Posts on ‘August 26th, 2009’

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., is questioning the government’s motivation behind its move to dismiss the drug trafficking conspiracy charge against an international pharmaceutical businessman wanted for prosecution in Mexico. At a status hearing Tuesday in the government’s case against Zhenli Ye Gon, Judge Emmet Sullivan of U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia directed DOJ prosecutors to address in a brief how the government may benefit from dismissal of the case without prejudice.

This winter, Scott Jaffe, Paul Roberts and Ross Schiller had an idea that could only have come out of the recession: a law firm staffed by laid-off lawyers. The trio planned to open a boutique firm in Manhattan that specialized in finance, commercial law and bankruptcies. They bought computers, distributed marketing materials and signed up a few clients. But by July, Jaffe, Roberts & Schiller was dead. Schiller was out, and Jaffe and Roberts were cutting a deal to combine with another start-up firm.

Note to legal staffers: Do not steal money from judges. Note to law firms: Do not hire legal staffers you have defended in court for stealing money from judges. A small Virginia law firm, Jessee & Read, learned that second lesson the hard way after a legal secretary stole more than $42,000 from the firm while on probation for stealing from a judge months earlier. The secretary was sentenced to three years in prison on Aug. 18 after pleading guilty in June to mail fraud and felony money laundering.

A Japanese manufacturer of LCD screens has agreed to plead guilty and to pay a $26 million criminal fine for its role in a conspiracy to fix prices of panels Motorola used in “Razr” cell phones, marking the latest corporate defendant to settle with the Justice Department in a long-running antitrust investigation. The ongoing antitrust investigation has generated more than $600 million in criminal fines against other manufacturers of LCD panels who were accused in the conspiracy.

Chrysler’s creditors committee has petitioned a federal bankruptcy court to hire Susman Godfrey and Dallas bankruptcy boutique Stutzman, Bromberg, Esserman & Plifka as special counsel for its lawsuit alleging that Daimler siphoned billions out of Chrysler through “fraudulent conveyances” before selling off its majority stake in the automaker. But in a court filing on Monday, Daimler’s lawyers from Shearman & Sterling revealed a few quibbles with Chrysler’s proposed retention agreement for the two firms.

With less than a week to go before former Pennsylvania state Sen. Vincent Fumo is set to report to prison to begin serving a 55-month term, his ultimate fate could be significantly affected by developments in an obscure child pornography case from New Jersey that could play a key role in the Justice Department’s decision about whether to appeal Fumo’s sentence as too lenient. Both the prosecutors and Fumo’s defense team are sure to be studying Tuesday’s decision from the 3rd Circuit in United States v. Lychock.

A wealthy investment banker and prominent fundraiser for President Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats was arrested Tuesday on charges he lied to get a $74 million business loan that — once confronted by authorities — he hastily repaid. Prosecutors accused Hassan Nemazee of giving Citibank documents showing he owned millions of dollars in collateral that were “fraudulent and forged.” On Tuesday, a New York federal court judge ordered a haggard-looking Nemazee locked up for the night.

A California lawyer who allegedly agreed to accept more than $100,000 in bribes in exchange for coaching his client to lie to a grand jury investigating immigration fraud has been indicted on obstruction of justice charges. Federal prosecutors allege that Alfred N. Villalobos coerced an attorney who represents the target of an immigration fraud investigation to give him $107,000 in cash and other compensation in exchange for the promise that his client would make false statements to a prosecutor and the grand jury.

New York’s Chadbourne & Parke is swooping into Northern California with the hire of a Yahoo in-house IP lawyer in Silicon Valley. Duane Valz, associate general counsel of global patents, will be joining the firm next month as it makes its first foray into the Bay Area. Valz said it was still unclear where Chadbourne’s new office would be located: San Francisco or Silicon Valley. The move comes in a tough economic year when only one other major firm, Haynes and Boone, has opened up shop in the area.

The Am Law Daily takes a closer look at this week’s developments in the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch bonus case, including the issue of how close Bank of America came to waiving attorney-client privilege in asserting — to the Securities and Exchange Commission — that the two banks relied completely on their outside counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Shearman & Sterling in drafting clauses in their merger agreement pertaining to employee bonuses.