Posts on ‘February 18th, 2010’

Apparently, some “leading economic indicators” suggest that the global economy may have begun to bounce back. The Snark also feels things may be looking up, based on some Big Law indicators: increases in tee times and voluntary departures, and a decrease in brown-bag lunches.

Last July, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe dropped lockstep compensation in favor of a performance-based system, and almost 30 Am Law 200 law firms have followed suit. But are these new tiered-pay structures just another way to cut associate pay — without having to disclose anything?

A jury has ruled against a Massachusetts woman who claimed in a lawsuit against her real estate broker that she was forced to move out of her condominium because of secondhand cigarette smoke coming from a neighbor. Alyssa Burrage alleged that her broker repeatedly assured her that the prior owner of the Boston condo she was buying in 2006 was a smoker and the smell would go away. Burrage, who has asthma, said she later discovered the smoke was coming from a neighbor.

Attorneys who settled a class action lawsuit over impermissible strip-searching of county jail inmates were properly awarded a smaller counsel fee than they sought due to their prior experience in filing similar cases, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled. The 2nd Circuit rejected arguments that a federal district court judge had abandoned the “presumptive, preferred method” of calculating fees and had used an “unprecedented factor to penalize counsel” for their previous litigation work.

A relatively small case has ballooned into serious malpractice trouble for a Seyfarth Shaw partner. A former client has sued the firm and David Wiseblood for allegedly pretending that a $1.2 million loan default case was still pending, when it had been thrown out because he failed to pursue it. The plaintiffs allege that Wiseblood pretended that they were in settlement negotiations with the debtors and that he made “progressively more outrageous fabrications” to make it appear that he was moving the case forward.

Latham & Watkins on Wednesday released its financials for fiscal year 2009 and the picture that’s emerging is of a firm on the mend. While revenue was down 5 percent last year, profits inched up by the same percentage. The optimistic figures come after the firm’s profits per equity partner suffered one of the steepest falls among Am Law 100 firms in 2008. Firm Chairman Bob Dell points to improved market conditions throughout the second half of 2009 in explaining Latham’s profitability.

Lawyers suing Roche Laboratories had reason to be dismayed 14 months ago when a New Jersey state appeals court threw out a $2.5 million jury verdict they had won. On Tuesday, the lawyers won 10 times more at the retrial, after jurors found that Roche knew or should have known that Accutane caused inflammatory bowel disease and failed to warn prescribing physicians. The award is the largest that an Accutane user has won against the drugmaker. In a statement, Roche said it plans to appeal the verdict.

A private equity firm that last week entered into a multimillion-dollar settlement agreement with New York’s attorney general over its role in the state pension fund scandal is embroiled in a fee dispute with Gibson Dunn & Crutcher, refusing to pay the law firm more than $1.3 million. Markstone Capital Group claims Gibson Dunn was not properly retained and that Markstone’s chairman hired the law firm without the permission of his two partners.

The Boston Bar Association and the Massachusetts Bar Association filed amicus briefs with the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals challenging different aspects of a Boston federal court ruling against the Real Estate Bar Association for Massachusetts Inc. Both organizations filed briefs on Feb. 12, but they tackle separate orders issued by District of Massachusetts Judge Joseph Tauro in The Real Estate Bar Association for Massachusetts Inc. v. National Real Estate Information Services.

Federal prosecutors on Wednesday announced an indictment charging an alleged international arms dealer and an American associate with a range of crimes, including conspiring to launder money and violating economic sanctions. The indictment, unsealed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charges the defendants, Viktor Bout and Richard Chichakli, who is an American citizen, with conspiring to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act.