Posts on ‘August 13th, 2009’

DLA Piper’s Jared Genser represents a very high-profile client: Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and the face of democracy in Myanmar. On Tuesday, the Myanmar government convicted Suu Kyi of violating the terms of her house arrest, sparking international outrage. As local lawyers work for her release through the Myanmar courts, Genser, a partner in DLA’s government affairs group in Washington, D.C., has been working the international angles.

In November, almost 10 percent of Brown Rudnick’s lawyers and staff were let go, including third-year associate Lynne Zagami. Not having luck with recruiters, she started “a marketing campaign of myself and my work,” but so far has had limited success. “The post-layoff budget evolved into the post-severance budget, which has evolved into the just-get-me-a-job budget,” she says. “But I do try to keep everything in perspective. Over a potentially 40-year career, this is just one year that sucks.”

The Social Security Administration has agreed to pay an estimated $500 million to people whose benefits it suspended or denied between January 2007 and April of this year, under a settlement given preliminary approval by a judge Tuesday. The government also agreed to change the policy under which it denies or suspends payments for people with outstanding arrest warrants. People whose benefits were denied or suspended between 2000 and 2006 also will have a chance to reinstate their benefits.

Attorneys defending a Georgia lawyer accused of laundering money for his clients continue to question the actions of a prosecutor in the case. J. Mark Shelnutt’s lawyers complain in court filings that Assistant U.S. Attorney Jason M. Ferguson negotiated unusually lenient plea deals with drug defendants expected to testify against Shelnutt. They also note that Ferguson filed ex parte sealed motions seeking to hide one defendant’s cooperation with prosecutors and another’s change of plea until after Shelnutt’s trial.

Texas federal Judge Leonard Davis on Tuesday rejected Microsoft’s request to throw out Toronto-based i4i’s recent $200 million win, and added almost $90 million to the May jury verdict: about $40 million for willful infringement of i4i’s patent on electronic document processing and about $37 million in post-trial interest. The judge also issued an injunction banning Microsoft from selling products that violate i4i’s patent, including some versions of Microsoft Word.

A complaint by a Florida-based foundation seeking $30 million in damages from Merrill Lynch claims the Wall Street financial advisory firm was taken in by Bernard Madoff at a face-to-face meeting months before his investment empire collapsed in fraud. The MorseLife Foundation alleges Merrill Lynch was negligent and breached its fiduciary duty by failing to advise the foundation to pull its money from what ended up being the largest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history.

A judge in Charles County, Md., has acknowledged deflating a tire of a car parked in a restricted area near the courthouse, but he isn’t apologizing. Circuit Court Judge Robert Nalley tells a local TV station that he let out the air because leaving notes for illegal parkers is not effective. The owner of the car, Jean Washington, works part time at the courthouse as part of a cleaning crew. She says she didn’t know she couldn’t park in the area and never received any warnings.

Michael Vick’s reinstatement into the National Football League is creating a lot of buzz in the employment law arena, where companies seek advice about using criminal records to make somewhat lower-profile job decisions. Employment lawyers say the case serves as a timely reminder to employers to review how they can obtain employee criminal records and how they can use them in hiring and firing decisions.

A statement that someone is a homosexual is not defamation per se in New York state, a federal judge ruled Wednesday. The ruling comes in a suit brought by Howard K. Stern, the lawyer and former lover of tabloid sensation Anna Nicole Smith. Stern claims Rita Cosby defamed him in her book “Blond Ambition: The Untold Story Behind Anna Nicole Smith’s Death,” with statements such as the suggestion that he had engaged in sex with the man ultimately determined to be the father of Smith’s daughter, Dannielynn.

The dean of Fordham University School of Law has banned Reed Smith from on-campus interviews for five years, citing the firm’s “lack of professionalism” in its recession-era handling of summer associate hiring. According to a memo, first posted on the Above the Law blog and also obtained by The Legal Intelligencer, Reed Smith told Fordham it would be pulling out of recruiting after the school had already issued its interview schedule to students.