Posts on ‘October 19th, 2009’

After a complex 19-day trial before Manhattan federal bankruptcy court Judge James Peck, Charter Communications has won the right to maintain favorable terms on $11 billion in secured debt that its lenders had sought to refinance. Peck’s ruling should clear the way for the cable company to emerge from Chapter 11 in the next several weeks. Peck took time at the end of the trial to praise the lawyers involved in the bet-the-company litigation: “I don’t believe that I have presided over a more expertly tried case ever.”

An electronic discovery request in a dispute over the authenticity of a classic car has prompted a rare opinion from a Pennsylvania court on the emerging issues surrounding the discovery of electronically stored files by litigants in a civil case. Editor Peter Hall analyzes the decision.

The Indiana Supreme Court, addressing a “novel question,” ruled that prosecutors properly introduced electronic evidence from an accused murderer’s MySpace page. In so doing, the court upheld the conviction of a man found guilty of murdering his fiancee’s 2-year-old daughter.

Under fire for its handling of the criminal case against former Sen. Ted Stevens, the Justice Department has outlined a plan to ensure prosecutors play by the rules when dealing with evidence. But some criminal defense lawyers and judges say the reforms don’t go far enough. The reform plan presented last week is an attempt by the department to beat back a recommendation that a Judicial Conference of the United States panel adopt a measure that would require prosecutors to disclose more material to the defense.

Florida attorney and receiver Lewis Freeman went to court Friday seeking to liquidate his firm amid a federal investigation trying to trace $3.6 million from accounts overseen by the firm. A Miami attorney who represented Freeman in receiverships said he was “in a state of shock and disbelief” when he heard that Freeman had put himself in receivership. The FBI raided two Lewis B. Freeman & Partners offices earlier this month.

Shifting the momentum in the multistate litigation over average wholesale pricing for pharmaceuticals, Alabama’s Supreme Court, in an opinion that details the 30-year history of state and national drug pricing policy, ruled Friday there was no basis for the state’s fraud claims against three drug companies appealing adverse jury verdicts. The ruling wipes out verdicts of $33 million against Novartis, $81 million against GlaxoSmithKline, and $215 million (reduced post-trial to $160 million) against AstraZeneca.