1st Circuit Court

Will Popular Bankruptcy Judge Return, After Dress Incident?

Lawyers in Boston are still waiting and wondering whether a popular bankruptcy judge, who resigned from the bench after a much-publicized cross-dressing incident but then changed his mind, will be allowed to return to the bench. Whether U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Somma will be allowed to rescind his resignation was…

May 21, 2008 5:10 PM CDT

Federal Judge Blocks Bear Exec From Leaping to New Company

A federal judge issued an order yesterday that bars a former Bear Stearns executive from joining Morgan Stanley. The order by U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton in Boston said Bear Stearns was likely to succeed on the merits of its case against Douglas Sharon, Reuters reports. Sharon was executive director…

Mar 28, 2008 12:04 PM CDT

Documents Produced in Major Art Case Have Created ... More Art

When officials at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art decided to litigate against artist Christoph Büchel over an incomplete commissioned piece, they probably didn’t realize what they were getting into. Although the museum won its federal court battle to display to the public a massive maze representing American culture that…

Mar 1, 2008 12:01 AM CST

Status of Late-Recognized Indian Tribes at Issue in High Court Case

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the federal government can take land into trust for an Indian tribe, a move that could bar states from preventing the construction of additional Indian casinos on newly acquired land. Indian Country Today says a ruling against tribal interests in the…

Feb 29, 2008 6:55 PM CST

Lawyer’s Poems Nix Discrimination Case

An in-house intellectual property lawyer in the Worcester, Mass., office of a Pennsylvania company apparently wrote his way out of a job by sending four anonymous “sexually tinged” poems to a co-worker. Although David Bennett denied that he did so, company officials hired a private investigator to look into the…

Nov 12, 2007 5:17 PM CST

Federal, State Judges in Sentencing Spat

A career criminal’s almost-successful effort to circumvent a lengthy federal sentence by persuading a state court judge to vacate an earlier conviction has been foiled after the state court judge changed her mind about doing so. But U.S. District Court Judge William Young obviously was still irked about the incident…

Oct 11, 2007 11:39 PM CDT

Judge Takes Crack at Seuss-Style Egg Rhyme

With a nod to Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham, a federal judge has warned an inmate that attaching a hard-boiled egg to his complaint about his prison diet was a half-baked idea. Magistrate Judge James Muirhead of Concord, N.H., ordered the egg destroyed forthwith, the Concord Monitor reports. “Today!…

Sep 21, 2007 4:56 PM CDT

Hearing Transcripts to Go Online

The policy-making arm of the nation’s federal courts voted today to make it easier for both lawyers and the public to access court materials. For lawyers, the big news is the plan approved by the Judicial Conference of the United States to put transcripts of district and bankruptcy court proceedings…

Sep 18, 2007 7:01 PM CDT

CT Case: Sarbanes v. Attorney Ethics

Fellow practitioners are watching with increasing concern the case of Philip Russell, a Connecticut lawyer who has been charged with violating the Sarbanes-Oxley Act because he allegedly obstructed justice by destroying a client’s computer. “For a lawyer, especially a criminal lawyer, this is the most important case in a long,…

Aug 13, 2007 5:30 PM CDT

Son to Get $250 K of $28 M Jail Award?

Lawyers for the son of a man who died in 1995 after 28 years in prison, serving a sentence for a murder he didn’t commit, told a federal judge in Boston yesterday that that her $28 million award to Louis Greco’s estate isn’t going to accomplish what she apparently intended.…

Aug 3, 2007 10:53 PM CDT

When Honesty Is Not Best Politics

Courts struggle with honest-services charges in bribery cases

Aug 1, 2007 8:12 AM CDT

Judge Skeptical of Facebook Suit

Lawyers for the founders a social networking Web site will get a chance to revise their infringement complaint against their big-name competitor, Facebook Inc. But they may face an uphill battle, if comments by a Boston federal judge during a pretrial hearing yesterday are any indication. Judge Douglas Woodlock was…

Jul 26, 2007 8:29 PM CDT

Record $100 Million for Unjust Conviction

A federal judge in Boston has awarded $100 million to four men unjustly convicted of murder in Massachusetts state court in 1968, reportedly the largest such judgment ever made. Ruling today, U.S. Dist. Judge Nancy Gertner found that the Federal Bureau of Investigation had suppressed evidence that four men convicted…

Jul 26, 2007 8:06 PM CDT

Last Resorts of Court

One date that’s on almost every federal judge’s calendar this summer is the meeting of his or her circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals, at which trial and appellate judges review the work of the court and socialize at some of the nicest resorts and hotels in the nation. So as not to provide a roadmap for disgruntled litigants, we’re taking a look back at where the circuit courts summered in 2006.

Jul 1, 2007 7:04 PM CDT