Posts on ‘March 1st, 2010’

The U.S. Supreme Court dismissed an appeal Monday from the seven Chinese Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay because they have been offered another place to live. The justices took the unusual step of scratching a case three weeks before it was going to be argued, allowing the Obama administration to avoid a difficult Supreme Court argument over whether a judge can order detainees released into the United States.

Two veteran Silicon Valley lawyers are jumping to new firms — one to open a new office in the tech capital. Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr corporate partner Curtis Mo is headed to DLA Piper in East Palo Alto, Calif. In a separate move, White & Case patent litigator William Coats will open New York-based Kaye Scholer’s new Silicon Valley office. Mo opened WilmerHale’s Palo Alto office in 2005 and was managing partner of the now 40-lawyer office until last year.

After a trigger event is identified and analyzed to find the scope of the preservation of evidence warranted under the circumstances, the organization needs to implement the hold with a written notice, say Howett Isaza partner John Isaza and Goldberg Segalla partner John J. Jablonski.

Universal Music might have to pay for pulling video of a dancing baby off YouTube. A federal judge ruled late Thursday that Stephanie Lenz can get some limited recompense from the music label for ordering YouTube to drop a 29-second video of her son dancing to the music of Universal artist Prince. Lenz still must prove her case before collecting anything. But it appears to be the first answer to the question of how an apparently ill-brought takedown notice should be punished under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

The former head of Troutman Sanders’ real estate investments and capitalization practice groups is one of five defendants to reach a $14 million civil settlement with federal prosecutors Friday stemming from an alleged $50 million kickback scheme. The settlement comes about four months after prosecutors filed civil claims against Troutman partner Leonard Grunstein and others in connection with a $98 million civil settlement between the DOJ and Omnicare, the biggest provider of pharmacy services to nursing homes in the U.S.

In the end, a proposal to adopt a January kickoff date for law firm summer associate offers proved too controversial. The board of the National Association for Law Placement decided Friday to back off a plan that would delay the summer associate offer process by as long as four months. Law firm recruiters and law school administrators on Friday largely welcomed the shift. Said one: “To make any kind of significant change, everybody needs to be on board or the changes won’t be followed.”