Posts on ‘February 16th, 2010’

Connecticut attorney Daniel Barber has been ordered suspended for 90 days, following his discovery that his sister, whom he hired in 2005 to help run the financial end of his practice, was allegedly siphoning clients’ funds from real estate closings for about three years — apparently to cover a heroin addiction that her family thought had ended. Barber must also pay restitution of about $215,000 within a year to four clients from whom his sister allegedly took money.

Merck & Co. has agreed to pay $12.15 million in plaintiffs’ legal fees to settle two shareholder derivative suits over its painkiller Vioxx — one in state court in New Jersey and the other in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. As part of the settlement, Merck agreed to create two committees to address product safety and to appoint a chief medical officer. The settlement does not apply to a separate damages suit filed against Merck by shareholders, which is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the first criminal trial tied to the stunning collapse of Stanford Financial Group, a federal judge, in an unusual move, cut off jury deliberations and granted acquittals to two employees accused of shredding documents in the alleged $7 billion fraud. Visiting Senior Judge Richard Goldberg said the evidence was lacking to support a conviction of Stanford global security chief Thomas Raffanello and technology officer Bruce Perraud. In an era of supersized fraud, legal observers said the call was a gutsy and bold one.

Moving or copying large Microsoft SharePoint document libraries from one site, or extranet, to another is a recurring need in law firms. Mark Gerow, of Fenwick & West, shows how to move a document library of any size with just a bit of .NET code using the Windows SharePoint Services SDK.

The bankruptcy trustee for jailed attorney Scott Rothstein’s defunct law firm set his sights Thursday on equity partner Stuart Rosenfeldt, claiming $8 million in excessive compensation and linking bonuses to political contributions. Rothstein has pleaded guilty to racketeering, fraud and conspiracy in a $1.2 billion Ponzi scheme based on fake structured settlements sold through the 70-lawyer Rothstein Rosenfeldt Adler. Rothstein and Rosenfeldt were the firm’s only equity partners.

New York federal Judge Jed Rakoff issued an order last week directing Bank of America and the Securities and Exchange Commission to give him by today the underlying discovery materials relating to why BofA fired its general counsel, Timothy Mayopoulos, shortly after the bank’s shareholders approved the merger with Merrill Lynch. Rakoff also wants all materials that shed light on how Mayopoulos and the bank’s outside lawyers decided what the bank would disclose to shareholders in proxy materials before the vote.

Stories raising the possibility that U.S. Supreme Court Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader Ginsburg may leave the Court at roughly the same time have suddenly become part of the Washington conversation, already fueling nightmare scenarios of dragged-out battles between a weakened President Barack Obama and a fiercely contentious Senate over possible replacements. But one theory argues that, in a strange way, two vacancies at once might actually help Obama push through at least one liberal nominee.