Corporate Law

Merchants say lawyer should lose $32M fee award over alleged email contact with opposing counsel

So far, the fallout from an alleged $5 million scheme by an attorney and her husband to defraud two law firms and a client includes a lost BigLaw partnership and wire fraud conspiracy charges against both spouses. Now it appears that email between Keila Ravelo and another lawyer who is…

Jul 28, 2015 4:02 PM CDT

Boy Scouts ends ban on gay troop leaders, but allows religion-based exceptions

The executive board of the Boy Scouts of America voted Monday, 45-12, to eliminate a national ban on gay troop leaders, effective immediately. The vote comes two years after the 2.5 million member group decided to allow openly gay scouts. It follows comments in May by the BSA’s president, former…

Jul 28, 2015 10:15 AM CDT

US seeks unprecedented life sentence for peanut executive in food safety case

The U.S. government is asking a federal judge to impose a life sentence on the former owner of a peanut-processing company who was convicted for covering up salmonella contamination. If a judge agrees with the calculation in sentencing Stewart Parnell, the 61-year-old former executive would receive the harshest punishment so…

Jul 27, 2015 5:45 AM CDT

Backpage sues sheriff over letters to credit card companies

Efforts by a Chicago-area sheriff to persuade credit card companies not to deal with Backpage.com are “an especially pernicious form of prior restraint,” the company says in a federal lawsuit filed this week. Arguments on the First Amendment lawsuit, which seeks a restraining order against Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart,…

Jul 23, 2015 5:00 PM CDT

Decades-old contract lets historic Dairy Queen apply ‘rogue ice-cream rules’

Typically, those who operate and patronize franchise restaurants are looking for a uniform brand. But among the outliers are Troy and Diane DeLeon, the owners of a longtime Dairy Queen in Moorhead, Minnesota. Still operating under a 1949 contract from their predecessor, Bob Litherland, since they took over in 1995,…

Jul 23, 2015 3:55 PM CDT

Struck by pickup, injured bicyclist sues another driver who she says gave pickup the OK to turn

Jeffrey Lovelady may have thought he was being courteous and helpful by allegedly giving a man at the wheel of a pickup a go-ahead signal to make a left turn in an industrial area of Portland, Oregon, last year. But now he is facing a big-bucks accident suit. Struck by…

Jul 23, 2015 1:55 PM CDT

Feds face tough laws requiring specific intent in possible criminal case over GM ignition issues

After the 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, prosecutors charged a BP unit with violating the federal Clean Water Act over the deaths of brown pelicans. Like similar consumer-safety laws involving pharmaceuticals and food, no specific intent is required to prove a violation, the New York Times (reg.…

Jul 21, 2015 12:35 PM CDT

Reed Smith practice leader leaps to Cooley in four-partner group

After joining Reed Smith in 2011 from DLA Piper along with three other lawyers, U.S. capital markets practice group chair Yvan-Claude Pierre wasn’t looking to lead his team to another major firm. But that’s what he’s doing, after some persuasion from Cooley’s CEO, Joe Conroy, the Am Law Daily (sub.…

Jul 17, 2015 1:35 PM CDT

Partner who overheard lawyer discuss client merger is indicted for alleged insider trading

A real estate partner in the Philadelphia headquarters of a national law firm overheard a colleague talking with their shared legal assistant about an imminent client merger. Then he illegally used the insider information in purchasing stock in the client’s company for himself and his wife, federal regulators say. Herbert…

Jul 17, 2015 10:40 AM CDT

Cover-up claim about GM ignition-switch issues is ‘reckless and outrageous,’ law firm says

Fighting an attempt by plaintiffs in a massive federal products liability case to get hold of confidential documents in discovery, King & Spalding came out swinging. Claims that firm lawyers conspired with General Motors to conceal ignition-switch defects are not only baseless and defamatory but “reckless and outrageous,” the firm…

Jul 14, 2015 12:05 PM CDT

Law firm owes $35M to car dealers because it also represented government in GM talks

A well-known Bay Street law firm has been ordered to pay 45 million in Canadian dollars to 181 former car dealers it represented in restructuring negotiations with General Motors of Canada Ltd. Toronto-based Cassels Brock & Blackwell was ordered by an Ontario judge to pay the judgment—which amounts to about…

Jul 9, 2015 1:15 PM CDT

5th Circuit: Feds must pay $500K in attorney fees to defendant company for bad faith in FLSA case

Calling the U.S. Department of Labor’s conduct in an employment case baseless and vindictive, a federal appeals court is requiring the government to pay some $500,000 in attorney fees to the defendant company under a bad-faith provision of the Equal Access to Justice Act. “It is often better to acknowledge…

Jul 8, 2015 12:55 PM CDT

Worker sues over Kmart’s plastic paychecks

A worker is challenging Kmart’s practice of paying employees through debit cards. Filed last week in California state court, Donte Winfrey Sr.’s suit contends that the company and Sears Holding Corp. are engaging in unfair business and employment practices by paying workers with plastic, Courthouse News reports. The Riverside suit,…

Jul 7, 2015 3:05 PM CDT

Judge nixes jury conviction of ex-Goldman Sachs programmer, calls law a bad fit in source-code case

A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. programmer committed a crime by taking computer code for a high-speed trading program with him when he left the investment bank for a new job, prosecutors insist. But they didn’t prove their case against Sergey Aleynikov, 45, because the facts of the case don’t…

Jul 6, 2015 1:45 PM CDT

2nd Circuit says 2 judges used wrong test in deciding high-profile cases over unpaid internships

Do unpaid internships primarily benefit the employer? Or the interns? That is the question two federal judges should have asked, but didn’t, in ruling on lawsuits claiming that internships at two major media and entertainment companies violated the Fair Labor Standards Act, a federal appeals court said Thursday. In a…

Jul 2, 2015 4:30 PM CDT