Posts on ‘October 8th, 2009’

President Barack Obama plans to nominate an openly gay lawyer as the United States’ ambassador to New Zealand and Samoa, an administration official said Wednesday. If confirmed by the Senate, David Huebner would be the administration’s first openly gay ambassador. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush both had openly gay ambassadors during their terms. A Yale Law School graduate, Huebner is currently general counsel for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation.

Southern District of New York Judge Shira A. Scheindlin gave her final approval Tuesday to an April settlement concluding eight years of litigation over inflated pricing and undisclosed compensation in initial public offerings during the technology boom. The settlement, which involves a total of $586 million to end 309 coordinated class actions brought against investment banks and the companies they took public, was deemed fair by the judge. She also awarded plaintiffs lawyers $170 million in fees.

Ted Roberts, the Texas attorney convicted of theft-related charges for threatening litigation to extract money from two men who had sexual liaisons with his then-wife in 2001 and 2002, has failed to persuade the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals to review his case. Without issuing an opinion, the CCA on Wednesday refused Roberts’ petition for discretionary review. Roberts says he will file a motion for rehearing of his petition.

A few months after advising two separate consortia of private buyers in the acquisitions of two struggling banks, lawyers at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom have advised a new group that’s picked up a piece of the defunct Corus Bank in a deal with the FDIC, according to the firm and lawyers on the deal. Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison advised the FDIC on the deal. The agency took over Corus last month after bad real estate loans and other assets crippled the bank.

An attempt by former Washington Mutual employees to recoup their retirement account losses from JPMorgan Chase, part of a complex tangle of litigation stemming from WaMu’s collapse last year, has been dismissed. The case is the first to pose the questions of whether a successor corporation is liable for retirement fund management under ERISA and whether ERISA liability is transferred from a bank holding company such as WaMu to the buyer of the bank that is its principal asset, according to a lawyer for the employees.

The trustee for failed subprime lender American Business Financial Services reportedly reached a $100 million settlement agreement Wednesday in a suit against four major financial institutions. A source says the settlement would result in payments of $55 million from JP Morgan/Bear Stearns defendants, $37.5 million from Credit Suisse defendants and $7.5 million from Morgan Stanley defendants. In a separate case over its representation of ABFS, Blank Rome previously settled with the trustee for $20 million.

During arguments Wednesday in a major establishment clause dispute over a Latin cross that stands as a war memorial on federal land in the Mojave Desert, the Supreme Court justices seemed to be seeking a narrow way to decide the case, often getting bogged down in procedural matters. But there were also moments of drama. A lawyer in attendance said that after an interjection by Justice Antonin Scalia, “you could audibly hear people breathing in,” adding, “A lot of people were surprised at the insensitivity of that comment.”

Major labels will soon have a copyright battle with music creators that stems from the termination rights Congress created when it amended the U.S. copyright law in 1976. The law allows a copyright grant to be terminated after 35 years, which may rock and roll the recording industry.

Lawyers are calling it social networking burnout. Back-to-back studies show a big chunk of Corporate America is banning communication wonders like Twitter and Facebook from the workplace. Lawyers say their experience bears the surveys out. So who’s doing all the blocking?

A recently filed sexual harassment suit against a Delaware law firm is garnering attention not only because it’s chock-full of salacious details, but also because both the plaintiff and the alleged harasser are female lawyers. In the suit, attorney Jennifer Braude claims that during the 18 months she spent as an associate at Maron Marvel Bradley & Anderson, she was subjected to a “hostile environment” due to the sexually charged conversations initiated by her direct supervisor.