Posts on ‘November 23rd, 2009’

A rare economic espionage case ended badly for the government Friday, as a federal jury acquitted two Silicon Valley engineers on a pair of counts and deadlocked on three others. Jurors who sided with Lan Lee and Yuefei Ge felt the government relied too heavily on evidence supplied by NetLogic Microsystems Inc., the alleged victim. To prove that information found on defendants’ computers was, in fact, a trade secret, prosecutors called only witnesses from the company itself.

Chief Judge Paul Michel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has announced that he is stepping down as chief and retiring from the judiciary effective May 31, 2010, the Federal Circuit Bar Association said Saturday. Michel, the chief since Dec. 25, 2004, revealed his retirement plans at the bar association’s 25th annual dinner on Friday. Judge Randall Rader is next in line for chief judge, the bar association said.

When an e-discovery provider was assigned the job of looking for e-mail evidence in a recent business dispute, it seemed like just another job until the company found itself on the receiving end of a motion for contempt for reporting that 70,000 files had been deleted from a computer.

A panel of general counsel and senior in-house lawyers at a conference last week revealed that cost isn’t always their top criteria when picking outside lawyers. They also want outside lawyers to take the initiative in building a relationship. Julia Coyne, Nike’s assistant GC, recalled a law firm that did a pitch even after learning that the work it wanted was farmed out elsewhere. The firm later became a Nike partner. “They were willing to come in and spend the time,” Coyne said.

Two very different cases, the Jose Padilla case and the “balloon boy” case, cast new light on a legal issue that has been simmering for years: when, whether and how defendants should be informed about the collateral consequences of pleading or being found guilty. A model law tackling the issue will go before the American Bar Association for endorsement in February, and then would be put before state legislators. But the new emphasis on informing defendants about collateral consequences is not without critics.

A lawsuit that seeks more than $100 million in damages alleges that ousted Florida law firm leader Scott Rothstein solicited investors for an alleged Ponzi scheme by piggybacking on actual lawsuits, including a tawdry case his firm was handling that involved a billionaire accused of engaging in sexual activities with underage girls. The investor lawsuit also contends TD Bank served as the “critical linchpin legitimizing” a fraud and knew the law firm was moving hundreds of millions of dollars through its accounts.

A class can’t be decertified unless there are substantial changes to the facts of a case, nor can it be decertified once a partial ruling has been made as to the merits of the case, an attorney for a class suing over the off-label marketing of epilepsy and neuralgia drug Neurontin argued before the Pennsylvania Superior Court in Philadelphia. The attorney argued that Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Mark I. Bernstein improperly decertified the class in February — a month before trial.