Posts on ‘September 4th, 2009’

Free speech, copyright infringement and some unsolicited literary criticism were on the docket Thursday as the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard oral arguments about whether a book based on J.D. Salinger’s “The Catcher in the Rye” should be barred from being published in the United States. One of the judges on the panel elicited loud laughter from the gallery when he said in an aside that “60 Years Later,” whose main character is a 76-year-old Holden Caulfield, is “a rather dismal piece of work if I may say so.”

Credit-rating agencies have long turned to the First Amendment to fend off suits over promoting securities that turn out to be not so credit worthy. But that defense didn’t completely hold up Wednesday when a federal judge ruled the protection does not apply when a “rating agency has disseminated their ratings to a select group of investors rather than to the public at large.” The case involves a $5.86 billion structured investment vehicle that collapsed when the true value of the asset behind its notes became clear.

If your outlook on everyday business communications is heavily influenced by, well, Microsoft Outlook, then there’s a good chance that you’ve wished you could tweak the software to make it better serve your needs. The good news is a handful of companies have tools to do just that.

Everything may be bigger in Texas, but attorney George M. Fleming is hoping it’s better in Nevada. The plaintiffs attorney filed suit on Wednesday against Proskauer Rose, alleging that the New York law firm is liable for its role in the development of tax shelters offered by Ernst & Young that the Internal Revenue Service has deemed unlawful. In February, a Texas appeals court booted Fleming’s case out of the Lone Star state, ruling it lacked jurisdiction because the law firm had insufficient contacts with Texas.

Moving swiftly, a two-judge panel of the 2nd Circuit heard an appeal Thursday of an order issued on the eve of trial disqualifying Debevoise & Plimpton as counsel for MetLife in an $8 billion class action. Eastern District of New York Judge Thomas C. Platt on Tuesday issued the order disqualifying Debevoise, which represented MetLife during its conversion in 2000 from a mutual company to a publicly traded stock company, and has handled litigation arising from the conversion ever since.

Plaintiffs lawyers have received another boost in their Alien Tort Claims Act suits against Ford, General Motors, IBM, UBS and others. In April, a federal judge in Manhattan denied motions to dismiss claims that the companies aided and abetted crimes committed by the apartheid regime in South Africa. And this week, the South African government announced that it has dropped its opposition to the litigation, saying it now considers the court to be an “appropriate forum” to hear the remaining claims.