Posts on ‘September 21st, 2009’

A federal judge in Los Angeles has refused to seal a wrongful termination suit in which a former in-house attorney for Toyota Motor Sales USA has asserted that the company hid and destroyed evidence in numerous rollover lawsuits. U.S. District Judge George H. King wrote that sealing would be futile since the complaint is “irreversibly in the public domain” by being available on the Internet. The suit threatens to reopen personal injury suits against Toyota brought on behalf of victims of rollover accidents.

A lawyer who resorted to cursing and name-calling during a deposition has been hit with a creative sanction by a federal judge. Instead of imposing any monetary punishment, federal Judge Gene E.K. Pratter ruled that attorney Lewis P. Hannah must take a CLE class on “civility and professionalism” and also sit down for a meal with his opponent. Pratter said she was inspired by a quote from Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”: “And do as adversaries do in law, Strive mightily but eat and drink as friends.”

Mark Gerow, who leads the application development team at Fenwick & West, describes some of the ways that SharePoint can reduce the effort to create, manage and retrieve documents and increase their value, as smart documents, to both your firm and its clients — while lowering costs.

The Thelen firm filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Thursday night, almost a year after the law firm voted to dissolve. Facing a $25 million judgment granted to a New York landlord in Los Angeles County Superior Court in June, Thelen had 90 days to void the judgment with a bankruptcy or face paying the landlord ahead of other unsecured creditors. A similar judgment forced Heller into bankruptcy last December. The move was the only way to be fair to all unsecured creditors, according to a member of Thelen’s dissolution committee.

Just a month after Pfizer came under fire for allegedly using strong-arm tactics against a potential key witness in the multidistrict litigation over its Neurontin anti-seizure medication, the pharmaceutical giant lodged a similar complaint against a plaintiffs expert. Pfizer lawyers accused a twice-sanctioned doctor-consultant named David Egilman of attempting to coerce favorable testimony from one of the physicians who treated the alleged victim in the case, a Neurontin patient who killed himself in 2002.

On May 18, the U.S. Supreme Court gave corporate defendants a gift that keeps on giving: the Iqbal decision, which has made it easier than ever for defendants to shut down lawsuits before they get to the costly discovery stage. Now, four months later, civil rights and consumer groups and trial lawyers are beginning to push back. They met last week in Washington, D.C., to lay plans for a two-pronged battle to undo what they see as a devastating blow to their lifeblood litigation.

Nelson Levine has opened a new office in Denver with the addition of three Cozen O’Connor attorneys. Former Cozen O’Connor members Joseph Bermudez and Jason Melichar joined the firm as partners. Joining them is Suzanne M. Meintzer, coming on board as an associate. The Blue Bell, Pa.-based insurance boutique has now claimed six Cozen O’Connor lawyers in a little more than a year.