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In another blow to Chicago's legal market, Bell Boyd & Lloyd on Thursday laid off 10 associates. The announcement comes just two weeks after Katten Muchin Rosenman cut 21 attorneys and Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal dropped 25 associates. Both those law firms have their largest offices in Chicago. As with the other firms, Bell Boyd & Lloyd said the attorney cuts are in response to the slowing economy.
Four lawyers are set to guide Thelen's wind-down. The three members of Thelen's dissolution committee are David Graybeal, Douglas Davidson and Thomas Hill. The firm has also hired as outside counsel Peter Gilhuly, the Latham & Watkins bankruptcy partner who advised Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison on its dissolution half a decade ago. Some former Thelen partners are voicing frustration over the inclusion of Hill -- the managing partner of operations at Thelen -- as a member of the wind-down committee.
The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee released a report Wednesday suggesting that FDA officials made changes to federal prescription labeling rules to follow a Bush administration policy of protecting drug companies. The report's release comes as the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Monday in the landmark pre-emption case. Former FDA Chief Counsel Sheldon Bradshaw says the timing of the report's release is no accident, and its "sole purpose is to sway the Court."
The Federal Circuit on Thursday issued a rare full-court opinion in a closely watched case, ruling 9-3 that business methods or processes cannot be patented unless they are tied to a machine or involve a physical transformation. The case could impact the explosive growth in such patents. The three judges who dissented didn't agree with each other either. One judge argued that the majority did not go far enough in restricting business-method patents and the other two argued for a more lenient standard.
In a closely watched immigration law case, a lawyer for Hazleton, Pa., on Thursday urged the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to revive a city ordinance that would have barred employers and landlords from hiring or renting to illegal aliens. But two ACLU lawyers, warning of the possible "Balkanization" of the country into "immigrant-friendly communities and immigrant-hostile communities," urged the three-judge panel to uphold a lower court decision that struck down the ordinance.
Eversheds has suspended two quarterly profit distributions to partners as more evidence emerges of law firms battening down the hatches for a full-blown recession. The U.K. firm's equity partners will miss out on two quarterly payments due in November and February 2009. The decision to defer the payments, which was taken by Eversheds' senior management, will be reviewed in March when the firm looks at capital requirements for next year.
Dallas plaintiffs lawyer Fred Baron died Thursday after battling multiple myeloma, a blood cancer. He was 61. Baron was known for his representation of plaintiffs in asbestos litigation and his involvement with the Democratic Party in Texas. In recent weeks, news of Baron's illness surfaced after his son, Andrew Baron, posted a letter online that Andrew had sent to the CEO of Biogen Idec Inc., seeking an experimental cancer drug treatment that he argued could have saved his father's life.
One-time adversaries in the landmark patent case, Morrison & Foerster's Harold McElhinny and McKool Smith's Samuel Baxter teamed up for a big win in a patent suit against Seoul-based Samsung Electronics. A 10-person jury in Marshall, Texas, returned a $59.3 million verdict Tuesday in favor of Tokyo-based Pioneer, which had alleged that Samsung infringed on two plasma screen patents. The case also signals a new trend of Japanese companies turning to U.S. courts for redress.
Pharmaceutical company Biopure's defamation and trade libel case against a National Institutes of Health official for statements in an article co-authored for the raises concerns about the litigation risks of scientific discourse. The company claims that an article in the journal's online edition falsely stated that use of the company's Hemopure blood substitute product "is associated with significantly increased risk of death and myocardial infarction."
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