Corporate Law

Ex-CEO Hank Greenberg Sues AIG, Says He Overpaid for Stock

Forced to resign in 2005 as chairman and chief executive of insurance giant American International Group Inc. after almost 40 years at the helm, Maurice “Hank” Greenberg is now suing AIG over an alleged securities fraud. Material misrepresentations and omissions by some former officers and four directors concerning AIG’s credit-default-swap…

Mar 3, 2009 8:50 PM CST

Wilmer Asks for $1.3M Legal Fee, Gets $730K + Lecture from Judge

Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr hasn’t had a lot of luck lately when requesting legal fee reimbursements in a long-running whistle-blower case. Last summer, when WilmerHale and co-counsel Wiley Rein sought $20 million in fees in Miller v. Bill Harbert International Construction Inc., Chief Judge Royce Lamberth of U.S.…

Mar 3, 2009 2:10 AM CST

State Prosecutors Give Bad Check Cases to Private Collectors, Share Money

Those who have written a bad check tend to pay up when they get a letter from a state prosecutor’s office. However, in some states, such letters are actually being sent by private collection agencies, reports CNN. Such outsourcing is controversial, because collection can take place without the government ever…

Mar 2, 2009 9:25 PM CST

ACLU Backs Florida Bait Shop Ticketed for Displaying US Constitution

Updated: At first, it was a painting of game fish on an exterior wall of a Florida bait and tackle shop that drew adverse attention from sign code enforcement officials of the city of Clearwater, who said it violates a ban on a business displaying a depiction of the product…

Feb 24, 2009 9:31 PM CST

W.R. Grace, 5 Ex-Execs on Trial in Landmark Asbestos Prosecution

Five former executives and the company that employed them, W.R. Grace & Co., went on trial today in federal court in Missoula, Mont., in what observers say is the most significant criminal case ever pursued over corporate pollution. “There’s never been a prosecution in the United States where so many…

Feb 24, 2009 1:36 AM CST

Finance Giant Asks Top Law Firm to Probe Lobbying re Mortgage Regs

Freddie Mac has asked Covington & Burling to conduct an internal probe of the finance giant’s own $2 million lobbying campaign. The lobbying effort was mounted to counter a 2005 effort in Congress to enact new regulations that would have required Freddie Mac to sell a substantial amount of mortgages…

Feb 23, 2009 5:30 PM CST

Buyers Sue Bank: Bad Prequalification Cost Them Money, They Contend

Several buyers who say they were somehow prequalified to purchase expensive Seattle condos utilizing mortgages they couldn’t possibly afford are now suing the bank that allegedly put them in this position. By prequalifying them, JPMorgan Chase bank set the plaintiffs up to lose $175,000 in earnest money when, inevitably, they…

Feb 21, 2009 12:42 AM CST

Bankruptcy Judge Nixes Sidley’s Top $1,100 Hourly Rate, OKs $925

In a hearing today, a federal bankruptcy court judge in Wilmington, Del., said he won’t OK a top $1,100 hourly fee requested by Sidley Austin in a newspaper company’s case. But U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Kevin Carey approved a top hourly fee of $925 in the Tribune Co. bankruptcy, Bloomberg…

Feb 20, 2009 9:03 PM CST

Madoff Made No Trades for Perhaps 13 Years, Trustee Says

A whistleblower who pointed the finger at alleged $50 billion Ponzi scheme architect Bernard Madoff for many years before he was criminally charged claimed that Madoff’s claimed hedge fund investment profits didn’t conform with options market trading records. Now the trustee who is winding up Madoff’s securities firm says there…

Feb 20, 2009 7:42 PM CST

As Heller Dissolved, Partner Closed Big Deal; But Now What?

As others at the dissolving Heller Ehrman law firm scrambled to find work last year, partner Steven Tonsfeldt found himself in an unusual situation. He had a lot of work to do in a $3 billion deal involving a client’s planned merger with Brocade Communications Systems, Inc. But, due to…

Feb 20, 2009 7:14 PM CST

US Clients of UBS Mull Options as Feds Press Swiss Bank to Name More Names

Contending that a Swiss bank’s plan to name client names to U.S. regulators as part of a $780 million settlement of a criminal tax probe violates Switzerland law requiring secrecy, American depositors are mulling their options. Attorney Andreas Rued of the Rued Winkler law firm in Zurich said unnamed UBS…

Feb 19, 2009 6:53 PM CST

Swiss Bank UBS Settles With US; Will Pay $780M, Name Client Names

Updated: In a clash between U.S. tax law and a longstanding international tradition of secret accounts, a Swiss bank has blinked first. Although UBS AG had resisted handing over to the feds names of American residents who are private banking clients, it has now agreed to do so, the U.S.…

Feb 19, 2009 1:31 AM CST

SEC Looked Into Stanford CDs in 2005; Why Didn’t Feds Act Sooner in $8B Case?

In 2005, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission sent letters to holders of certificates of deposit at Stanford International Bank of Antigua, seeking information about how the instruments had been marketed. And, as two former brokers for R. Allen Stanford contend in a lawsuit they filed in January 2008, they…

Feb 19, 2009 12:38 AM CST

$75B Mortgage Bailout Detailed, as Foreclosures Clog Courts

As President Barack Obama today announced a $75 billion federal mortgage bailout plan intended to help up to 9 million homeowners avert foreclosure, courts are already busy dealing with a deluge of pending foreclosure cases for which such measures appear to have come too late. And the Homeowner Affordability and…

Feb 18, 2009 10:43 PM CST

Where is Billionaire Defendant, Following SEC Lawsuit?

Where is a 58-year-old Texas billionaire accused by securities regulators in civil litigation yesterday of operating a massive investment fraud? The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed the federal lawsuit in Dallas over $8 billion in certificates of deposit sold under dubious representations by a bank affiliated with his Stanford…

Feb 18, 2009 5:45 PM CST