Posts on ‘November 24th, 2009’

Houston police say an SUV driven by trial attorney John O’Quinn was going nearly twice the speed limit during rainy conditions when it wrecked and he died. The Oct. 29 accident on Allen Parkway also killed a passenger, Johnny Cutliff, who worked for O’Quinn. Police cited crash data from the computer of the Chevrolet Suburban that indicted the vehicle was traveling up to 79 mph before the SUV went out of control and hit a tree. The speed limit is 40 miles per hour in the area.

The power of eminent domain can legally be invoked to purchase and clear private property for developer Bruce C. Ratner’s massive Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday morning. The ruling removes a major hurdle to Ratner’s plan to convert 22 acres of downtown Brooklyn to a mixed residential and commercial project. The site contains the obsolete Vanderbilt Rail Yard. About 20 percent of the property is privately held.

Who hasn’t heard the phrase “jack-of-all-trades, master of none”? Perhaps Hewlett-Packard Development Corp., because the new HP Officejet 8500 All-In-One Printer is a jack-of-all-trades in generating computer output — print, scan, copy and fax — but it seems to have mastered them all.

Alternative fee billing has been a buzzword for decades, but many say the latest recession has finally given the trend some teeth. Witness Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe’s all-in arrangement with Levi Strauss & Co. Earlier this year, Orrick inked a deal with Levi Strauss that is the law firm’s broadest alternative fee arrangement ever. Orrick will handle all of Levi Strauss’ legal work worldwide in exchange for a fixed yearly fee paid in monthly increments.

A Philadelphia jury returned a $34 million verdict Monday against two drugmakers over hormone-replacement therapy drugs that the jury found caused a plaintiff’s breast cancer. And a $75 million punitive damages verdict from the end of October in another hormone-replacement therapy, or HRT, mass tort case was unsealed by court order after the other jury verdict was rendered around 2 p.m. Monday.

Warner Music Group mogul Edgar M. Bronfman Jr. is not obligated to pay former Simon & Schuster CEO Richard E. Snyder more than $100 million for work Snyder insists he did to facilitate Warner Music’s purchase by Bronfman’s investment group, the New York Court of Appeals ruled Monday. The ruling extinguished Snyder’s final two claims of his entitlement to significant compensation for his role in what became the $2.6 billion purchase of Warner Music from Time Warner in 2004.

A panel of the Georgia Court of Appeals has slammed an insurance company for refusing to defend a contractor against claims resulting from an accidental fire, hitting both the insurer and its outside counsel with a monetary penalty for filing what the court considered a frivolous appeal. In an opinion unusual for its critical tone, the appellate panel ordered a trial judge to make Chicago-based Transportation Insurance and Atlanta lawyer Dennis A. Brown of Buckley Brown each pay the contractor a $2,500 penalty.