Lawyer - News

With some recent talk of claims that many employees use drugs, I recently stumbled upon a list of the occupations with the highest rate of drug use.  A study by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration (SAMHSA), which looked... No comments

The private equity firm that owned a controlling interest in failed commodities brokerage Refco Inc. has filed a $245 million lawsuit against Mayer, Brown, Rowe & Maw, accusing the law firm of helping to conceal the sham transactions that led to Refco's collapse. Boston-based buyout firm Thomas H. Lee Partners filed a complaint against Mayer Brown on Thursday in federal court in Manhattan, alleging that Mayer Brown handled 17 fraudulent transactions at the behest of Refco's executives between 2000 and 2005. No comments

A lawyer who objected to a recent $49 million settlement with the makers of the BAR/BRI bar review course has announced the filing of a $48 million class action on behalf of tens of thousands of consumers who were overcharged when purchasing BAR/BRI materials in preparation for the New York bar exam. The allegations in the suit are similar to those in an antitrust case in California against the same defendants -- namely, that the students were overcharged by $1,000 each, on average. No comments

In a case of first impression, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week held that individual actions brought by WorldCom bondholders were not time-barred even though they had filed their actions prior to certification of a class action. Judge Pierre N. Leval wrote in that the filing of a class action tolls the statute of limitations for all members of the asserted class "regardless of whether" they file an individual action before the class is certified. No comments

Have the rampant and highly publicized insider trading scandals of the 1980s been forgotten by today's generation of business executives, traders, bankers and lawyers? The recent resurgence of insider trading investigations and enforcement actions shows no signs of slowing. Jones Day's Harold K. Gordon and Tracy V. Schaffer discuss recent SEC actions that show that employers can also face liability if they fail to police employee activity through the implementation of appropriate compliance procedures. No comments

Real-time transcription and deposition transcript management applications such as LiveNote are key litigation tools. A questioning attorney with a real-time transcript can gain the upper hand over opposing counsel by searching the transcript for the critical pieces of testimony. No comments

The case of is barely at the Supreme Court's starting gate, yet nearly everyone involved has a growing sense that this will be the Big One. It is shaping up as the case that finally forces the Court, after nearly 70 years of silence, to decide one of the most keenly debated issues in constitutional law: the full meaning of the right to keep and bear arms declared by the Second Amendment. But as the case heats up, factions on both sides seem to be getting cold feet. No comments

Whenever a U.S. firm is named lead counsel in a bid for a major British company, the market takes note. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom's role representing Qatari investment fund Delta 2 on its $24 billion offer for British supermarket chain J Sainsbury Plc has been London's most high-profile M&A assignment of recent weeks. Earlier this year, the chain was the subject of an approach by a private equity consortium led by British buyout house CVC Capital Partners, which was advised by Clifford Chance. No comments

A Pennsylvania lawyer may not collect a referral fee in a New Jersey lawsuit that yielded a $1.9 million verdict because the clients were never told about any fee-sharing arrangement, as New Jersey's ethical rules require, a federal judge has ruled. The judge said it was undisputed that in a discussion of a construction-accident lawsuit, the attorney never told his neighbors that he expected to receive one-third of any fee earned by the lawyers at Parker McCay if the neighbors decided to retain that firm. No comments

A California-based nonprofit can't put the federal government on trial for saying that marijuana has no medical use -- but it might get to challenge the government for blowing deadlines, a federal judge ruled last week. In an eight-page ruling, Judge William Alsup agreed with DOJ lawyers that the federal Information Quality Act provides for only administrative, not judicial, review for people to challenge the "quality, objectivity, utility and integrity" of information disseminated by federal agencies. No comments