Posts on ‘August 13th, 2009’

Last year, Cleary Gottlieb raked in $4.3 million for helping Iraq balance its books. And though its paycheck this year stands to be significantly less, the past five years have been good ones for the small band of lawyers handling much of the country’s $120 billion in debt. Partner Lee Buchheit and four other attorneys have brought in about $20 million in fees and disbursements since they took on the task of dealing with a range of claims against Iraq for debt Saddam Hussein amassed during his reign.

For some law firms wrestling with nonpaying clients, San Francisco lawyer Joel Adler is the final stop. Adler, whose current clients include the dissolved Heller Ehrman and Thelen firms, has specialized in law firm fee disputes for 22 years. He’s one of a small number of lawyers working alongside non-attorney collectors in the field. Adler says that, while as a litigator he is able to “escalate the conversation,” persuasion is part and parcel of the job, too.

Most in-house counsel are very interested in being knowledgeable about the issues that are of concern to their company’s directors and senior executives. An indication of what those issues are was the agenda at Stanford Law School’s annual Directors’ College, which took place in late June. Consultant Michael C. Ross describes the highlights, including shareholder voting, restrictive hiring arrangements and risk management.

E-mails, IMs, blogs, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social networks enable employees to inflict greater damage to businesses due to the speed of publication to vast audiences and the difficulty of retracting information from cyberspace. How can employers protect themselves?

Hollywood movie studios scored a second court victory in as many days
against DVD copying. On Wednesday, California’s 6th District Court of
Appeal threw out a trial court win for Kaleidescape, maker of high-end
home entertainment systems that allow people to copy and store DVDs.
That follows a Tuesday order from Northern District Judge Marilyn Hall
Patel blocking RealNetworks from selling its RealDVD software, which
allows users to copy DVDs. The winner in both cases was the DVD Copy
Control Association.

The fate of 52,000 American clients of Swiss banking giant UBS, believed to be holding nearly $15 billion in secret accounts, is contained in details of a settlement agreement reached Wednesday between Swiss and U.S. negotiators. Details of the settlement have not been released, but experts say one thing is inevitable — indictments of UBS clients that have been hiding money from the U.S. government in Swiss accounts and potentially the professionals that helped them, including lawyers and accountants.

In a ruling that one defense lawyer calls “a sweeping review of the Alien Tort Statute,” a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit upheld the dismissal of four cases claiming Coca-Cola and two Colombian bottling subsidiaries were liable for the murder and torture of trade unionists by Colombian paramilitary forces. Citing the Supreme Court’s Iqbal ruling, the court concluded the plaintiffs’ complaints “fail to sufficiently plead factual allegations” to establish subject matter jurisdiction and state a valid claim.

The dismissal of the SEC’s complaint against billionaire entrepreneur and Dallas Mavericks NBA team owner Mark Cuban marked the first time a court has analyzed specifically what kind of an agreement can give rise to insider trading liability based on the “misappropriation” theory. Attorneys Harold K. Gordon, Tracy V. Schaffer and Julie A. Rosselot analyze what the decision means for public company and investor clients.