Lawyer - News

Four international airlines have agreed to pay $504 million in fines to settle charges they conspired to fleece consumers by driving up cargo shipping prices. The Justice Department called the case one of the largest antitrust settlements in U.S. history. Associate Attorney General Kevin O'Connor called the scam an "international price-fixing cartel" that cost consumers hundreds of millions of dollars between 2001 and 2006. In some instances, for example, fuel surcharges rose by 1,000 percent. No comments

The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the "millionaire's amendment," a campaign finance law that says when House candidates spend more than $350,000 from their own pockets, opponents may qualify to accept larger individual contributions than normally allowed and can receive unlimited coordinated party expenditures. The justices, in a 5-4 ruling that reflects skepticism of campaign finance overhauls, said the law violates the First Amendment. No comments

The New York Court of Appeals on Wednesday revived a legal malpractice suit against law firm Larossa, Mitchell & Ross over its representation of personal injury lawyer Morris J. Eisen, who was found to have defrauded New York City by fabricating evidence in tort cases. The accusations and subsequent prosecution of lawyers and investigators for Morris J. Eisen PC -- once one of New York's top personal injury firms -- was a major scandal in the legal community. No comments

Wachtell litigation partner Lawrence Pedowitz bills $875 an hour. That figure has come to light in a federal court filing, as the National Basketball Association seeks restitution of more than $1 million in legal expenses from former referee Timothy Donaghy, who is set to be sentenced in July on felony fraud charges. NBA commissioner David Stern hired Pedowitz last summer to conduct an internal investigation of the league's referee program after Donaghy was discovered to have engaged in illicit gambling. No comments

A federal appeals court has rejected a class action suit brought by uninsured hospital patients who claimed that the practice of charging them significantly higher rates than those for insured patients or people covered under Medicare and Medicaid is discriminatory and violates consumer protection laws. In its 21-page opinion in , a unanimous three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals took the rare step of adopting the lower court's opinion as its own. No comments

Jackson Lewis has opened an office in Memphis, Tenn., making it the sixth new location for the labor and employment law firm this year. So far in 2008, Jackson Lewis has opened offices in Albuquerque, N.M.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Portsmouth, N.H.; Las Vegas and Detroit. The law firm, with about 420 attorneys, focuses exclusively on management workplace issues. No comments

New York's highest court on Wednesday upheld the dismissal of claims brought by a woman who had sued her rabbi for abusing his position by allegedly persuading her to have sex with him to help her find a husband. The court said Adina Marmelstein failed to meet a rigorous pleading standard required to pursue damage claims against the rabbi, Mordecai Tendler, who Marmelstein claimed told her "he was as close to God as anyone could get" and having sex with him would be "her only hope." No comments

California Attorney General Jerry Brown sued Countrywide Financial Corp. and its top officers June 25, accusing the lending giant of pushing unwitting homebuyers into risky loans that resulted in thousands of defaults and foreclosures. Brown is seeking an injunction barring Countrywide employees from "making any untrue or misleading statements" during future sales, plus damages of $2,500 for each time a company agent had engaged in deception or other unfair business practices. The complaint also asks for unspecified damages for Countrywide borrowers. No comments

In a historic 5-4 decision Thursday, the Supreme Court declared for the first time that the Second Amendment protects an individual right -- not a collective or militia right -- to keep and bear firearms for self-defense. The ruling ended the Court's nearly 70-year aversion to considering the meaning of the amendment's oddly constructed language, but likely marks the beginning, not the end, of litigation over Second Amendment rights. No comments

In the latest sign of an ever-tightening legal market, a new Altman Weil survey shows that more chief legal officers are planning to decrease their reliance on outside counsel and increase their in-house staffs in the coming year. To hold their ground, law firms must understand how that consolidation will take place, consultants say. Survey respondents also predicted that cost will continue to be the greatest concern among chief legal officers over the next five years. No comments