Posts from ‘January, 2012’

In October 2006, Gary Swanson, an executive with Hynix Semiconductor, was charged with joining a criminal conspiracy to fix prices in the dynamic random access memory industry. The right trial technology made Gary Swanson, the last man standing in this litigation, a free man.

Corporate general counsel expect increased company risk management and more regulatory enforcement in the wake of collapsing financial institutions, such as Fannie Mae, Lehman Brothers and American International Group. State government regulatory oversight will rise with more attorney general probes, and federal oversight will expand in step with the next presidential administration, said some general counsel attending the Argyle Executive Forum in Chicago this week.

Fannie, Freddie, Lehman, AIG: As Wall Street’s woes continue, Law.com presents ongoing coverage of the financial meltdown from across the globe, with updates on the firms handling the bankruptcies, the fate of in-house legal teams, the legal implications of the Fed’s fix and other ramifications for the law firms and lawyers involved. Check back for daily updates from all Incisive Media publications.

After a federal judge warned that “heads will roll” in the McAfee case, a Howrey counsel explained that critical e-mails in a stock option prosecution against McAfee’s former GC weren’t turned over sooner because contract lawyers at the firm had marked them “not relevant,” and the problem wasn’t spotted by more senior lawyers. The explanation came after a full trial day as the government kicked off its case against Kent Roberts. A Howrey partner characterized the omission as inadvertent, though defense lawyers from Cooley Godward Kronish expressed astonishment.

Thelen is said to still be in merger talks with Nixon Peabody. But if a merger hunt comes to naught — or if lawyers don’t stick around to find out — there would appear to be no shortage of takers for those with business. Despite the departure of almost 200 lawyers since its 2006 merger — Bingham McCutchen plans to announce on Monday that four D.C. attorneys from Thelen are moving over — Thelen still has several choice rainmakers among its ranks, according to former lawyers, recruiters and competitors.

The 2nd Circuit’s dramatic opinion in the KPMG case, upholding the district court’s dismissal of all 13 defendants, is a clear demonstration of the widening gap between traditional prosecutorial attitudes and the nontraditional world of white-collar investigations, says attorney Dan Small. It’s time for some attitude adjustment, according to Small, who says the issue for the prosecutors goes back to “omerta,” the old Mafia code of silence.

In the last week of August, the DOJ issued a memo authored by Deputy Attorney General Mark R. Filip that replaces the McNulty Memo as the DOJ’s corporate charging guidelines. The Filip Memo reconsiders corporate cooperation credit in the areas of privilege waiver, employee indemnification, joint defense agreements, and employee discipline and termination. Attorneys Mark J. Stein and Joshua A. Levine examine the changes implemented by the memo and the criticism already emerging.

Chapter 472 of New York’s Laws of 2008, signed into law on Aug. 5, is complex legislation, imposing obligations on lenders making certain types of loans to natural persons on the security of one-to-four-family dwellings. Michael J. Berey, general counsel at First American Title Insurance Co., identifies certain provisions of Chapter 472 that should be considered when certain loan title insurance policy endorsements are requested and when a mortgage covered by the legislation is being foreclosed.

The Department of Justice’s yearlong study of the state of competition and monopoly law has produced conclusions that may be put to the test in the department’s analysis of objections to the Yahoo-Google ad sharing deal. The report was the result of joint hearings between the DOJ and the Federal Trade Commission, but oddly, the FTC did not sign on to the final report. One item that caught the eye of antitrust lawyers has been a dispute within the antitrust bar about use of the profit-sacrifice test.

As the hot, young clean-tech industry matures, companies are hiring and searching for general counsel that have the hard-to-come-by blend of energy business and startup lawyer skills. Ausra Inc., a solar company in Palo Alto, Calif., recently hired energy-industry veteran Debra Olson as its first general counsel. “We are all migrating toward this — it’s a phenomenal opportunity, it’s a tremendous career,” said Olson, who previously worked at Calpine and a wind-energy company.