Posts from ‘October, 2009’

After agreeing to a huge class action settlement last June, State Street Bank tried to renege, arguing that its ongoing negotiations with the SEC threw the fairness of the ERISA deal in doubt. But this week, a New York federal judge concluded that a deal’s a deal, granting preliminary approval to the settlement.

William Lerach and Melvyn Weiss, two former kings of the securities class action bar, went down in a federal racketeering probe. Lerach cut a deal before indictment, while Weiss pleaded guilty after litigating for a spell. So a judge sentenced Weiss to six months more in prison. But now, thanks to participation in a treatment program, Weiss is scheduled for release a month sooner than Lerach. Both prisoners eased into halfway houses six months before their release dates, per a change in federal law.

Only a quarter of in-house lawyers now use online information-sharing sites to evaluate and select lawyers and law firms, according to a recent survey by LexisNexis Martindale Hubbell. What’s more, in-house counsel are not yet convinced that such sites would help them hire lawyers.

Should metadata be considered a public record like most other government documents? Yes, said the Arizona Supreme Court, overturning a lower court decision that denied a police officer access to performance reviews, written by his superiors, to find out who accessed the documents when.

The Federal Trade Commission cleared the way Thursday for Schering-Plough’s $41.1 billion acquisition of Merck & Co., but required both companies to make significant divestures. Under the terms of the FTC’s consent order, Merck must sell its interest in Merial Limited, an animal health joint venture with Sanofi-Aventis, and Schering-Plough must sell its assets related to drugs that treat nausea and vomiting in humans.

The lawyers for accused insider trader Raj Rajaratnam, the head of the Galleon Group hedge fund, launched their first attack on the government’s case Thursday, claiming the chief witness in the $25 million insider trading prosecution was a liar who could not be trusted. John M. Dowd and his legal team at Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld said that cooperating witness Roomy Khan was a convicted felon who was “adjudicated by a court in August 2009 to have fabricated evidence in a court proceeding.”

The Federal Trade Commission cannot force practicing lawyers to comply with new regulations aimed at curbing identity theft, a federal judge ruled Thursday. The decision offers a reprieve to law firms across the country, which faced a deadline this weekend to put in place programs to meet so-called “Red Flags Rule” requirements, which would have forced firms to verify the identities of potential clients. The American Bar Association had argued that the rules would impose a serious burden on firms.