Posts on ‘August 6th, 2009’

According to records obtained by The Lawyers Weekly, the Canadian government spent a record $57.1 million on outside law firms in the 2008-09 fiscal year. It’s the most Canada has ever paid out to private law firms in one year and represents a 34 percent increase from legal fees paid in 2007-08. Weil, Gotshal & Manges led the pack of outside legal advisers with $7.7 million in billings for representing Canada in trade disputes with the U.S.

Big Law Cogs who’ve managed to survive round after round of layoffs now are reeling from the latest hit to come their way: a pay cut. But don’t cry, sympathizes The Snark, because with a few adjustments to your spending habits, you probably won’t have to move back into your parents’ house. For instance, you can rent out a room in your suburban mini-mansion, and start a Cog Commune. Another alternative: Make the switch to public school for even just one of your kids (the least grateful, of course).

Greenberg Traurig has been bulking up its presence in Las Vegas for the past several years. Now, two partners who joined the firm in May from a well-regarded Sin City shop are facing off against former colleagues in a class action alleging that some of Vegas’ bigger strip clubs are paying kickbacks to cab drivers to steer customers to their establishments. With 26 named defendants, the case offers lots of work for plenty of prominent defense firms.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has hit Baker Botts with a lawsuit seeking information that the law firm uncovered in its investigation of a defunct Texas savings and loan. The FDIC, as the receiver for Franklin Bank, said that the law firm failed to hand over materials that the agency subpoenaed in July. The action stemmed from an investigation that Baker Botts conducted last year for the savings and loan after one of its vice presidents alleged accounting fraud and misconduct.

Like a gambler on a losing streak, Trump Entertainment Resorts is no stranger in bankruptcy court — the company entered Chapter 11 for a third time this past February. Now, Donald Trump and a team of lawyers led by Weil face a fight from a bondholder group represented by Stroock that’s opposing The Donald’s rescue of his Atlantic City gaming empire. The Weil team is led by restructuring co-chair Ted Waksman, at $925 an hour; restructuring partner Michael Walsh ($950); and tax partner Mark Hoenig ($900).

At the American Bar Association’s annual meeting, the ABA House of Delegates adopted a resolution that will allow the group to file an amicus brief in Bilski v. Doll, a potentially landmark Supreme Court case about business method patents. The proposed ABA amicus brief, as laid out in the resolution, will argue that the patent owners in Bilski aren’t eligible for a patent because they’re trying to patent an abstract idea, said Rob Lindefjeld, secretary of the ABA’s Intellectual Property Law Section.

Litigators from Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges have been busy filing cases against banks since the economy went into free-fall. Now, they have their sights trained on a new target: Citibank and Credit Suisse. In a complaint filed on Monday, Quinn client Ambac Credit Products alleges that, because of fraud by the banks, the bond insurer was induced to provide $2 billion in coverage for collateralized debt obligations that were secured by high-risk subprime mortgages.

The 9th Circuit came down on the side of Brayton Purcell in an Internet
copyright infringement case Wednesday. The 50-lawyer personal injury and
asbestos firm had sued another law firm for allegedly plagiarizing Web
content describing its elder abuse practice. Dissenting Judge Stephen
Reinhardt said that under the panel’s interpretation, every Web site operator faces the potential of being hauled into “far-away courts based upon allegations of intellectual property infringement.”

China executed two business people for defrauding hundreds of investors out of more than $127 million, calling the scam a serious blow to social stability, state media said Thursday. China’s highest court said the fraud had “seriously damaged the country’s financial regulatory order.” China puts to death more people than any other country, although last month a high official for the Supreme People’s Court, which reviews every death sentence, said the punishment should be used more sparingly.

An armada of 24 patent infringement cases, filed against 37 defendants by a prolific plaintiff with a single patent, could all get tried separately. Bucking the status quo, Northern District of California Judge William Alsup refused to relate the 24 cases brought by Gregory Bender against companies from AT&T to Pioneer Electronics to IBM for infringing on his nearly expired patent on a type of electrical circuit. It means that each case will proceed in separate courtrooms with separate judges.