Posts from ‘December, 2009’

The 2nd Circuit has upheld the refusal of the National Security Agency to disclose whether conversations between lawyers and their clients at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility were intercepted. Addressing questions of first impression, the federal appeals court on Wednesday adopted a doctrine holding that intelligence agencies can refuse to confirm or deny the existence of records sought under the Freedom of Information Act where intelligence officials state that disclosure would compromise national security.

New York Judge Larry M. Himelein has accepted censure for trying to organize other judges to recuse themselves from cases involving the law firms of legislators who have denied New York’s judiciary a pay raise since 1999, a judicial conduct commission said Monday. The commission’s ruling said Himelein aggravated his conduct by writing e-mails to other state judges in which he mocked judges who declined to recuse themselves, calling them “wusses” and “wimps” and telling them to “grow some stones.”

The battle over hefty fines imposed for Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” at the 2004 Super Bowl is ready to return to court. It has been nearly eight months since the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the 3rd Circuit to take a second look at the case and consider reinstating $550,000 in fines that the FCC imposed on CBS over Jackson’s breast-baring performance. Since then, the 3rd Circuit has ordered both sides to file supplemental briefs. The case has also attracted a flurry of amicus briefs.

A maritime lawyer’s misconduct, including his flight from New York to avoid arrest on contempt charges, has disqualified him from sharing in a contingency fee for work performed prior to his disbarment, a federal bankruptcy judge ruled last week. Disbarred lawyer Kenneth Heller’s refusal to turn over files in a matter that ultimately was resolved with a $3.7 million settlement was “symptomatic” of a 24-year record of “utter contempt for the judicial system,” Judge Stuart M. Bernstein wrote.

The key whistleblower in the U.S. government’s case against Swiss banking giant UBS over offshore banking practices is asking that his 40-month prison sentence be postponed and reconsidered. If granted, Bradley Birkenfeld’s motion would push back the Jan. 8 date on which he is to report to prison and reduce his sentence. Birkenfeld said he would use the additional time before reporting to prison to cooperate further with the government in its investigations and possible new cases against UBS clients.

A plaintiffs lawyer fired midway through a personal injury case will have to provide a court with more than just a conclusory presentation of the work he did if he wants to share in the settlement, says a New Jersey appeals court. The court described the evidence that the solo provided regarding his fee application as “cryptic” and “grossly inadequate.”

In an unusually contentious ruling Monday, California appellate court Judges Paul Haerle and J. Anthony Kline got in each other’s faces about whether a judge can order a criminal defendant to stop using medicinal marijuana while on probation when the underlying crime has nothing to do with pot use. Kline said the “precedent shattering” majority opinion “flies in the face of the law,” “subordinates the will of the people” and is “legally untenable.”

Already on the hook for the lion’s share of a $17.7 million judgment and waiting for a decision from a jury that was out considering punitive damages, Ford Motor Co. decided to settle with a couple who sued following a Christmas 2005 wreck that left the woman paralyzed. The agreement came after a Georgia jury ordered Ford to pay more than $16 million of the judgment to compensate for what the plaintiffs argued were design defects in the 2002 Explorer sport utility vehicle in which the woman was a passenger.

Broadcom said Tuesday it will pay more than $160 million in cash to settle a class action investor lawsuit related to stock option backdating, but the California-based chipmaker did not admit wrongdoing. The deal, which still needs a judge’s approval, would represent the second-largest up-front cash recovery from a company accused of stock option backdating, according to an attorney for the lead plaintiff, the New Mexico State Investment Council.

Dimitrios Biller, a troubled and persistent lawyer who oversaw rollover litigation at Toyota from 2003 to 2007, grabbed the spotlight this fall when he leveled allegations that Toyota was hiding crash safety data in rollover cases. He hand-delivered four boxes of supposedly incriminating evidence to a Texas courthouse, which had the documents scanned. But a spokesman for plaintiffs lawyer E. Todd Tracy says he didn’t find “a shred of evidence” among the 9,000 documents in those boxes to support Biller’s whistleblower claims.