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Listening to its GC might well have saved New Century Financial, once the nation's second-largest subprime mortgage lender, from plunging into bankruptcy. That's one lesson from a report filed by Michael Missal, appointed by New Century's bankruptcy trustee to investigate the company's problems. Missal wrote that former New Century general counsel Stergios Theologides recognized the high risk of subprime mortgages and warned senior managers about it in a memo in the fall of 2004. But no one paid attention.
A former Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal partner has won his trial seeking higher compensation from the firm. Jurors determined that for years 2003 and 2004, the firm should have paid Douglas Rosenthal $500,000 per year rather than the over-$400,000 he received, and that for 2005 and 2006, he should have received $1,365,000 per year instead of the over-$1 million offered by the firm. The jury also awarded Sonnenschein $300,000, finding that Rosenthal and his new firm had interfered with Sonnenschein clients.
Fresh off a major courtroom victory over Hynix Semiconductor and other manufacturers, Rambus says it's considering seeking an injunction against Hynix to keep it from making memory chips that infringe on its patents. Since the U.S. Supreme Court's decision, such orders have been less frequent. The specter also brings to the fore the debate over whether patent holders should be allowed to get an injunction over patents that are used in industry standards, like those at issue here.
A former partner at Latham & Watkins pleaded guilty Friday to defrauding both clients and his own firm by charging them more than $300,000 in personal or false expenses. In announcing the guilty plea of Samuel A. Fishman, a mergers and acquisition specialist in Latham's New York office from 1993 to 2005, prosecutors noted that the firm had reimbursed its clients hundreds of thousands of dollars that had been fraudulently charged.
Motorola said it will split into two public companies, separating its struggling mobile-phone business from its broadband and mobility-solutions operations. The move comes amid a longstanding battle with investor Carl Icahn, who has been urging the company to shed the handset unit.
With its winning bid for the open-access spectrum, Verizon Wireless didn't just stake a claim to beachfront wireless property, it also grabbed control of the medium that consumers will use with any compatible wireless device or software, as long as it doesn't harm the network.
Did the practice management software you purchased fail to revolutionize your law firm overnight? Don't be embarrassed, says consultant Storm Evans, you're not necessarily a Luddite just because you can't learn everything this powerful software can do in one day.
Some lawyers still shy away from using high-tech toys in court rooms to their fullest capabilities. But in the Brien McMahon Federal Building in Bridgeport, Conn., U.S. District Court Judge Janet C. Hall says that as long as you can use a laptop, "you're not going to have a problem."
A timely e-discovery request might not always be enough. In , in the Eastern District of New York, a defendant dodged substantive sanctions for losing or destroying e-mails because there was no evidence that the missing e-mails were relevant to the case.
He may be a conservative now, but Steven Bradbury has liberal roots. The acting chief of the DOJ's influential Office of Legal Counsel campaigned for Jimmy Carter in 1976 and volunteered for Democrat Gary Hart's presidential primary campaign in '84. Reviled by Democrats for his legal work on interrogation techniques and warrantless wiretapping, Bradbury burnished his conservative credentials as a law clerk. Friends and former colleagues say he is an honest lawyer who's been vilified for unpopular positions.
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