Posts on ‘November 18th, 2009’

Absent aggravating factors, a judge’s tardiness in rendering decisions is a matter for court administrators, not the Commission on Judicial Conduct, the lawyer for a soon-to-be New York Supreme Court justice argued Tuesday before the New York Court of Appeals. The attorney conceded that Judge James Gilpatric allowed some matters to go on too long — such as a small claims matter that he took 31 months to decide — but asked whether an administrative judge could have done more to help Gilpatric clear the backlog.

In a major setback for banks, federal judges in Pennsylvania and New Jersey have refused to dismiss a pair of class action consumer suits against TD Bank over allegedly deceptive practices used to market gift cards. In both decisions, the judges rejected TD Bank’s argument that such suits, brought under state consumer protection laws, are pre-empted by the federal National Bank Act. At issue are so-called “dormancy fees” charged by TD Bank that reduce the value of gift cards each month after a period of non-use.

A Georgia appeals court considered on Tuesday whether a sports deal worth hundreds of millions of dollars could have been sealed without the parties signing on the dotted line. At issue is Turner Broadcasting System’s sale of the Atlanta Hawks and the Atlanta Thrashers. Turner is fighting a jury verdict that found Turner breached an oral contract to sell Texas businessman David McDavid the sports teams and awarded $281 million to McDavid — an award that Turner calls the largest compensatory verdict in Georgia history.

A man accused of conspiring to bomb U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 will not be allowed to keep the military lawyers assigned to him when he was imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the rights of Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani — the first Guantanamo detainee to be transferred to the civilian justice system for trial — were not violated by the Secretary of Defense’s decision to reassign the two lawyers designated to represent him when he was preparing for trial before a military commission.

A New York appeals court has upheld the dismissal of a county worker who helped organize an on-the-job “club,” dubbed the “I Hate Teena Club,” to show her disdain for a co-worker. The panel found that a hearing officer reasonably concluded that Penny Sindoni had created a “hostile, intimidating, disruptive” and “uncomfortable” work environment by showing animosity for co-worker Christeenia Cargill. Sindoni wore a ribbon that identified her as a central figure in the “club,” according to the decision.

Besieged Florida attorney and political rainmaker Scott Rothstein is picking his battles — and trying to stay a lawyer is not one of them. The ousted chairman of Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler has submitted a request of permanent disbarment on consent to the Florida Bar. The Bar confirmed Wednesday it accepted his request, which must be approved by the Florida Supreme Court. The upshot is that Rothstein would not have to defend himself against a Bar investigation for breaking any rules regulating Florida attorneys.

A procedural muddle kept Lynne Stewart out of prison for another day, but even as she prepared to surrender, the possibility remained that one or more judges on the 2nd Circuit may want to revisit her controversial sentence en banc. On Monday, a divided three-judge panel vacated the disbarred lawyer’s 28-month sentence for providing material support to a terrorist conspiracy, saying it was too light, and directed a lower court judge to re-sentence her and make a finding on whether she committed perjury at trial.

On Tuesday, in a huge win for shareholders, a New York federal judge took the unusual step of lifting the statutory discovery stay in a securities class action suit against Bank of America. His order will give the plaintiffs access to the mountains of documents that BofA and related defendants have already turned over to Congress, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York attorney general and other government entities scrutinizing the bank’s acquisition of Merrill Lynch.

Wells Fargo & Co. will buy back an estimated $700 million in troubled auction-rate securities from California investors under terms of a settlement announced by Attorney General Jerry Brown on Wednesday. In a separate deal reached with the North American Securities Administrators Association, the San Francisco-based bank has agreed to repurchase nonliquid auction-rate securities totaling approximately $700 million from non-California residents.