* Let’s see…a corrupt Laguardia Community College instructor on the one hand, and students dumb enough to think that a slightly better grade in computer science will compensate for the fact that they attend Laguardia Community College…I won’t comment, lest you think I’m elitist or something. [Newsday]
* Sponsoring babies, but not the Sally Struthers way. [Madisonian]
* And another way in which babies can pay off. [Cookie; The Poop]
* We too are hoping the judge’s mishandling of this case comes back to bite shoot him in the ass. [Legal Reader]
* So Tom Brady is like one of 5 football players I actually recognize. (I’m exaggerating of course — I’m counting Tiki Barber as two.) Well, he’s suing Yahoo! for improperly using his image in its promotion of Fantasy Football. (Which is strange since he did not sue SNL for skits that made him look as interesting as a brick.) [The Smoking Gun]
Plaintiffs Firms
People pay attention to a judge’s reversal rate — how often that jurist gets reversed by a higher court. And a high reversal rate is usually regarded as “not a good thing.”
But we kinda admire judges who aren’t overly concerned with their reversal rate. We respect judges who are willing to go out on a limb, who aren’t afraid to take the law in new and interesting directions — no matter what the folks upstairs might think. Such judges play a key role in the evolution and clarification of the law.*
Some of you might criticize such an envelope-pushing approach to judging as improper, even “lawless.” But here at ATL, we call it entertaining!
Meet Judge Melinda Harmon (S.D. Tex.). She’s the trial judge responsible for the jury instructions in the Arthur Andersen prosecution, which the Supreme Court didn’t like so much. And now she’s handed down another interesting ruling:
In a decision that she conceded flies in the face of previous rulings by other courts, a federal judge in Houston has ordered the law firm of William S. Lerach, a leading class-action lawyer, to pay the legal fees and costs of a company he sued.
The company, Alliance Capital, a money management firm, was sued by Mr. Lerach’s firm as part of a large Enron class-action case. The lawsuit argued that Alliance should be held responsible for the Enron fraud because an Alliance official was also a director of Enron.
The federal rules permit awards of fees and costs. But these are usually paid by the parties, NOT by their law firms.
More about this groundbreaking ruling, after the jump.
The Borat litigation juggernaut rolls on. And Fox, the studio behind the hit movie, is fighting back:
Fox attorneys filed a legal brief Monday slamming a request for a preliminary injunction against the hit comedy “Borat” as a “fatuous” attempt to thwart free speech, even as the studio’s legal battle spread to a second front.
“Plaintiffs may claim that they were tricked ‘into making fools out of themselves’ and becoming ‘unsuspecting players’ in the movie ‘Borat,’ ” the studio said in opposing the request. “They never contend … that bigoted and misogynistic statements were put into their mouths.”
The plaintiffs are the two fraternity brothers who are suing the studio for depicting them as bigots and misogynists — after they made, on camera, bigoted and misogynistic statements.
The frat boys may not be terribly sympathetic plaintiffs. But they’re not the only ones suing over Borat:
[A]ttorneys representing a pair of villagers in Glod, Romania, filed a $30 million lawsuit over their roles in “Borat.”
Filed in U.S. District Court in New York, the suit seeks to stop distribution of the film until scenes showing plaintiffs Nicolae Todorache and Spiridom Ciorebea are removed.
It didn’t take long for plaintiffs’ lawyers to discover Bhopal. What took them so long to find Glod?
Fox Fires Back at “Borat” Suit [Hollywood Reporter]
Earlier: Prior ATL coverage of Borat (scroll down)
The icky plaintiffs’ lawyers, or the obscenely rich private equity tycoons? Both can be less than appealing at times, although for different reasons.
Our big brother blog has the details.
Private Equity Gets Hit With Class Action Suit [DealBreaker]
- Allen & Overy, Bad Ideas, Bankruptcy, Biglaw, Fried Frank, Matthew Gluck, Milberg Weiss, Patricia Hynes, Plaintiffs Firms
Musical Chairs: Parachuting Onto a Sinking Ship?
By David LatWe’re vaguely troubled by the title of this WSJ Law Blog post (’cause it makes us think of this). But it does report on a notable move within the legal profession, so we will plow ahead.
From the aforementioned post:
Matthew Gluck is joining Milberg Weiss Bershad & Schulman as a senior partner, marking a significant hire for the plaintiffs’ law firm. Gluck had been a litigation partner at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson since 1973….
Milberg Weiss was indicted in May on fraud charges based on allegations that it paid plaintiffs to file cases. It pleaded not guilty and has vowed to fight the charges. Since the indictment, the firm has lost a significant number of partners and associates.
Gluck’s move continues the trend of breaking down the barrier between plaintiffs’ firms and Biglaw. Sometimes Biglaw associates might, after a few years of practice, move over to the plaintiffs’ side; but such moves at the partner level were much less common. Biglaw was Biglaw, plaintiffs’ firms were plaintiffs’ firms, and never the twain shall meet.
This may be changing. Gluck’s move, from Fried Frank to Milberg Weiss, comes not long after former Milberg Weiss name partner Patricia Hynes moved in the opposite direction — from Milberg Weiss to the New York office of Allen & Overy, the defense-oriented British firm.*
So why did Gluck make the move?
Gluck, 64 years old, is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Cornell University. He told the WSJ’s Nathan Koppel he was soon facing retirement age at Fried Frank and wanted a new challenge.
Attempting to turn around a class-action-complaint mill under federal indictment would indeed qualify as a “challenge.” But the undaunted Gluck is surprisingly sanguine about Milberg’s future:
“I don’t know why people have left [the firm] except for panic,” he says. “It doesn’t strike me as rational.”
Not “rational”? Clients defecting en masse, partners fleeing in droves, courts taking the firm off cases, or refusing to appoint them in new ones… Call us Debbie Downer, but this doesn’t sound too promising.
Even if you question the original decisions of clients, partners, and courts to abandon Milberg in the first instance, here’s the problem: the prophecy of doom has turned self-fulfilling. Does the name “Arthur Andersen” ring a bell? Even though the accounting firm was ultimately vindicated in the Supreme Court, that vindication came too late.
But hey, Matt Gluck’s arrival is undoubtedly a good thing for Milberg. In addition to being an experienced litigator, Gluck has — as noted by Milberg Weiss managing partner Sanford Dumain — “superb credentials in the area of bankruptcy law.”
* Yes, Allen & Overy is one of the “Magic Circle” firms. There, we said it. Now wasn’t that fun?
Fried Frank Partner Comes In Through Milberg’s Out Door [WSJ Law Blog]
Milberg Gets Fried Frank Veteran [Wall Street Journal]
Against Tide, Lawyer Joins Milberg Weiss [New York Times]
Matthew Gluck bio [Martindale-Hubbell]
- Ann Althouse, Celebrities, Fashion, Glenn Reynolds, Law Schools, Money, Non-Sequiturs, Orin Kerr, Plaintiffs Firms, Pornography, Project Runway, Prostitution, Tax Law
Supplemental Non-Sequiturs: 10.20.06
By David LatNow that we have the able assistance of Stella Q for Non-Sequiturs — check out her great post from yesterday — we have no place for random links that catch our eye, but don’t merit full treatment in a separate post. Blogospheric leftovers, if you will.
So here’s a special midday “bonus edition” of Non-Sequiturs:
* “Law porn”: Glenn Reynolds is not turned on. [Instapundit]
* Wherever there’s a financial debacle, the plaintiffs’ lawyers can’t be far behind. [DealBreaker]
* Project Runway: We were thinking (and hoping) that Uli Herzner would win. But Professor Althouse called this one correctly. [Althouse]
* This paper sounds interesting. Can it justify damage awards that include payments for prostitute visits? [PrawfsBlawg]
* “[T]he Nietzschean alternative: a postmodern appropriation of pop culture that turns an entire class into a video game.” Unorthodox? Certainly. But it also sounds kinda fun. [Concurring Opinions]
* Forget about Kansas’ Kansas’s Kansas’ issues. What’s the matter with Namibia? [WSJ Law Blog]
* CNN has its finger on the pulse of America — and Orin Kerr is giggling. [Volokh Conspiracy]
- Allen & Overy, Michael Chepiga, Milberg Weiss, Pamela Rogers Chepiga, Patricia Hynes, Plaintiffs Firms, Simpson Thacher
Milberg Weiss Death Watch: Now It’s Getting Really Bad
By David LatSince it went and got itself indicted, things have been less than peachy-keen over at Milberg Weiss, everyone’s favorite class-action complaint factory. Milberg has lost oodles of prominent partners to other plaintiffs’ firms. And now things are turning downright ugly:
Patricia Hynes, a former name partner of Milberg Weiss, is crossing over to the other side. Starting today, she will be a senior counsel in the New York office of Allen & Overy, an elite, London-based firm that defends companies against securities-fraud litigation, according to a release issued by A&O. “We are desperately trying to build the U.S component of a great firm,” says A&O partner Pamela Rogers Chepiga,* who notes that she used to work with Hynes in the U.S Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.
Yes, that’s right. Pat Hynes — who was a name partner at Milberg, back when it was called Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach — is going to be a defense lawyer in securities class actions.
Congratulations to Hynes for seeing the light — or, at the very least, the fat paycheck that A&O probably dangled before her.
Milberg Weiss Heavyweight Bolts to the Other Side [WSJ Law Blog]
Earlier: Prior AboveTheLaw coverage of Milberg Weiss
* The legal world is a small one: Pamela Rogers Chepiga is the wife of Simpson Thacher powerhouse partner Michael Chepiga (who also finds time to be a Broadway playwright).
(Disclosure: Back when we were in private practice, Michael Chepiga got mad at us on the telephone — and was entirely in the right. After changing into dry underwear, we called him and left a voice-mail of one thousand apologies.)
- Anna Schneider-Mayerson, Bad Ideas, Bonuses, Melvyn Weiss, Milberg Weiss, New York Observer, Parties, Plaintiffs Firms, Wachtell Lipton, Yachts
Milberg Weiss Death Watch: Partying on a Sinking Ship
By David LatOne of our favorite legal reporters, Anna Schneider-Mayerson of the New York Observer — a paper that is, by the way, now under new ownership — chimes in on the slow death of securities class-action behemoth Milberg Weiss (headed by Melvyn Weiss, pictured).
Most of her piece summarizes recent developments that have been reported previously elsewhere. But the article does contain some nice color, including details about the indicted firm’s summer party on board an enormous yacht.
Some of our favorite anecdotes, after the jump.
Continue reading “Milberg Weiss Death Watch: Partying on a Sinking Ship”
Milberg Weiss, the plaintiffs’ side class-action factory under federal indictment, continues to fall apart before our very eyes. The former legal powerhouse, which just lost partner Christopher Jones, suffers another defection. CalLaw’s Legal Pad reports:
The most recent [departure] is William Fredericks, a New York-based partner who’s joining rival Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossman.
“We’re thankful to have a partner of Bill’s background and experience on the Bernstein Litowitz team,” Bernstein partner John “Sean” Coffey said Monday.
Plaintiffs’ lawyers are so predictable. What’s that saying about rats and a sinking ship?
Milberg’s Partner Flight Continues [Legal Pad - CalLaw.com]
Earlier: Milberg Weiss: The Harder They Fall
-
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