Securities and Exchange Commission

Morning Docket: 11.09.11

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* Yet another appeals court has has ruled that Obamacare is constitutional. Aww, can’t we wait for the other side to catch up a little before it goes to the Supreme Court? [Wall Street Journal]

* How did it go for this controversial ballot initiative? As it turns out, the personhood amendment was so stupid that it couldn’t even pass in Mississippi. Color me surprised. [New York Times]

* Raj Rajaratnam has to pay $92.8M in penalties in his SEC case, but come on, he’s a billionaire. Much like the honey badger, Raj don’t care, and he certainly don’t give a sh*t. [Bloomberg]

* We thought this might be a swing and a miss, but the Dodgers won approval to pay Dewey & LeBoeuf and Young Conaway after hitting the Trustee’s curveball out of the park. [Businessweek]

* Best use of footnotes ever? Pitbull’s lawyers are trying to get LiLo’s case against him removed to federal court, and gossip rags are cited in the footnotes more than law. [Hollywood Reporter]

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Lawsuit of the Day: Everyone’s A Loser in Tamman v. Nixon Peabody

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A few years ago, the law firm of Nixon Peabody came up with a catchy jingle to celebrate its own fabulosity. You can listen to the song here, in case you’ve never heard it. The chorus went as follows: “Everyone’s a winner at Nixon Peabody!”

Alas, a recent lawsuit filed against Nixon Peabody by a former partner at the firm, David Tamman, does not put the firm in a very winning light. Instead, it just makes everyone look bad.

The allegations are seamy. What does Tamman allege?

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Non-Sequiturs: 09.02.11

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Judge Ginsburg: back to school.

* Judge Douglas Ginsburg (D.C. Cir.) is taking senior status and joining the NYU Law faculty. Query how this will affect his feeding (and no, we’re not talking about New York versus D.C. restaurants). [The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times]

* “Two Examples of Things Not to Say When You’re at Your Local IRS Office.” [Going Concern]

* Speaking of efficiency-challenged government entities, how can the U.S. postal service be fixed? Professor Gerard Magliocca floats some ideas. [Concurring Opinions]

Madonna: going to court.

* Should you rinse religion from your résumé? Reflections from Professor Paul Horwitz. [PrawfsBlawg]

* The Material Girl is going to trial — over the trademark to “Material Girl.” [Fashionista]

* It’s not just law schools that are getting sued for fraud; it’s happening to art schools too. [PetaPixel]

* Elsewhere in litigation land, Quinn Emanuel is making bank — by suing banks. [Thomson Reuters News & Insight]

* What’s the deal with high-frequency trading algorithms? Fear not; the SEC is on the case. [Dealbreaker]

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Non-Sequiturs: 08.26.11

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Elie wishes he had taken the nuggets.

* What can law firms learn from Folgers crystals? Maybe how to provide legal services rich enough to be served to America’s finest corporations. [What About Clients?]

* A look at what $100,000 in law school loans could have purchased instead — e.g., 505,050 chicken nuggets from Wendy’s. [Constitutional Daily]

* What kind of “reasonable accommodations” are alcoholics entitled to in the workplace? A three-martini mojito lunch sounds good to me. [Overlawyered]

* Some thoughts from Henry Blodget on Groupon and the SEC-mandated “quiet period.” Any thoughts, readers, on Blodget’s take on attorney/client privilege? [Business Insider]

* Professor Ann Althouse on the exoneration of Justice David Prosser (noted in Morning Docket): “A justice is despised because his decisions do not please liberals, and so, without thought, they forgot about things liberals like to love themselves for caring about, such as fairness and due process.” [Althouse]

Is it wrong to find Justin Bieber totally hot? Just askin'....

* E-discovery is moving to the cloud. What are the opportunities and the risks? Ben Kerschberg and Bret Laughlin discuss. [Forbes]

* Speaking of e-discovery, the DISH Network and Redgrave LLP are sponsoring an e-discovery research and writing competition, open to law students. [dishdiscovery]

* Law librarian Joe Hodnicki weighs in on the controversy over ScamProf aka Paul Campos and his controversial blog. [Law Librarian Blog]

* If you share Staci’s opinion that Justin Bieber “kind of looks like a girl,” here’s some support for your viewpoint. [Fashionista]

* The American Constitution Society is holding an online symposium in honor of the unveiling of the Martin Luther King Jr. National Memorial. [ACSblog]

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Non-Sequiturs: 08.12.11

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Tyler Clementi and Dharun Ravi: both said politically incorrect things.

* The Kardashians may be “America’s rightful overlords,” as Marin so memorably put it, but even they must respect intellectual-property laws. [Fashionista]

* Congratulations to the Best LGBT Lawyers Under 40 (class of 2011). Perhaps you know some of the inductees? [National LGBT Bar Association]

* In less cheerful LGBT news… another day, another Republican politician allegedly trolling the internet for paid male companionship. Stay classy, Phil Hinkle. [Indianapolis Star]

* Tyler Clementi joked about Dharun Ravi’s parents owning a Dunkin’ Donuts shop. [New York Magazine]

Must lobster salad contain lobster?

* So just who is behind Inside the Law School Scam? Con Daily got an interview with LawProf, and breaks down a list of schools where LawProf may be employed. [Constitutional Daily]

* The SEC is sniffing around S&P; Matt Levine explains why. [Dealbreaker]

* When it comes to taking “reasonable” steps to prevent disclosure of privileged materials, perfection is not required, according to Magistrate Judge Paul W. Grimm. [Catalyst E-Discovery Search Blog (Bob Ambrogi)]

* A popular grocery store on the Upper West Side thought that it could get away with mislabeling its lobster salad. Not so fast… where’s Kash when you need her? [New York Times]

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Matt Kluger, Ex-Biglaw Associate Charged With Insider Trading, Is A Gay Dad — and Once Sued Fried Frank Over It

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Matthew Kluger aka Big Gay Matt

“Aww, Matt, why do you have to go around giving us a bad name?”

Ever since Matthew Kluger was charged in a massive insider trading case, involving an alleged conspiracy that spanned 17 years and generated more than $32 million in profit, the foregoing question could be asked by many groups: Cornell grads, NYU law grads, Cravath lawyers, Skadden lawyers, and Wilson Sonsini lawyers.

Tonight we can add more groups to the list: Fried Frank lawyers, and gays — specifically, gay dads.

As reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier tonight, Matt Kluger worked at yet another major law firm: Fried Frank. After he was fired by the firm in 2002, he sued, claiming that partners there discriminated against him because he’s gay — and a father of three, with parenting responsibilities.

Just when you thought this case couldn’t get any weirder, it just did. Matthew Kluger is gay. And a dad. With three kids. Thanks for sending America such a positive image of LGBT parents, Matt!

Let’s take a closer look at Kluger’s suit against Fried Frank — and additional details about Matt Kluger’s complicated personal life, gleaned from ATL tipsters….

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Morning Docket: 03.09.11

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Gov. Pat Quinn

* The opening of the RaJabba Rajaratnam trial will be gripping, apparently. [Reuters]

* The S.E.C. is being attacked again about its ethical standards. It’s not like these problems started with Cam Newton. I mean, the S.E… what’s that? The Securities and Exchange Commission? What? No, I don’t even know what that is. What does that have to do with football? [New York Times]

* Horrifying syphilis experiments keep coming back to haunt the United States government. That’s so syphilis. [Charlotte Observer]

* Illinois Governor Pat Quinn is expected to sign legislation today ending capital punishment. I couldn’t think of a joke here, but this cat thinks it’s a frog. [Chicago Tribune]

* In Buffalo, a fight over attorney pay. I blame Norwood. [Buffalo News]

* A judge helped cut an attorney out of his father’s will and claimed he was still able to act impartially on a case the attorney was handling. That sh*t-eating grin on the judge’s face every time the attorney spoke? Oh, that was just a joke he remembered. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Former U.S. attorney (S.D.N.Y.) and Davis Polk litigator S. Hazard Gillespie, R.I.P. [New York Times]

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Inside Straight: FAS 5 Fracas

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Ed. note: This is the latest installment of Inside Straight, Above the Law’s column for in-house counsel, written by Mark Herrmann.

First, a shameless plug; then, back to business.

The plug: I’ll be giving my “book talk” about The Curmudgeon’s Guide to Practicing Law in several locations in the next couple of weeks, including in a conference room at Skadden and in auditoriums at the law schools of Northwestern and Indiana University. If you have a group that might be interested in the talk, please contact me. We’ll sneak you into one of the upcoming talks, and you can decide whether my spiel would actually fit your occasion.

Now, the business. And it’s real business this time around — a business issue that has caught the attention of an awful lot of in-house counsel. The issue has to do with the Financial Accounting Standards Board’s deliberations over whether to alter corporate disclosures about loss contingencies. (Sorry, guys. No pictures of naked Canadian judges after the jump here. You’ve gone from the sublime to the ridiculous, or vice versa.)

Here’s the backstory: Investors legitimately want to know whether companies are about to lose a ton of money in litigation. So investors want companies to make fulsome disclosures about their “loss contingencies,” which picks up a lot of territory, including pending or threatened litigation.

Companies, on the other hand, are reluctant to disclose publicly that they anticipate losing a lawsuit. If companies were to make that type of disclosure, their litigation opponent would be energized and the settlement value of the case would skyrocket….

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Mark Cuban Wants to Pay Government Attorneys to Get Off Their Butts

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I’d love for Mark Cuban to own my basketball team. He’s a self-made billionaire who focuses on the fans and (for all the bluster) leaves the basketball decisions to basketball people. Compare that to current Knicks Owner James Dolan — a man living off of his daddy’s success, who thinks he’s smarter than he really is, who has run the once-proud Knicks franchise into the ground, and who may be in romantic love with Isiah Thomas. You’d take Cuban any day of the week over little Jimmy.

You’d probably take Cuban as a client as well. Stephen Best, the Dewey & LeBoeuf attorney currently representing Cuban in his SEC insider trading case, seems to be happy with his client. And we haven’t even seen his legal fees.

But if you are one of Cuban’s adversaries, it must be brutal. To paraphrase Rory Breaker, if the milk’s sour, Mark Cuban ain’t the kind of pussy to drink it. NBA referees know that. And SEC attorneys are about to learn the same lesson…

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Non-Sequiturs: 10.14.10

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Obamacare

* A federal judge allows state challenges to Obamacare go forward. Whatever, wake me up in 15 years when we have to have the single-payer debate again. [Wall Street Journal]

* The purpose of teaching lawyers how to act isn’t to help them become better liars. [End Scene, Exit Right]. [Underdog]

* “It’s okay in Italy” is not a viable defense to sexual harassment. [Courthouse News Service via @kashhill]

* British billionaire Alki David will pay Obama streaker’s rent for a year, and his sister’s hospital bills, but not the full $1 million. [ABC News]

* CVS is getting smacked so hard, you’d think it was a supporting character on Breaking Bad. [CNN Money]

* A bunch of big name law professors, including several members of the Volokh Conspiracy, signed a letter endorsing the legalization of pot in California. [WSJ Law Blog]

* Musical chairs: congrats to Lat’s former Wachtell colleague, Scott Black, who has left the SEC and joined Hudson Bay Capital Management as general counsel and chief compliance officer. [Dow Jones]

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