Posts on ‘February 10th, 2010’

Lawyers who represent clients and their firms well may be rewarded with a leadership position. Herein lies the problem. Most lawyers, like most human beings, are not natural leaders. Consultant James Dolan discusses how all leaders, natural or not, can become more effective.

Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati wealth management partner Peter LaBoskey is leaving the firm after nearly three decades, and taking his group of five attorneys to midsize regional shop Hopkins & Carley on March 1. That firm is opening an office in Palo Alto, Calif., to accommodate the new group. Managing partner William Klein said his firm had been looking to grow its 15-lawyer family wealth and tax planning department for several years, and added that the new group won’t need to lower its rates.

Houston lawyer Harry C. Arthur’s courthouse battle with Christ Church Cathedral and The Beacon, a homeless center in downtown Houston, is over. On Tuesday, Houston Judge Reece Rondon signed an order granting Arthur’s motion for a nonsuit without prejudice in the suit filed by Arthur and a building he owns, The Marine Building. The plaintiffs filed the suit in November 2009 seeking a court order to shut down The Beacon on the grounds that it is a “private nuisance.”

The Justice Department wants to convince a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., that the accounting firm Deloitte should be forced to give up tax documents stemming from auditing services provided to Dow Chemical Co. A district court judge ruled against Justice in June 2009, saying that the requested documents are confidential and some are protected as attorney work product. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is scheduled to hear oral argument Feb. 26.

The closely watched case of Howard Udell, the first general counsel of a major company known to be debarred from doing business with federal agencies, has been moved to U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., and combined with the cases of two of Udell’s fellow executives — chief executive Michael Friedman and chief medical officer Paul D. Goldenheim — caught up in the same scandal. The cases stem from a May 2007 settlement over the misbranding of the powerful painkiller OxyContin.

The Federal Circuit has overturned sanctions imposed by a Southern District of New York judge against New Jersey intellectual property law firm Kaplan Gilman & Pergament and software company ResQNet.com Inc. The panel ruled that the district court’s pretrial order to impose sanctions on the firm and the company once the trial was completed was an abuse of the court’s discretion. It’s rare for the Federal Circuit to overturn a sanctions order given the appellate standard of review, said one patent lawyer.

U.S. News & World Report’s decision to rank law firms along the lines of its much-maligned law school rankings has prompted the American Bar Association to investigate the magazine’s methods. The ABA House of Delegates approved a resolution Monday to “examine efforts to publish a national, state, territorial and local ranking of law firms and law schools.” U.S. News was not specifically named, but officials of the New York State Bar, which sponsored the resolution, acknowledged the magazine was the catalyst.

A conflict of interest affecting global litigation giant Howrey isn’t serious enough to warrant the firm’s disqualification from a major drug patent case, a federal judge in New Jersey said Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Joel Pisano reversed a magistrate judge’s decision that 650-lawyer Howrey is automatically prohibited from defending Boston Scientific Corp. against a suit by Wyeth in Newark, N.J., because the firm represents Wyeth in a patent case in Europe.

The American Bar Association announced this week that it’s cutting the cost of dues for solo practitioners, government lawyers, judges and attorneys working for nonprofits as part of an effort to respond to lawyers’ differing financial circumstances and the effects of the economic downturn. The ABA said Tuesday that its House of Delegates had approved a new dues structure that will reduce costs by 50 percent for solo practitioners and by 25 percent for the other lawyers.

Plaintiffs attorneys’ assault on Toyota continues to move forward. Lawsuits were filed in federal court in Los Angeles on Monday on behalf of shareholders and a nationwide class of buyers of several Toyota hybrid models. Another lawsuit, brought in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday on behalf of California buyers of a Prius and a Lexus model, seeks damages for alleged breach of implied and express warranty, product liability, negligence and violations of business and consumer protection laws.