Posts on ‘November 9th, 2009’

A dozen Kentucky court administrators received hefty raises and a published report says it happened months before 47 other workers were laid off. The Lexington Herald-Leader cites salary records in reporting the administrators got increases that boosted some salaries by 20 percent or more. The Administrative Office of the Courts says the administrators who got raises took on more responsibilities as the court system trimmed staff to save money.

Among those who died when an American military helicopter crashed in Afghanistan last month was DEA special agent Michael Weston, a 37-year-old Harvard Law School graduate who’d already been deployed to Iraq as a Marine three times. His wife of five months, Cynthia Tidler, has been here before. Her first husband, Helge Boes, died in Afghanistan in 2003 while serving as an operations officer for the CIA. Boes, too, was a member of Harvard Law’s class of ‘97, where he and Weston were best friends.

Online objections to a corporation’s products or services — posted on “gripe” sites by former employees or consumers — can threaten the target’s operations. Although these postings can subject the posters to liability, companies might want to first consider alternatives to litigation.

Bernie Bilski and Rand Warsaw were just a couple of “math geeks for hire” when they applied for a patent in 1997. The case over that patent application, set for argument at the Supreme Court today, has been touted as the biggest patent case in decades, with implications for inventions from software to medical diagnostics, not just so-called “business methods” like the one at issue. Warsaw said he’s “in awe” of the gravity of the dispute, which has drawn 67 amicus briefs from all business sectors and on all sides.

A judge has tossed out a decision that could have cost PepsiCo $1.26 billion after the soft drink maker didn’t respond to a lawsuit claiming it stole the idea for bottled water. The decision Friday by a Wisconsin court means PepsiCo will get its say in court — now that it has found out about the case. Last month, a judge sided with the men and gave them a default $1.26 billion judgment, granting them the award without a trial.

The United States’ largest law firms this year suffered the deepest cuts in their attorney numbers since The National Law Journal began tracking the figures more than 30 years ago. The total number of attorneys working at the top 250 law firms plunged by 5,259 lawyers. Put another way, it’s as if all of the lawyers working at two firms the size of Jones Day vanished in 2009.

The New Jersey judiciary is considering a judge’s request for mass tort status for a growing number of suits alleging strokes and other serious health problems from the oral contraceptives Yaz, Yasmin and Ocella. With 13 suits filed in his vicinage, Judge Donald Volkert Jr. wrote that the litigation “would place a fairly substantial strain on our already limited resources.” There are 26 suits pending in other counties, and Volkert said plaintiffs lawyers have told him the number could reach 1,000.