Posts on ‘September 29th, 2009’

Lawyers are preparing for battle in Essex County, N.J., over whether the $10 billion estate of Taiwanese industrialist Wang Yung-Ching, who died last year, should be administered in New Jersey, and which law should apply. The case involves not only extensive financial and commercial holdings, but also an extended-family relationship that includes a widow, two putative secondary wives — who under Taiwanese law would share in the estate — and nine children, all of whom have lawyered up.

Townsend and Townsend and Crew has announced it will reduce the pay scale for attorneys in 2010, which includes cutting first-year associate salaries from $160,000 to $145,000. The 200-lawyer firm also said that it would ditch lockstep compensation altogether in 2011 and move to merit-based pay, a system popularized by national intellectual property firm Howrey. Townsend is exclusively an IP firm. The latest move shows that the once-abundant supply of patent litigation is drying up in the recession.

A Georgia jury found in favor of a man who sued an Atlanta men’s clinic after its erectile dysfunction therapy caused permanent damage to his penis, awarding him $750,000 in compensatory damages and $8.5 million in punitive damages. W. Fred Orr II, attorney for plaintiff John Henry Howard, called Howard “the most courageous client” he’s ever had. “He was willing to take the stand and testify in an open courtroom about his private life,” Orr said.

This is the year the recession hit the legal profession. Lawyers and support staff were cut by the hundreds. Law firms went belly up. Court dockets burst with foreclosures and bankruptcies while budgets everywhere went bust. Buried under the statistics are those most affected by it all: the overworked judge, the unemployed paralegal, the laid-off associate and the law firm manager. The National Law Journal talked to people across the profession to find out how the downturn changed their lives.

In what could become a first-in-the-nation test, a young woman injured by a drunk driver is challenging the sovereignty of Connecticut’s Mohegan American Indian tribe. She is arguing the tribe should be liable in state courts if it lets patrons get so dangerously drunk at its casinos that they then injure or kill other people. Currently, the Mohegan and Mashantucket Pequot tribes are immune from being sued in state court for ordinary negligence matters, including so-called “dram shop act” violations.

Chadbourne & Parke told half of its incoming associates on Monday that the firm will extend their deferrals indefinitely and pay them an additional stipend of $60,000, according to a firm spokesman. The class of 25 associates from the graduating class of 2009 was initially supposed to start at the firm in January. Instead, about half the class will start on that date, while the other half now has no certain starting date.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge John L. Segal granted an injunction requested by Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. to stop former in-house attorney Dimitrios Biller from publicizing privileged information about Toyota. Segal granted the injunction with respect to a consulting firm that Biller now operates and referred the matter to the State Bar of California for possible disciplinary action, but made clear that his order won’t affect federal litigation in which Biller accuses the automaker of discovery abuses.

Tax lawyers Jonathon Moore and Charles Bruce already had their hands full defending themselves from allegations that they botched a client’s matter, resulting in millions of dollars in Internal Revenue Service back taxes and penalties. Now the lawyers’ insurance company has come forward saying it no longer wants to cover the malpractice case.

A Manhattan judge says he is “willing to take a fresh look” at a request that has been greeted skeptically by many courts. Although nearly every other state judge to have considered the issue has refused to allow such evidence, a hearing Tuesday will focus on whether to allow the defendant in a high-profile murder case to submit expert testimony at trial about what makes people confess to crimes they did not commit.

High-ranking U.S. government officials usually are protected from claims that they violated a person’s civil rights. They?re accustomed to having their actions in office judged by history, not the courts. In lawsuits stemming from law enforcement and intelligence efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, however, three federal courts have left open the possibility that former Attorney General John Ashcroft and a hard-line lieutenant may be held personally liable.