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.
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.
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.
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.
In a Wednesday order, federal Judge James Ware enforced a settlement between Facebook and onetime rival ConnectU over claims that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg stole ideas and success from ConnectU. The settlement, which will give ConnectU undisclosed amounts of stock and cash, was disputed by ConnectU, which claimed it was a fraud. In a statement issued Thursday, Facebook claimed that the dispute over the settlement wasn’t about fraud; it was about ConnectU and its lawyers at Quinn Emanuel.
The Legal Blog Watch weighs in from the floor and conference rooms of LTWC 2008. Bloggers watch as Rob Robinson of Orange Legal Technologies conducts live webcam interviews; Chevron GC Charles James delivers a telling keynote; and Monica Bay posts answers to her conference quiz.
Like many organizations, title inflation has befallen law firms. Over the last decade, starting with the move of executive directors to chief operating officer titles, most functional managers have seen their titles elevated to the “C” level. Recruiter Michael DeCosta says that, while well intentioned, such titles can have a reverse effect on everyone as they cheapen the meaningfulness of the level. But used correctly, he says, they can represent a way to reward — and, in theory, retain — talent.
When Coke Zero marketers invited Web users to “take advantage of our revolutionary Sue-A-Friend Technology and sue the pants off anyone who is copying you,” they weren’t really soliciting suits against the Coca-Cola Co. But the diet drink’s ad campaign — featuring Coke managers who want to sue their counterparts at Coke Zero for “taste infringement” — has taken a sharp turn from camp to the real thing in federal court in Atlanta.
Kaye Scholer has been hit with a legal malpractice suit by an ex-client that claims the firm’s discovery errors forced it to enter into a $107 million antitrust settlement. Chemical and plastics giant Celanese Corp. announced last month it was paying that amount to resolve litigation by textile makers. In an amended complaint, Celanese says it only paid such a large settlement because Kaye Scholer’s failure to turn over thousands of documents to plaintiffs had exposed Celanese to draconian trial sanctions.
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.