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California Bans Restaurants From Using Trans Fats
California on Friday became the first state to ban trans fats from restaurant food, following several cities and major fast-food chains in erasing the notorious artery-clogger from menus. New York City, Philadelphia, Seattle and Montgomery County, Md., have ordinances banning trans fats, but California is the first state to adopt such a law covering restaurants, said Amy Winterfeld, a health policy analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Scalia Takes to the Stage to Make Case for Better Advocacy
Before a sizable crowd of lawyers and law students at Kennedy Center, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and co-author Bryan Garner held forth on Friday in what had to be one of the most unusual continuing legal education courses of all time. Alternating their way through all 115 tips for better advocacy from their book “Making Your Case: The Art of Persuading Judges,” the Scalia-Garner duet lavished funny asides and useful advice on their audience.
Judge to Dismiss McAfee Overbilling Suit Against Wilmer Cutler
A judge said he will dismiss McAfee’s lawsuit against Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale and Dorr over alleged overbilling in its $12 million criminal defense tab for representing former Chief Financial Officer Prabhat Goyal. But the anti-virus software maker’s fee fights are far from finished. It is still battling suits filed by Goyal and former GC Kent Roberts, who says the company is not meeting its contractual indemnity obligations to pay the Cooley Godward Kronish lawyers mounting his defense.
Legal Fee Bylaws May Need Change
A trio of decisions from the Delaware Court of Chancery concerning when officers, directors and law firms working for a company are entitled to advancement of legal fees has put companies on notice to revisit their bylaws. The most recent decision extended advancement rights to a company’s litigation counsel because it was acting as an agent of the company. Two other recent decisions turn on the companies’ own articles of incorporation and bylaws to order advancement in one case and deny it in the other.
Search Engine Optimization Means Business
Search engine optimization helps a law office develop a Web site that allows search engines such as Google or Yahoo to find it and rank it high in search results. The higher you climb in search ranking, the more likely you will bring in business from the clicks of potential clients.
Scalia takes to stage to tell lawyers how to win (AP)
AP - It’s a pretty good crowd for a summer Friday morning at Kennedy Center. From stage right (where else?) Justice Antonin Scalia enters.
Five Tapped for Federal Bench Openings in Pennsylvania
The Eastern District of Pennsylvania federal bench will soon be welcoming four new judges and bidding farewell to one judge who will be elevated to the 3rd Circuit if the Senate confirms a package of judicial nominations announced late Thursday. U.S. District Judge Paul S. Diamond was nominated to fill one of two vacancies on the 3rd Circuit and, if confirmed, would leave the Eastern District with four vacancies. Sources said the package of nominees has a good chance of winning confirmation.
High Court Justices Go Digital to Access Founding-Era Documents
U.S. Supreme Court justices on both sides in last term’s landmark gun rights case resorted to original documents in making their arguments about the meaning of the Second Amendment. But they — as well as the lawyers in the case — used a little-known digital resource to find them: The Constitutional Sources Project, which has digitized and made freely available online more than 11,000 historical documents relating to the Constitution and the amendments.
$10 Million Verdict Upheld Against PricewaterhouseCoopers
Georgia’s Court of Appeals has upheld a $10 million jury verdict against PricewaterhouseCoopers on behalf of four family trusts. In 2007, a jury found the Big Four accounting firm liable for negligent misrepresentation in a series of financial audits of a nursing home conglomerate. Two brothers associated with the trusts claimed that PwC had engaged in fraud that cost them more than $126 million in stock losses.
Dead Man’s Hand Plays Out in IP Case
The dry, technical world of patent law apparently has a seamy underbelly. And it was all hanging out Tuesday when MultiMetrixs’ patent infringement suit against Applied Materials was irrevocably besmirched by documents supposedly signed by a dead man and a witness who’d sold freon to meth dealers.