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In a ruling of first impression, a Manhattan judge has scratched a request for punitive damages in a bedbug case. But the judge, Acting Supreme Court Justice Judith J. Gische, let go forward the negligence claims of two Maryland tourists for bites they sustained during a two-night stay at the Milford Plaza Hotel, and for which they're seeking $2 million in compensatory damages. Gische found that the plaintiffs had failed "to raise a triable issue of fact whether bedbugs are anything more than a nuisance."
New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the nation's largest public transportation system, has awarded Tishman Speyer Properties the right to develop the city's West Side rail yards. Representing Tishman in the request for proposals process were Fried Frank partners Jonathan Mechanic and Stephen Lefkowitz, along with associates Molly Dunham and Daniel Benavides. Tishman's winning offer of more than $1 billion trumped proposals from heavyweights Vornado Realty Trust and The Durst Organization.
Cooley Godward Kronish is forming a Latin America real estate group to work with clients seeking to invest in or develop real estate in the region, including the Caribbean. Thomas O'Connor, the firm's current chair for the real estate practice, and Mark W. Lipschutz, of counsel at the firm and the chief executive of the real estate company Caribbean Property Group, will co-head the new team. Both lawyers are based in New York.
If Daniel Hurstel's schedule on Thursday was anything to go by, the Paris legal market is in decent health. The head of Willkie Farr's office there, Hurstel was frantically attempting to juggle two deals while explaining parts of the firm's strategy in London. The Paris mood is cautious, but it falls short of the outright pessimism of New York or the uncertainty of London. For Willkie and Orrick, Paris has become the power base of their European operations as they put expansion plans to the fore.
Defense firm Margolis Edelstein is currently involved in litigation with a former partner in its Wilmington, Del., office over allegations that the former partner breached his fiduciary duties to the firm. Margolis Edelstein alleges that Jeffrey K. Martin ceased acting as a partner in the firm and acted solely for his own benefit prior to his resignation from the firm, including soliciting firm clients to transfer business to himself, according to court papers.
The next time pro-industry Republicans in Washington state, Oregon or Idaho saber-rattle about splitting the 9th Circuit because it's too cozy with environmentalists, don't be surprised if judges use as a shield. Several judges on an en banc court in that case Thursday appeared ready to overturn the panel decision that had enjoined a logging project in Idaho. The U.S. Forest Service had approved the project, despite concerns about its impact on wildlife.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court will once again hear an appeal in a class action suit filed in 1993 over the way H&R Block worked its rapid refund program. The justices will decide whether the Superior Court misapplied the aggrieved party doctrine and whether it erred in rejecting the trial court's ruling that H&R Block's claims could be tried on a classwide basis.
The Supreme Court of Georgia has upheld a $13 million judgment against Ford Motor in a suit brought by the widower of a woman killed when a truck slammed into the rear of her 1985 Mercury Marquis, leading to her death at the scene, according to a brief in the case. Plaintiffs lawyers' theory was that Ford's design of the Marquis made the fuel tank too vulnerable and that the design of a trailer hitch made by co-defendant Draw-Tite involved dangerous bolts that punctured the tank, resulting in the fire.
In a stern order and opinion, a federal judge has rapped a trio of health care companies for failing to comply with discovery requests. In a contract dispute between the companies and a pharmaceutical business that sued them, the judge found that the defendants' have "clearly and blatantly failed to meet their discovery obligations," and that their reasons for not producing documents, answers and witnesses varied from "unacceptable" and "unpersuasive" to "ridiculous."
Carl Malamud and other digital activists are piling up case law in public archives, moving toward a vision of the Web in which words in a given judge's decision are hyperlinked to other decisions, or to academic analysis, through the efforts of Internet users organized in social networking collectives.
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