Lawyer - News

Fans of Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick say he has never had enough premier players around him. That was not the case Thursday, when legal proceedings began against him in a federal courthouse in Richmond, Va. Vick has hired a high-profile team of lawyers to fight charges that he participated in an illegal dogfighting enterprise. He faces up to five years in prison. U.S. District Court judge Henry Hudson set a trial date of Nov. 26 at Vick's arraignment. No comments

Everyone stayed in character for the last full day of the first stock option backdating trial. There was the sardonic Assistant U.S. Attorney, who delivered a closing argument emphasizing the simplicity of the fraud case against former Brocade Communications CEO Gregory Reyes. On the other side, Richard Marmaro, the Skadden Arps partner defending Reyes, ridiculed the argument offered by the prosecutor. Then there was the judge, who, true to form, pounded on each side by questioning their tactics. No comments

Last week, U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen T. Brown in Miami permanently blocked a lawsuit in Costa Rica against Canon's Latin American division. The plaintiff, a local Canon distributor, argued the lawsuit had to be brought in the Central American country because of a Costa Rican law requiring certain business disputes to be settled there. The case is expected to end up before the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which could establish a precedent on how to interpret forum selection clauses in contracts. No comments

A federal jury in Hartford, Conn., acquitted coated-paper maker Stora Enso North America Corp. of charges in a rare price-fixing trial. The U.S. Department of Justice indicted Stora Enso for conspiring to fix coated magazine paper prices, and the company faced a fine of up to $10 million. "Juries tend to relate more to individuals rather than corporations, so winning an acquittal for a corporation is a rare success," said the company's lead trial counsel, McDermott Will & Emery's David Rosenbloom. No comments

Bingham McCutchen has expanded its antitrust practice by adding a leading Japanese lawyer to its Tokyo office. Hiroshi Iyori comes to Bingham from Asahi Law Offices. Bingham, which has nearly 1,000 attorneys in 13 offices, said it will continue expanding the Tokyo office and plans to have more than 50 Japanese lawyers there by the fall. No comments

The 5th Circuit has handed Robert Jenevein, a former Dallas County judge, a partial victory in his seven-year fight with the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct. The unanimous panel ruled that the commission violated Jenevein's First Amendment free-speech rights in its January 2003 public censure of him. However, it also held that the commission could censure Jenevein for holding a news conference in his courtroom -- while wearing his judicial robes -- to criticize a Dallas attorney. No comments

Former Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, counsel to Salim Hamdan, the enemy combatant whose legal case, , made U.S. Supreme Court history, has been named acting director of the newly established International Humanitarian Law Clinic at Emory University School of Law. With Swift at the helm of the IHL clinic, law students will gain firsthand experience in the practice of humanitarian law by assisting organizations, law firms and military tribunals in prosecuting or defending individuals. No comments

A storm of perjury charges, subpoenas and political gamesmanship blew up and down Pennsylvania Avenue on Thursday as congressional Democrats widened what had started as a probe into whether President Bush's aides directed the firings of federal prosecutors. Justice Department officials sought to explain congressional testimony by FBI Director Robert Mueller that -- under protracted, hard-to-follow questioning -- seemed to contradict the sworn comments of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. No comments

Although congressional fervor to split the nation's largest federal appeals court may be waning, grumbling persisted at the 9th Circuit's annual judicial conference over repeated calls to divide the circuit. Among judges at the conference, one expressed concern that the U.S. Supreme Court may be signaling support for a split, while others criticized a newspaper opinion column that linked the circuit's size to the likelihood of "extreme" decisions. No comments

The state of California recently approved regulations under A.B. 1825 - the law that requires training for supervisors for sexual harassment.  According to the California Labor and Employment Law Blog, the regulations will go into effect on August 17th.  These... No comments