Posts on ‘November 17th, 2009’

Robert Depew picked a bad time to switch from the practice of law to associate recruiting. In the year he recently spent working for Major, Lindsey & Africa, he made just one placement: himself. “The day I started was the day Lehman Brothers collapsed, and the fallout of that in the legal market was huge,” he said. But a confluence of factors fell into place to aid Depew in going back into law practice, joining Wilson Sonsini’s employment litigation group in October and making $210,000 as a fifth-year associate.

The St. Louis Archdiocese has released financial figures showing it spent $352,000 last fiscal year on payments to victims of predator priests — and more than twice that amount on lawyers. Numbers released by the archdiocese Friday show more was paid in legal fees than to victims for five of the past 10 fiscal years. An advocacy group for abuse victims said Monday that fewer cases of clergy sex abuse are being filed, so legal costs should be declining.

New York AG Andrew Cuomo won his bid to subpoena the employment records of two lawyers in connection with his investigation of state pension fund fraud, when a state appeals panel last week found that the attorney general “enjoys a presumption that he is proceeding in good faith.” In a pair of unanimous decisions, the court upheld subpoenas seeking records for two lawyers in a probe into whether public agencies improperly classified independent contractors who are ineligible for public pensions as employees.

A U.S. District judge’s lax oversight of more than $30 million tied to the late Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos is “curious,” a 9th Circuit panel said in an opinion issued Friday. The three-judge panel ordered that a new judge give a fresh accounting of the $33.8 million previously entrusted to Los Angeles-based U.S. District Judge Manuel L. Real. The 85-year-old Real oversaw the millions for eight years as several U.S. courts attempted to decide who had rights to the money among various claimants.

The U.S. trustee in LandAmerica Financial Group’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding is objecting to the company’s reorganization plan because it releases nearly everyone involved, including lawyers, from liability for negligent actions. In an objection filed in Virginia federal court last week, the trustee states that the releases do not comply with the bankruptcy code or case law. LandAmerica filed for protection in 2008 after its Section 1031 exchange business collapsed due to its auction-rate securities investments.

The 5th Circuit has denied an attempt by the Stanford International Bank receiver to keep investors’ assets frozen, ruling that the receiver failed to show that investors were “relief-defendants” who could be sued in a clawback action and that the lower court lacked authority to freeze their assets. The decision will affect more than 500 investors who have been unable to get at money that was in their Stanford accounts when the SEC won a freeze order after discovering Allen Stanford’s alleged fraud.

The D.C. Circuit heard oral arguments Monday in a case where two major defense contractors are fighting the government’s planned release of documents under the Freedom of Information Act, saying that the information is confidential and that disclosure should be stopped. United Technologies, Pratt & Whitney Division and Sikorsky Aircraft sued the Defense Department and the Defense Contract Management Agency in an attempt to prevent the release of information that two journalists requested in 2004.

The energy trading hedge fund Amaranth has long been toast. And now, so are its purported claims against Touradji Capital Management and various affiliated entities and employees. In a joint statement on Monday, Touradji and Amaranth said that the defunct hedge fund had withdrawn a New York state court summons against Touradji. Amaranth’s would-be claims included breach of contract, trade secret theft and fraud. No money exchanged hands as part of the deal.

Chevron is suing one of the architects of a massive environmental torts case against the company for his role in filing a separate civil suit against the energy giant in April 2006. A federal judge tossed the bulk of a suit filed by Cristobal Bonifaz after finding that plaintiffs’ attorneys “manufactured” claims. Now Chevron is accusing Bonifaz of malicious prosecution, seeking $4 million in legal fees, and unspecified damages.

The White House said late Monday that President Barack Obama has made two choices for the Federal Trade Commission: a business litigator from Los Angeles who worked on his presidential campaign and a consumer protection regulator who spent most of her career in Vermont. They are Obama’s first nominees for the commission, which has a central role in antitrust enforcement and consumer protection.