Posts on ‘February 22nd, 2010’

Federal Judge Shira A. Scheindlin recently found that six Pension
Committee plaintiffs were grossly negligent in failing to comply
with their e-discovery obligations and subjected them to an “adverse
inference instruction,” a severe sanction under which the jury will be
told to presume that the destroyed documents would have harmed the
plaintiffs’ case. Attorneys Robert Schwinger and Marcelo Blackburn
examine the four e-discovery failures the court identified as sufficient
to show gross negligence.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s lawsuit to recover $1.2 billion from a hedge fund operator for losses his investors sustained when he gave their money to convicted swindler Bernard Madoff may proceed to trial, a New York judge has ruled. The judge rejected Ezra Merkin’s contention that Cuomo’s claims were not viable because Merkin said in an offering memorandum that he “might delegate investment management duties to independent money managers” without first telling his investors.

A New York appeals panel has thrown out the negligent homicide conviction of a man who, after a woman overdosed on heroin and passed out in his car, dropped her off on the lawn of a trailer park. The woman, who was unconscious but breathing when defendant Carl Erb pulled her from his car, died in a hospital after she was discovered two hours later. The unanimous court found that the woman was no worse off on the lawn than in Erb’s car. The county district attorney said he intends to appeal.

The Federal Circuit last week decided to hold an en banc rehearing on a controversial decision about the standards for introducing new evidence when patent board appeals are heard in district court. The en banc appeal is important because there’s tension between the Administrative Procedure Act and the Patent Act, said a Crowell & Moring partner who represented the patent applicant at the Federal Circuit.