court with a black eye after a game. “Interestingly, no one even asked where it came from,” he says.

The 5th Circuit has determined how “projected disposable income” is to be calculated in Chapter 13 bankruptcies, an important ruling that could mean debtors pay more or less to their unsecured creditors in some instances. The case involves an issue of first impression in the 5th Circuit concerning a common problem in Chapter 13 bankruptcy proceedings: What happens when a debtor’s level of disposable income changes during the 60-month payment plan period?

Wachovia, Bank of America and Citibank have been named as defendants in multidistrict litigation challenging bank overdraft fee policies — and plaintiffs attorneys predict that other financial institutions will also be brought in. One such complaint claims that Wachovia “routinely enforces a policy” under which incurred charges are posted to consumers’ accounts in nonchronological order to maximize overdraft fees.

A New York federal judge has dismissed a shareholder suit alleging two top Kmart officials tried to drive down the price of the company’s stock by toying with asset values during and just after its bankruptcy reorganization. Saying “plaintiffs’ theory piles one unsubstantiated assumption on another,” Judge Lewis Kaplan threw out a putative class action that claimed former board chairman Edward S. Lampert and Julian Day, Kmart’s former president, COO and CEO, intentionally undervalued billions in real estate assets.

Ever since the Supreme Court ordered new arguments in a key campaign
finance case, some lawyers and ethics experts have questioned whether
former Solicitor General Theodore Olson, now with Gibson Dunn, should
stay in the case. The Court said it wanted to consider a new question:
whether part of the landmark 2003 ruling in McConnell v. Federal
Election Commission should be overruled. As SG, Olson argued on
behalf of the government in McConnell, so he would effectively be
switching sides in the current case.

Bristol-Myers Squibb now has one less headache to worry about involving its Plavix blood-thinner product, one of the most prescribed medications in the world. In a Securities and Exchange Commission filing last week, the company revealed that in May, it agreed to pay $125 million to settle a securities class action that alleged BMS and its former chief executive violated securities laws by hiding material information about their efforts to settle a patent lawsuit with the Canadian generic drug maker Apotex Inc.

A federal judge on Friday revived the discrimination suit filed by former Covington & Burling staff attorney Yolanda Young against her old firm. The judge had dismissed the case after Young and her attorney failed to show up in court. Young asked the judge to reconsider, saying her attorney had simply written down the wrong time for the conference on his calendar. Young argued that her inability to file another claim was too harsh a penalty for a small oversight, and the judge seems to have agreed.

The name partners of Arlington, Va., lobby shop Alcalde & Fay are suing Buchanan Ingersoll & Rooney and a former partner for malpractice, alleging that a bungled tax matter could put the plaintiffs on the hook for more than $2 million in back taxes and penalties. Lobbyists Hector Alcalde and Kevin Fay filed suit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on July 20. The 17-page complaint names Buchanan and its former partner, Louis Diamond, as defendants.