* It took SCOTUS more than four hours to write one sentence. But oh, to be a fly on the wall last night when they decided to deny a stay of execution for Troy Davis. [New York Times]
* AT&T wants to take the DOJ’s antitrust case to trial. This must be some sort of a joke, but the only punchline I can think of is the company’s crappy wireless network. [Bloomberg]
* Court-clogger or pocket-stuffer: Andrew Cuomo is debating signing a bill that could put more money into the hands of class action attorneys. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]
* GW Law ex-adjunct Richard Lieberman was disbarred this week. What is with all of these lawyers who try to seduce minors online? Such a weird casualty of this profession. [National Law Journal]
* Because Chanel No. 399 just doesn’t sound as classy as Chanel No. 5, the company has filed a massive trademark infringement lawsuit against nearly 400 defendants. [ABC News]
* Memo to our readers: You know our exploding car thing was just a caption contest, right? We weren’t anticipating a real life lawyer car bombing. [Forbes]
I’m always amazed when people aren’t afraid to let everybody know their prejudices. Even a little impressed. In most situations, people try to their disguise their disgust at an entire class of people, or at least try to express their viewpoints from behind a cloak of anonymity. But when people just come balls out with their prejudices, well, it’s a sight to see.
And when people who serve in official government positions reveal their contempt for the separation of church and state, that just makes it so much better.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that a person like Laura Fotusky fascinates me. She’s the former town clerk in Barker, New York, who chose to resign rather than sign a gay marriage license. Apparently the new New York gay marriage law conflicted with Fotusky’s interpretation of God’s law. Or, put another way, Fotusky thought she was teaching Sunday school, and then woke up one day as the town clerk of Barker, New York.
At least she corrected the problem, and for that she should be applauded….
Continue reading “Town Clerk In New York Resigns Rather Than Enforcing The Law — The ‘Gay’ Law, Of Course”
We live in the age of ulcer-inducing, never-ending budget cuts. It’s surprising, though, when the chopping block can help the government achieve some progress, instead of just slicing its legs off.
And what do you know? We happen to have recent news of that sort from the New York Unified Court System.
Last week, Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman proposed to cut $100 million from the $2.7 billion 2011-2012 state court budget. But his plan doesn’t just take money away from cute little babies and helpless lawyers. If Lippman gets his way, a big chunk of the cuts will come from implementing mandatory e-filing statewide.
Why didn’t this happen years ago? Way to make lemonade, Judge!
How did this come to pass?
Continue reading “The Digital Courtroom: Apparently Not a Pipe Dream”
* Hiscock & Barclay cut Andrew Cuomo a $45K check and one of the firm’s lawyers got a deal. Does pay-to-play go both ways in New York? [New York Daily News]
* John du Pont: millionaire, maniac, murderer… miracle worker? He died just in time to avoid the return of the 55% IRS death tax. [Los Angeles Times; TaxProf Blog]
* I ❤ boobies, you ❤ boobies, but this school thinks that they’re lewd. Come on, even the New York Times ❤s boobies. [Legal Intelligencer]
* Calling a client a “cheap lunatic” isn’t a very good idea, especially when your firm is overcharging by $540K. Just ask Goodwin Procter. [Boston Globe]
* Time to find a new fetish to deposit in your spank banks, sickos, because animal crush videos have been banned (again). [CNN Politics]
* Despite Mark Madoff’s suicide, Irving Picard still has him on a short leash is pursuing litigation against the Madoffs. All clawback lawsuits against the family will continue to move ahead. [Wall Street Journal]
* An inconvenient truth? A massage therapist in Oregon previously accused Al Gore, once thought to be a robot eunuch, of unwanted sexual advances. Is this why the Gores’ marriage didn’t have a happy ending? [Associated Press]
* YouTube scores a “decisive win” over Viacom in their long-running litigation over copyright infringement, thanks to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act’s “safe harbor” provision. [Technology & Marketing Law Blog / Eric Goldman]
* Should Judge Martin Feldman have recused himself in the deep-water drilling case? [WSJ Law Blog]
* Is Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan getting “borked” — by Bork? [The BLT via ABA Journal]
* Alleged Jamaican drug lord Christopher Coke, a fugitive from justice, is captured; Manatt Phelps claims it never did lobbying work in the Coke case. [Am Law Daily]
* New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, now running for governor, has accepted millions in campaign cash from special interests (some of whom he has pursued as AG). [New York Times]
* Five Muslim men from Virginia are each sentenced by a Pakistani court to at least 10 years in prison, on terrorism charges. [Washington Post]
* Americans are warming up to Lady Kaga: public support for confirming Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court has reached 58 percent. [Washington Post]
* But two Republican senators have issues with some of the memos Kagan wrote as a law clerk to Justice Marshall. [Associated Press via How Appealing]
* As new estimates double the rate of oil flowing into the gulf, the gusher of lawsuits against BP continues — aided by ad campaigns from plaintiffs’ lawyers. [New York Times]
* Meanwhile, Attorney General Eric Holder insists that “the American people will not pay a dime toward the cleanup of the Gulf region” because “BP will be held responsible.” [The BLT: Blog of the Legal Times]
* Tagged.com has been tagged with accusations of tolerating child pornography; New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo may sue. [Wired]
* He loves to work for people who fly and it shows: former Delta lawyer John Varley becomes the new general counsel of Virgin America. [Atlanta Business Chronicle]
We’ve previously covered a sticky situation involving an alleged drafting error by real estate lawyers at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. The dispute pits the buyers of luxury condos at the Rushmore, on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, against the development company Extell, Stroock’s client. (Our prior coverage appears here, here, and here.)
When we last checked in, the New York Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, had sided with the buyers and ruled against Extell. But instead of just rolling over, which is what most folks do when attacked by the New York AG, Extell is fighting back. From the Real Deal (via Am Law Daily):
In a last minute and stunning move, the developers of the Upper West Side’s Rushmore condominium filed a federal lawsuit [on Monday] against state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo seeking to reverse his April rescission order to refund more than $16 million in escrow funds to buyers.
The developers, Extell Development and Carlyle Realty Partners, operating under the name CRP/Extell, also filed a motion in U.S. District Court seeking a temporary restraining order that would block the release of the funds, which include down payments for more than $110 million worth of apartments.
In its moving papers, Extell kind of throws Stroock under the proverbial bus — but just a little bit….
Continue reading “Stroock Strikes Back? The Firm’s Client Sues Andrew Cuomo in Federal Court”
A couple of weeks ago, I asked if the mainstream media was aware of the existence of Biglaw lawyers. They’re still not, but the New York Attorney General is. Dealbook reports:
Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo fired another shot at Bank of America on Tuesday, asking the bank to allow its lawyers to be questioned.
In a letter to the bank’s outside counsel, Lewis J. Liman of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton, Mr. Cuomo wrote that “attorney-client privilege is hindering this office’s ability to make fair and fully informed decisions as to what charges, if any, to bring and whether individual Bank of America officers should be charged.”
What, does Andrew Cuomo want BOA to waive privilege to help him out? I’m not sure that this is how to run a prosecutor’s office, but it seems like a pretty effective way to run for Governor through the headlines.
Cuomo Takes Aim at Bank of America’s Lawyers [Dealbook]
Earlier: The Mainstream Media Is Aware That Law Firms Exist, Right?
It’s not often that the worlds of law and fashion intersect. There’s much more overlap between the worlds of law and finance, ably covered by our colleagues at Dealbreaker.
But an investigation by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo into the practice known as “astroturfing” offers us this opportunity to give a shout-out to the glamorous world of beauty and fashion. Read more (and comment) over at our sister site, Fashionista.
Cuomo’s Beauty Crackdown [Fashionista]
* The Pennsylvania Supreme Court ruled that hundreds of juvenile court cases in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania will soon be overturned. After former judge Mark Ciavarella pleaded guilty to accepting bribes from juvenile prisons in exchange for more convictions, the state hired a “Special Master” to investigate. He is not a Malasian Martial Arts expert or the Commander of a space shuttle. [WNEP news]
* Cuomo is still running around in his superhero cape putting out bonus fires. He has expanded his investigation into credit derivatives to see whether banks like Goldman Sachs received taxpayer funds. Do I smell a presidential run in 2012? [Bloomberg]
* In a stunning act of self parody, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has picked a Director for the NRA for the state’s new Attorney General. Check out this sweet picture of him sitting on a hummer. [Anchorage Daily News]
* Former Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff has joined Covington & Burling. [Covington & Burling LLP]
* Wisconsin Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen has a different response to executive compensation than Cuomo and Blumenthal. He says “..there is no law in Wisconsin making a contract illegal simply because someone is well compensated.” [The Wall Street Journal]
* In case you missed it, ATL got a shout out in the New York Times and Time Magazine.
* United Airlines settled a suit filed by a former pilot, who resigned after repeatedly finding porn in hidden places in her cockpit, including underneath a cap on a safety device called a “stick shaker” (no pun intended). Click to see United’s ridiculous effort to dismiss. [The Seattle Times]
* Attorney General Andrew Cuomo convinced 9 out of the top 10 bonus recipients at AIG to return their bonuses. Who is number 10? [The New York Times]
* Barney Frank called Antonin Scalia a “homophobe.” [The Associated Press]
* It turns out that Madoff has more than $1 billion worth of assets and the french authorities plan to seize his chateau in Cap d’Antibe, France, so maybe his victims can get a time share? No? [The Associated Press]
* A court battle between billionaire Wilbur Ross and hedge fund manager Bruce Rose may be the key to understanding the housing crisis. [Bloomberg]
* A sex-discrimination suit against Wal-Mart reaches the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals today. 200 female employees say women in comparable jobs don’t get paid as much as men. [The Huffington Post]
* Preservationists think a landmark case in Chicago is cause for alarm. [The New York Times]
* AIG turned in the list of bonus recipients to New York’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo yesterday–let the games begin. Just kidding, I too fear for the safety of heavily compensated AIG executives–there is nothing scarier than an angry progressive. [The Los Angeles Times]
* Dispensers of medical marijuana have room to breathe after Attorney General Eric Holder announced that federal authorities would cease raiding their operations. [The New York Times]
* Attorney General Eric Holder issued guidelines to federal agencies after The White House advised them to release their records to the public. [The Washington Post]
* A 3-judge federal appeals panel is considering whether or not to re-instate Madoff’s bail–springing him from jail until sentencing in June. [Newsday]
* Albert Hu, a Silicon Valley hedge fund manager conned clients by saying he was represented by prominent law firms like Heller Ehrman and Shaw Pittman; he was arrested in Hong Kong, and charged with defrauding millions from investors. [The National Law Journal]
* Another sad tale of an associate whose offer has been put on hold–his employer Latham & Watkins is asking incoming attorney’s to defer their start dates. [The National Law Journal]
* Michael Jackson “beat it” without paying his legal bill. [The Daily Breeze]
* Former Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain testified for 2.5 hours yesterday in New York in Attorney General Andrew Cuomo’s office, but wouldn’t say which employees got some of the $3.6 billion bonus pie before the merger with B of A. How are we supposed to know which men to date when we get laid off? Kidding….[Bloomberg]
* More than 100 clients of a man who pretended to be an immigration lawyer got free advice from Lawyers at the New York City Bar Association. [The New York Times]
* SCOTUS had a big day yesterday, ruling on a Utah union case and a case involvingIndian reservations, and hearing arguments on environmental cleanups. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the first to ask questions. [ABA Journal]
* In Houston, a Republican on the congressional judiciary has called for the impeachment of U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent, aka the groper we’ve been writing about, who is still hoping to get retirement funds from the state. [The Houston Chronicle]
* Show me the money. Lawyers, bankers, and accountants stand to make $1.2 billion in fees from GM’s bankruptcy. [Bloomberg.com]
* The NYT’s official statement on L’Affaire Berenson. [Starkman & Associates]
* A slew of law school hypotheticals about sex with and between minors, triggered by Carl Stanley McGee, our Lawyer of the Day. [PrawfsBlawg]
* Second runner-up for Lawyer of the Day? And a punitive damages award of $33 million. Ouch. [How Appealing]
* Man saves dog; law student saves man. Congratulations to GW’s Jason Coates, our Law Student of the Day! [GW Hatchet]
* “Derek Jeter has romanced Mariah Carey, squired Jessica Biel, sweet-talked Scarlett Johansson — and now he’s made it to first base with the state taxman.” [TaxProf Blog]
* Wow, this is wild. Has Gary Crossen, a former federal prosecutor and partner at Foley Hoag, read too many John Grisham novels? [WSJ Law Blog]
* Speaking of white-collar criminal defense lawyers, more business may be headed their way, courtesy of Andrew Cuomo. [DealBreaker]
* You’ve got… male? [Reuters]
* Are you a Disgruntled Republican? Join the club — or buy a mug. [Zazzle]
* A shout-out to the Elect on TV tonight. The lawyer protagonist of the new ABC drama, “Eli Stone” — portrayed by Jonny Lee Miller (pictured), an ex-husband of Angelina Jolie — is supposedly a former law clerk to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. [New York Times]
* A novel approach to the legal job hunt: build your own website, then advertise it in the ABA Journal. If Loyola 2L doesn’t have a job lined up already — although rumor has it that he does, which may explain his “retirement” from blogging — here’s something for him to consider. [3L for Hire and ABA Journal, via WSJ Law Blog]
* More proof that New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is a wannabe Eliot Spitzer. [DealBreaker]
* Lawyerly lairs: Tunisia. [flickr]
New York’s new Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has some big shoes to fill. Governor Eliot Spitzer, during his time as New York AG, was a very busy bee.
It looks like Cuomo has found a juicy scandal to sink his teeth into — one with possible implications for many of the law students among you. From the NYT:
The directors of financial aid at Columbia University, the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Southern California held shares in a student loan company that each of the universities recommends to student borrowers, and in at least two cases profited handsomely.
The personal stake of the three university officials in the company, now known as Student Loan Xpress, is the latest revelation in an expanding investigation by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo of New York into the relationships between student loan companies and universities. Student Loan Xpress is one of the “preferred lenders” recommended at all three universities.
Some interesting info from a tipster, after the jump.
Continue reading “‘Preferred Lenders’ for Financial Aid: A Big Racket?”
Nothing huge today, like yesterday’s news about Harriet Miers’s departure; but a few interesting moves. The two most noteworthy ones involve transitions between the public and private sectors:
From politics to private practice:
* Asa Hutchinson has rejoined Venable’s Washington office. Hutchinson — a former Undersecretary of Homeland Security, Republican congressman, and chief of the DEA — left the firm in March 2006, to run (unsuccessfully) for Arkansas governor.
From private sector to government:
* New York’s brand-new Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, snags another former federal prosecutor for his “dream team.” Henry Greenberg is leaving the Albany office of Greenberg Traurig to serve as Cuomo’s counsel.
Law firm news, after the jump.
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: 01.05.07″
Some other noteworthy moves within the legal profession (besides Chief Judge David Levi’s selection as Dean of Duke Law School):
Within government:
* This is big news: the new Attorney General for New York, Andrew Cuomo, has hired Barbara D. Underwood as his solicitor general.
Underwood has a resume to die for. She has served as counsel to Eastern District U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf, as chief assistant U.S. Attorney in the E.D.N.Y., and as principal deputy solicitor general over at the Justice Department (under President Bill Clinton and Attorney General Janet Reno).
Surprise surprise: Barbara Underwood is among the Elect (OT 1970/Marshall). We hear that she beat out other former Supreme Court clerks to win the New York SG job.
The fact that so many high-powered people were vying for the gig shows that state solicitor general posts are acquiring more and more cachet. Being an ex-SCOTUS clerk is rapidly becoming a requirement for these jobs. E.g., Ted Cruz in Texas (OT 1996/Rehnquist); Kevin Newsom in Alabama (OT 2000/Souter).
The rest of today’s transitions, plus links, after the jump.
Continue reading “Musical Chairs: 01.03.07″
Shortly after we predicted that he’d be making some personnel announcements, Andrew Cuomo, New York’s Attorney General-elect, made some personnel announcements. From the AP:
Cuomo, the eldest son of former Gov. Mario Cuomo, named Robin Baker as his executive deputy attorney general for criminal justice. Baker was the deputy chief of appeals for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan Southern District of New York. She has worked in that office since 1996, prosecuting gangs, terrorism, organized crime, narcotics, and other criminal cases.
Eric Corngold was named executive deputy attorney general for economic justice. He has served as chief assistant U.S. Attorney in Manhattan since 2005. He headed the office’s business and securities fraud unit from 1999 to 2005 and its general crimes unit from 1997 to 1999.
Baker and Corngold are impressive hires. They’re veterans of the S.D.N.Y. and E.D.N.Y., two of the most prestigious prosecutor’s offices in the country (recent setbacks notwithstanding).*
Correction: Thanks to “Ferris Reynolds” for this observation. Contrary to the AP report, Corngold was an AUSA in the Eastern District of New York, not the Southern District of New York. See, e.g., here and here.
Two other key Cuomo appointments announced today: Mylan Denerstein, head of legal affairs for the New York City Fire Department, was named executive deputy attorney general for social justice; and Jenny Rivera, of the New York City Commission on Human Rights, was named special deputy attorney general for civil rights.
* There appears to be a mini-trend of tristate attorneys general looking to federal prosecutors’ offices for talent. On the other side of the Hudson, Stuart Rabner, New Jersey’s new attorney general, has recruited from his former office, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Newark. For example, he picked John Vazquez, one of the U.S.A.O.’s most promising young prosecutors, to serve as his Special Assistant for criminal justice matters.
Cuomo Hires A Staff [The Politicker via The Daily Politics]
Cuomo names four appointments to attorney general’s office [Associated Press via Newsday]
Earlier: Coming Soon: Andy’s Kids
