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Delaware bankruptcy court judge Mary Walrath appears determined to continue presiding over JPMorgan Chase's ongoing battle with Washington Mutual Inc. According to a transcript of a hearing last Friday, Judge Walrath called efforts by JPMorgan's lawyers at Sullivan & Cromwell to challenge her jurisdiction "frivolous." The dispute between the two companies mainly concerns $4 billion in deposits that Washington Mutual Inc. had with Washington Mutual Bank, which was taken over by JPMorgan last September.
The economy has employers jittery about company secrets getting out, so they're hiring staff to monitor e-mail use, according to a recent Proofpoint survey. And it's not just the inappropriate use of e-mail that has companies worried. Social networks are also compounding data leak fears.
The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has announced a record $6.2 million Americans with Disabilities Act settlement of a nationwide class action against Sears, Roebuck & Co. over the firing of disabled workers. The agency described it as the largest ADA settlement in a single EEOC lawsuit. While the settlement doesn't include job reinstatement for former Sears workers, the company has changed its policy to make it easier for workers to return from leave in the future, according to an EEOC lawyer.
In orders released Wednesday morning by the U.S. Supreme Court, the justices granted review in 12 new cases for the fall term, including a major sequel to the D.C. v. Heller Second Amendment decision of 2008. At issue is whether the individual right to bear arms declared in Heller applies against state, rather than just federal laws restricting that right. The Court also granted the first employment law case of its new term, Lewis v. Chicago.
It's hardly a surprise that being a summer clerk this year wasn't exactly the full five-star experience the summer class of 2009 may have dreamed about in law school. One indication of what a summer intern called "a scary time to be a law student": The number of summer clerks who said they expected to receive full-time job offers was down sharply, according to this year's survey of summer associates. But the 2009 summer experience wasn't all darkness and despair.
In a tanking economy, lawyers and their clients are increasingly finding themselves on opposing sides instead of sharing the same table in court, as a growing number of firms sue clients over unpaid attorney fees and clients fight back with legal malpractice counterclaims. Attorney Warren Trazenfeld says lawyers suing clients is "one of the top 10 stupidest things a lawyer can do." And Carlton Fields' Charles Rosenberg says lawsuits are sometimes necessary, but overall, suing clients is a lose-lose scenario.
With social media, the days of companies controlling their image with multimillion-dollar ad campaigns are over. Lawyers looking for new ways of managing client reputations in the constantly changing online world found plenty of advice at the ALM event "Social Media Risks and Rewards."
Collecting ESI from the cloud isn't tomorrow's problem -- it's the rare e-discovery scenario that doesn't involve webmail and a facility to download it to a local collection amenable to EDD processing. Consultant Craig Ball details the steps he used to POP multiple Yahoo Mail folders.
Jackie Young took on Broward County, Fla.'s two largest law firms and prevailed. A jury has awarded her $4.9 million in a malpractice case related to litigation that began in 1997. Young, who was turned down by eight or nine lawyers before finding one willing to take her case, says she doesn't think badly of lawyers because of her experiences. In fact, she's considering going to law school. But the litigation that began 12 years ago is not over yet for Young: She will face an appeal before seeing any money.
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