Posts on ‘October 29th, 2009’

In June, when the U.S. Supreme Court asked Solicitor General Elena Kagan to weigh in on the 2nd Circuit’s precedent-setting “F-cubed” ruling in Morrison v. National Australia Bank, it looked like the high court was getting securities litigation fever. Just days before, it had decided to take on Merck v. Reynolds, which raised the issue of how the statute of limitations should apply in shareholder cases. But in a brief filed Tuesday, the SG seems to be trying to cool the Court’s ardor.

Firms across South Florida slashed expenses this year by cutting attorneys and staff, renegotiating with vendors and eliminating lavish firm dinners and retreats, according to a Daily Business Review survey of 76 area law firm leaders. Revenue per lawyer dropped or remained flat at 48 percent of firms last year, with large firms hardest hit, according to the survey. And just 34 percent of managing partners expect increased partner profits this year compared with 70 percent last year.

The trial of Taylar Nuevelle, a convicted felon accused of stalking a Washington, D.C., Superior Court judge with whom she had a yearlong relationship, has been recessed until Monday after the defendant spent Wednesday morning in the hospital with an undisclosed medical emergency. The judge ordered that Nuevelle be stripped of her passport after the prosecutor argued that Nuevelle has a history of delaying trials with bogus medical claims and once absconded to England for three years in the midst of custody hearings.

A former in-house lawyer for Toyota Motor Sales USA Inc. has filed court papers defending his claims that the automaker engaged in an illegal racketeering conspiracy to destroy and hide electronic discovery in rollover cases. In papers filed Monday, Dimitrios Biller, Toyota’s former managing counsel, claims he was “forced out of business, sued, harassed, defrauded, threatened, intimidated, left unemployed, rendered unemployable, defamed, and publicly ridiculed by Defendants.”

The accounting fraud case against former McKesson HBOC executives has gone topsy-turvy as the government’s main cooperator is now officially a defense witness. In opening statements Tuesday, Paul Weiss’ Theodore Wells Jr., who represents ex-CEO Charles McCall, told the jury he will call Albert Bergonzi to the stand. Once company president, Bergonzi pleaded guilty and testified for the government in its bid to convict McCall and former GC Jay Lapine. Both were acquitted on one count, as the jury hung on several others.

Roland Corning, a South Carolina deputy assistant attorney general who said he was on his lunch break when an officer found him in a cemetery with a stripper in his SUV, has been fired, his boss said Wednesday. A police officer found a Viagra pill and several sex toys in the SUV, items Corning said he always kept with him, “just in case,” according to a police report. Such a trip to the cemetery “would not be appropriate, at any time, for an assistant attorney general,” according to Attorney General Henry McMaster.

The House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee held a hearing Wednesday on the outsize effect the U.S. Supreme Court’s Ashcroft v. Iqbal ruling has had on civil litigation. The ruling, which requires plaintiffs to plead specific factual allegations in their complaints, has already been cited in almost 3,000 lower court rulings in just five months on the books. Only one witness, former DOJ Civil Division Assistant AG Gregory Katsas, defended the ruling as “consistent with the vast bulk of prior precedent.”

It seems that a disciplinary campaign against 9th Circuit Chief Judge Alex Kozinski for keeping explicit images on a personal Web site is falling silent. The U.S. Judicial Conference has dismissed an appeal by a former staffer, in which Kozinski was accused of allegedly breaking federal law when he disabled the court’s Internet monitoring systems in 2001. The conference found that Ralph Mecham’s allegations had been previously examined and found not worthy of a judicial misconduct finding.

A New York lawyer who claims that his experience as an adopted child inspired him to help would-be parents has been indicted on charges that he stole more than $300,000 from couples looking to adopt by promising them children who “did not exist.” Kevin Cohen was indicted Monday on 69 counts, including one of second-degree grand larceny, 11 of third-degree grand larceny and 10 of third-degree forgery. He faces up to 15 years in prison if convicted of the top count.

A Florida appeals court reversed a $24.2 million verdict Wednesday, striking a jury award to a surgeon who claimed asbestos exposure caused his terminal cancer. In a unanimous unsigned opinion, the three-judge panel remanded Stephen Guilder’s product liability lawsuit against Honeywell International and ordered a new trial. Guilder won one of the highest compensatory damage awards against a single defendant in a mesothelioma case in April 2008. He died before the appeal was decided.