Posts on ‘November 6th, 2009’

France’s investigating judges are a powerful lot: They can order phone taps and home searches, interrogate terrorists and bring down politicians. Now, one has even ordered former French President Jacques Chirac to stand trial. But those sweeping powers may soon end. President Nicolas Sarkozy’s government is drawing up a reform plan to do away with investigating judges, a two-century-old Napoleonic legacy, and give more power to prosecutors.

Kenneth Javerbaum and Gerald Baker are among New Jersey’s leading personal injury litigators and teachers, and now they’re going to practice together in a 22-lawyer operation. As of next month, Baker and his two partners will be of counsel to 19-lawyer Javerbaum Wurgaft Hicks Kahn Wikstrom & Sinins. Baker says PI firms of one, two or three lawyers often are hard-pressed to find time for law, the business of law and coping with best practices. Joining a larger operation is the right solution for his firm, he says.

A former Brooklyn, N.Y., lawyer has pleaded guilty to fleecing millions of dollars from guardianship accounts he oversaw for incapacitated seniors and children. Steven T. Rondos and his law firm, Raia & Rondos, were indicted in January on money laundering and grand larceny charges for stealing more than $4 million. On Wednesday, Rondos pleaded guilty to all 19 counts of the indictment, according to his lawyer.

Prosecutors have said repeatedly that Robert Wone, former GC at Radio Free Asia, was tortured and sexually assaulted the night his body was found in 2006 in the Washington, D.C., home of an Arent Fox litigation partner. But the defendants are charged with conspiracy, evidence tampering and obstruction of justice — not murder or sex crimes. Now, lawyers for Joseph Price, Victor Zaborsky and Dylan Ward have filed court papers saying government attorneys should be forbidden to say anything about torture and sexual abuse.

The government has been sniffing around hedge funds for years — now, like a dog that’s found where the bone is buried, it has started digging. And the SEC has made clear that it wants blood from the largely unregulated hedge fund industry. One of the latest guilty pleas came Tuesday from a California hedge fund manager who authorities say bilked investors out of $8.3 million.

A group of law schools will help expand an online U.S. Supreme Court database so that it reaches back to the court’s first recorded decision in 1792. The schools received an $874,000 National Science Foundation grant to begin the four-year project, which will add 19,675 cases to a database that now extends from the Court’s 1953 term through 2008. The group will post 4,400 cases by next summer and add more in installments each year.