Saturday, January 27, 2007

A high-profile lawyer whose firm was paid more than $1 billion for helping negotiate a settlement with tobacco companies in the mid-1990s will earn a far more modest paycheck for his work on Mississippi's accord with State Farm Fire & Casualty Co. over Hurricane Katrina damage. Richard "Dickie" Scruggs and other members of his legal team can collect up to $46 million in fees from Tuesday's accord with State Farm. The insurance company is expected to pay hundreds of millions of dollars.
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A Virginia judge declared a mistrial in an attempted-murder case and suggested the defense lawyer seek medical help after the attorney said he couldn't continue his closing statement because he had lost his train of thought. The defendant, charged with attempted capital murder, malicious wounding and use of a firearm, offered to finish the job himself.
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NEW YORK, NY UNITED STATES American Museum of Natural History 2007-01-05
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McKee Nelson said Friday that it has raised pay for first-year associates in its Washington, D.C., and New York offices to $160,000, setting a new bar for D.C. firms. The move came a day after both O'Melveny & Myers and Hogan & Hartson raised salaries for their D.C. starting associates to $145,000.
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[JURIST] The Committee to Protect Journalists [advocacy website], an international press freedom group, lashed out [press release] Friday at new media rules imposed in Bangladesh Thursday in the wake of the government's declaration of a state of
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The convergence over the past five years of litigation involving drugs such as Baycol, Propulsid and Rezulin has resulted in a steady increase in the amount of drug cases reported by major drug companies, according to statistics compiled by LexisNexis. But the increase has slowed slightly as litigation matures and as drug companies begin to settle, the figures indicate.


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New patent case filings in federal court increased by 4.2 percent between 2002 and 2003, continuing the upward trend that has resulted in a 130 percent increase in patent case filings from 1988 to 2003, according to a report released by LexisNexis.


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As large law firms grow larger and go international, some attorneys are departing for boutiques. Art Stroyd left Reed Smith after 32 years for a six-attorney firm. "I found more and more that I was doing fewer and fewer cases out of Pittsburgh," says Stroyd, who adds he didn't want to live out of a suitcase. Yet one recruiter says she doesn't anticipate big fallout for firms post-merger, saying larger firms are better at institutionalizing clients and companies have become used to paying higher rates.
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As the criminal and civil Brocade Communications cases slowly advance in tandem, tangles are occurring, and lawyers for ex-CEO Gregory Reyes are crying foul. Ex-employees recently invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to be deposed by Reyes' attorneys in connection with the SEC's civil charges. Those same witnesses were granted temporary immunity for an interview session with lawyers from the U.S. Attorney's Office and the SEC -- setting up what defense lawyers call an unfair advantage for the government.
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Craig Ball, EDD special master, observes that misplaced confidence in the power of keyword searches can unnecessarily burden the electronic data discovery process. He explains how the difference between a fruitul search and a failure hinges on thoughtful preparation and precaution.
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The Supreme Court's ruling in , which held that a patent licensee need not breach its license agreement to file a declaratory judgment action, overturned a Federal Circuit rule and will affect not only the law regarding declaratory judgment actions by licensees, but also the Federal Circuit's declaratory judgment jurisprudence generally. Morrison & Foerster's Charles S. Barquist and Jason A. Crotty examine the case's impact for both licensors and licensees.
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