Posts on ‘September 11th, 2009’

Gay marriage foes have launched an attempt to mold the federal challenge to Proposition 8 in their favor — or, if they’re very successful, to win the lawsuit without a trial. Prop 8 proponents, represented by Washington, D.C.’s Cooper & Kirk, sought permission to file a 98-page summary judgment motion late Wednesday, even though the court’s normal limit is 25 pages. Rules only allow for such requests before the filing deadline, not on the day of, Gibson Dunn’s Theodore Olson wrote in papers filed Thursday.

Thomas Raffanello, a former global security director with Stanford Financial Group and once South Florida’s top anti-drug agent, was indicted Thursday in the collapse of the financial company described by the SEC as an $8 billion fraud. Raffanello was charged with obstructing an SEC case, destroying records in a federal investigation and conspiracy for his work at Stanford’s Fort Lauderdale, Fla., office.

The Federal Circuit says Microsoft does not have to pay Alcatel-Lucent $358 million for patent infringement because of problems with how damages were calculated.The disputed patent describes a method of entering information into fields on a computer screen without using a keyboard. Alcatel-Lucent says Microsoft’s Outlook calendar and other programs illegally used this technology.

Capping weeks of charges of plagiarism, Connecticut’s largest newspaper reportedly disciplined six employees and issued an apology for using stories — online and in print — from smaller dailies. In this digital world, the process known as “aggregation” may exceed “fair use” boundaries.

Sheppard Mullin attorneys Daniel L. Brown and Aimee R. Kahn say that understanding the potential uses of social networking sites should be considered in litigation. Cases demonstrate that Facebook and MySpace can contain smoking guns and that they can be targets to serve legal process.

In a year when Wall Street was reviled and government was considered part of the problem — and part of the solution — we were reminded of the need for lawyers with both brilliant legal skills and a higher calling. The American Lawyer’s seven Lifetime Achievers fit that ideal. These six men and one woman combined careers in the private sector with longtime commitments to public service. This year we also announce the winner of our inaugural Law Firm Distinguished Leader Award.

In one of the first actions against bond rating agencies and banks over the so-called toxic debt instruments that helped trigger the economic meltdown, a Connecticut hedge fund has won a $35.5 million prejudgment lien against UBS Securities and UBS AG. A Connecticut judge found that the Pursuit Partners hedge fund established probable cause that the international investment giant sold the debt instruments even though it had inside information that major credit rating agencies were just about to downgrade them.

Inexperience. Incompetence. Laziness. All were cited as reasons behind the Securities and Exchange Commission’s failure to detect Bernard Madoff’s $50 billion Ponzi scheme at a packed hearing Thursday before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. SEC Inspector General H. David Kotz, who recently released a 477-page report detailing the agency’s shortcomings, appeared before the committee to summarize his findings. “It seemed relatively easy to uncover this, and it wasn’t done,” Kotz said.