Posts on ‘February 12th, 2010’

On Tuesday, the government of Iceland announced it had hired Cleary Gottlieb to advise on a new round of negotiations with the U.K. and the Netherlands over losses suffered by Iceland’s banks. The demise of the country’s banking sector in late 2008 jeopardized the savings of foreign depositors and led the British government to freeze the U.K. assets of Iceland’s second-largest bank, which had roughly 300,000 depositors in the U.K. and another 100,000 in the Netherlands.

In anticipation of Valentine’s Day, Texas Lawyer talked to four married lawyer-couples to find out how they came to sign the ultimate contract with each other. Find out how things like bad restaurants and a high school debate team played parts in these legal love stories.

A $10.5 million settlement has been reached in a wrongful death suit brought by the mother of a Philadelphia 17-year-old who died in a Tennessee juvenile detention center after an incident in which two guards allegedly used an improper choke hold to restrain him. According to court papers, the death was the second at the Chad Youth Enhancement Center, a facility that had come under scrutiny by officials in several states for a series of incidents involving the alleged use of harsh treatment.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., on Thursday criticized the American Bar Association’s process for evaluating federal judicial nominees, saying the ABA should not penalize a nominee for not having prior experience on the bench. “I think the ABA should get a new life and look at whether people are qualified, not whether they have judicial experience,” he said at a meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Attacking the judiciary as often out-of-touch, Reid even criticized judges’ “robes” and “fancy chambers.”

In a growing trend, courts are refusing to let consumers out of arbitration clauses that include an opt-out provision that would have allowed the consumer to reject the clause within the first month or two of the contract. As the judges see it, such a contract cannot be deemed a contract of adhesion because the opt-out provision, if exercised, would allow the consumer to alter the terms. For banks and other regular targets of consumer suits, the rulings are paving the road from the courthouse to the arbitrator’s office.

Barely a week after denying a feng shui master’s claim to a
multibillion-dollar fortune, the Hong Kong courts have ruled on another
blockbuster case. On Thursday, Hong Kong’s Court of Final Appeal
overturned a murder conviction and ordered a new trial for American
expatriate Nancy Kissel, who killed her investment banker husband in
2003. Prosecutors had charged that she planned the murder of her husband
by allegedly sedating him with a laced milkshake and then beating him to
death with a metal ornament.

Responding to a split between two appellate panels, the Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday stepped into a simmering dispute over a law meant to help courts manage a flood of asbestos litigation. The justices heard arguments for the first time on whether retroactive application of the law impermissibly interfered with pending lawsuits by setting a new medical threshold for people exposed to asbestos. With thousands of claims hanging in the balance, the high court is reviewing the dismissal of 13 cases.

Immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. often face excessive delays in getting authorization to work and, in some cases, are forced to work illegally out of desperation because of government mismanagement of their work applications under federal laws and regulations, according to a new report by two advocacy groups. The problems center around the so-called asylum clock, which potentially affects more than 50,000 asylum applicants per year, the report says.

The Judicial Confirmation Network, which has been a significant conservative voice in recent Supreme Court confirmation battles, is expanding its mission and adding urgency to its name; it will now be called the Judicial Crisis Network. It will take on state as well as federal judicial battles and the Department of Justice, and issues relating to limited government, a fair judiciary and the rule of law. “The crisis of judicial activism has spread” to state courts, Executive Director Gary Marx said in an interview.

Four states and dozens of California cities and water districts have joined a qui tam lawsuit, unveiled this week, seeking millions of dollars in damages against a company for allegedly supplying substandard PVC pipe. The suit, brought against J-M Manufacturing Co. and its former parent company, alleges that J-M sold PVC pipe that had tensile strength below industry standards, and that the company deceived customers by choosing stronger samples for independent certification of its product.