Posts on ‘February 12th, 2010’

Attorney General Eric Holder is leaving open the possibility of trying professed Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before a military commission instead of the civilian trial originally planned for New York City. Opposition from New York officials has forced the Obama administration to reconsider plans to put Mohammed on trial in federal court near the former World Trade Center site. Some argue the high-security trial would put New Yorkers at risk of further attacks.

Understanding the gravity of Judge Shira Scheindlin’s Pension Committee ruling is a first step toward meeting her litigation hold standards, a set of minimum standards that must be followed after an event triggers the duty to preserve evidence for litigation.

Employment lawyers are shaking their heads over this one: The American Psychiatric Association wants binge eating and excess gambling to be considered psychiatric disorders. The group has proposed that the problems be listed in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, used nationwide to diagnose and treat mental disorders. Lawyers have plenty to say about the proposed disorders, which, some argue, could open the door for more disability suits in the workplace.

General counsel for high-risk companies who stay up at night worrying about bribery could take a page from Jay Dalton’s playbook. The now-retired general counsel of Panama-based Willbros Group Inc., an international oil and gas pipeline company, not only helped find employees who were bribing foreign government officials to win contracts, he also stopped them from doing it, according to federal court documents.

Lawyers pushing a Facebook privacy settlement are trying to fend off critics by suggesting in a Thursday filing that privacy organizations are raising objections because they didn’t get a piece of the action. The groups, which have raised concerns that a new organization set up by Facebook to study online privacy won’t be independent, say Internet users would be better served if the money was used to fund existing nonprofits already fighting the good fight.

Miami attorney Peter Prieto is a big fish in a big pond, rising to the upper echelon at Holland & Knight as chairman of its national litigation section, the largest practice group at the law firm. But as of Feb. 16, he will jump across town to the boutique litigation firm Podhurst Orseck as a partner. Prieto said he was not pursuing a change, but the opportunity to move to Podhurst was too enticing to pass up. “Working in a litigation boutique is considered by many to be the gold standard,” Prieto said.

The attorney for a man imprisoned after a fatal car crash says he’ll seek to have the man’s Toyota re-examined in light of the automaker’s recent recall over accelerator issues. Koua Fong Lee is serving eight years in prison for a high-speed crash in Minneapolis that killed three people in 2006. The earliest model involved in the recent Toyota recalls is from 2005.