Posts on ‘August 7th, 2009’

A bankruptcy judge has approved a request by the trustee liquidating Bernard Madoff’s investment firm and his team of lawyers for roughly $15 million in interim counsel fees. Counsel for trustee Irving H. Picard told the judge that tracing the trail of money in the complex fraud required a full-service team of attorneys, and that the case has generated a “vast array of international litigation,” an onion that “has yet to be peeled to its core.”

Davis Wright Tremaine is representing four media groups that filed a motion to intervene Tuesday seeking access to the trial transcript in a suit over a prison murder. The widow of Jewish Defense League activist Earl Krugel, who was serving a 20-year sentence for conspiracy, sued the U.S. government, seeking damages for her husband’s death at the hands of a white supremacist. But unlike most other civil suits, the two-day bench trial in Los Angeles federal court was held almost entirely in secret.

Hot on the heels of Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation as the next Supreme Court justice, the Obama administration has let loose a round of five new judicial nominations, including two for circuit court openings. Jane Stranch, partner at Nashville’s Branstetter, Stranch & Jennings, has been tapped to fill a spot on the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, while Judge Thomas Vanaskie of the Middle District of Pennsylvania has been picked for the 3rd Circuit.

If law firms are hoping that announcing their worst financial results since the early 1990s recession will cut them more slack with cost-conscious clients, they had better think again. From discussions of clients’ impressions of profits generated at major U.K. law firms, it’s clear that general counsel believe that large law firms are still doing very nicely by most yardsticks.

Redacting information can be frustrating for many legal professionals. Because of the wide dissemination of digital documents online, once a redaction failure occurs, it can be impossible to undo. Advances in technology can help the redaction process, but human review is still necessary.

The question seems like one a first-year law student could answer: What constitutes a stay in court proceedings? But that very question was taken up recently by the California Supreme Court with prominent law firms clamoring for a reversal of a ruling they believe could have a severe impact on case management. The commotion is over a ruling that held that any partial stay of proceedings — such as for discovery, or a case management conference — tolls the five-year mandatory period for bringing a case to trial.

A Tuesday ruling by the Federal Circuit puts the patent bar on notice that vague claims of another lawyer’s intent to mislead or withhold data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will no longer fly. The precedent-setting ruling makes it harder for patent lawyers to prove that another attorney intentionally deceived the PTO when presenting a patent application. Also Tuesday, the American Bar Association approved resolutions favoring restrictions on such misconduct claims.

In a 68-31 vote Thursday, the Senate confirmed Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court, making her the first Hispanic and third woman on the high court. She will be sworn in Saturday at the Supreme Court by Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. Administering the oath at the Court bucks a recent trend of having a White House ceremony. In changing the custom, the president is heeding some justices’ concerns that a White House ceremony sends the message that justices are beholden to their appointing president.