Posts on ‘October 20th, 2009’

Five years ago, Roderick Palmore wrote “A Call to Action” — a pledge signed by GCs at some of the country’s largest corporations to make diversity a major consideration in their selection of outside counsel. Diversity efforts across the legal profession mushroomed, but real progress has been painfully slow. A sample of diversity advocates, law firm partners, GCs and law school leaders generally agree that the legal profession needs to make deeper, more collective changes to jump-start the stalled diversity movement.

It’s not uncommon these days to see law firms suing former clients over unpaid legal bills. Still, this latest bit of legal fee litigation seems remarkable: Williams & Connolly is taking a former client to court over $2 million after the company practically invited the firm to sue. Or so says the Williams & Connolly’s complaint, filed Friday in federal court in Washington, D.C.

A Manhattan federal jury has found Exxon Mobil liable for contaminating New York City’s groundwater with a gasoline additive and has awarded the city $105 million. An 11-week trial before Southern District of New York Judge Shira A. Scheindlin focused on six wells, and was part of a larger multidistrict litigation consisting of more than 200 suits concerning MTBE use. Chosen as a focus case, the city’s suit was the first action in the multidistrict litigation to go to trial.

Four pharmaceutical companies have agreed to settle False Claims Act allegations for a combined $124 million, the largest health care fraud recovery that federal prosecutors in New Hampshire have ever obtained, the Justice Department said Monday. Mylan Pharmaceuticals, UDL Laboratories, AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals and Ortho McNeil Pharmaceutical entered into settlement agreements with the DOJ following claims the companies failed to pay appropriate rebates to state Medicaid programs for drugs the state programs paid for.

An Atlanta federal jury has awarded a former account executive of a Georgia mortgage company $9.2 million in damages over sexual harassment and assault claims she made against the company CEO. The trial followed a federal judge’s issuing of a default verdict in favor of the account executive due to litigation misconduct. The case is part of a swirl of litigation surrounding AME Financial and James Pefanis, who has been the subject of sexual or racial discrimination claims by at least seven former employees since 2007.

A Houston attorney who was one of the late Enron chief Ken Lay’s trial lawyers has joined R. Allen Stanford’s criminal defense legal team. George “Mac” Secrest will work with Houston lawyer Kent Schaffer to defend Stanford, who is jailed for allegedly bilking investors out of $7 billion.

The husband of Iowa Supreme Court Chief Justice Marsha Ternus will stand trial this week on a misdemeanor charge for disobeying a deputy sheriff’s order that he stay put while the officer investigated underage drinking on the family’s property. Dennis Drake, the chief justice’s husband and general counsel for the Iowa Health System chain of hospitals, failed last week to persuade Iowa state Judge Gregory Brandt that the “interference with official acts” charge under state law should be dropped.

In the first case of its kind in California’s Central District to involve the seizure of grave sites, a Los Angeles attorney and two of his business associates have been arrested on charges of masterminding a visa fraud scheme to purchase cemetery plots worth more than hundreds of thousands of dollars. The solo practitioner was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents at LAX. Agents also served notice on a local mortuary to seize 30 vacant burial plots and 20 blank grave plaques.

Morrison & Foerster said Monday it will pay incoming associates $145,000 in offices outside of New York and Asia, making it one of the first firms to publicly state it won’t pay California first-year associates as much as those in the Big Apple. MoFo Chairman Keith Wetmore said salaries aren’t likely to fall further. The announced salaries are not set in stone, a firm statement said, noting that the firm “may elect to adjust as required based on larger market developments.”

Among the reasons to check out an economic espionage trial kicking off in San Jose, Calif.: allegations about Chinese efforts to penetrate Silicon Valley; the prospect of both defendants taking the stand; the wife of one defendant testifying for the government; and a procedure for handling witnesses that is rarely used in criminal cases. Jury selection begins Tuesday in the prosecution of Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge, former engineers for NetLogic Microsystems who were charged in 2006 with trade secret theft.