Posts on ‘August 30th, 2009’

Marriott International suffered a PR nightmare this month related to a lawsuit filed by a woman who said she had been raped in the parking garage of a Marriot Hotel & Spa in Connecticut. Lawyers for Marriot’s insurance company suggested the woman was partially responsible for the attack because she was careless and negligent for being in the garage. Was the initial legal strategy so outrageous? For a negligence case? No. For a negligence case involving the rape of a woman in front of her two children? Probably.

For more than two years, the California State Bar has ticked off discipline-defense lawyers by endorsing tougher and more aggressive prosecutorial tactics. Some attorneys thought that might change after former State Bar Chief Trial Counsel Scott Drexel was let go in June. But a lingering Drexel-era proposal that would let State Bar Court judges consider unsworn victim statements as evidence for increasing punishment has the discipline-defense bar up in arms again.

When a federal multidistrict litigation court makes a pretrial ruling in a suit, there usually is little — if anything — a U.S. district judge can do except abide by that decision; to do otherwise would frustrate the goals of multidistrict litigation. But in In Re: Ford Motor Co. and Bridgestone/Firestone North American Tire, a case of first impression, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that U.S. district judges do not need to abide by MDL court orders in some circumstances.

A Delaware federal judge has OK’d Howrey’s use of an “ethical wall” between the firm’s U.S. lawyers opposing Wyeth in a patent case and its European attorneys working with the pharmaceutical company in an unrelated matter. The ruling allows Howrey to represent Wyeth opponent Boston Scientific Corp. over Wyeth’s opposition. The judge approved the arrangement even though Wyeth’s objections mean the firm is technically violating local court rules and the American Bar Association’s Model Rules of Professional Conduct.