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As an in-house counsel for the city of Newark in the 1970s, Edward Petit-Clair defended police officers accused of civil-rights violations. Now he knows what it's like to be a plaintiff. On a wintry evening two years ago, Petit-Clair was about to take a shower in his home in an over-55 community in Brick Township, N.J., when officers with drawn guns barged in. Half-naked, but armed with a pistol, the 68-year-old Petit-Clair engaged in a tense standoff in the darkened house until being led away in handcuffs.
While some might say the colorful plastic clogs known as Crocs clearly infringe on any sense of style, the Federal Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals has ruled that the shoe company's competitors are actually infringing on the Crocs patented design. Wednesday's decision reversed an International Trade Commission ruling. It's a big win for Crocs' lawyer James Otteson, who left Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati to start his own firm, Agility IP Law, after arguing the appeal.
The hits just keep on coming for White & Case. On Wednesday, the firm lost the chair of its global information technology practice when Steven Betensky resigned, according to a report by The Lawyer. Betensky's resignation comes after the loss of antitrust partner Elaine Johnston and mining and metals practice chair Tanneke Heersche in recent days. Johnson, who left the firm late last week, will join the New York office of Allen & Overy to head up that firm's U.S. antitrust practice.
A federal judge has balked at a proposed class action settlement with American Honda Motor Co. Inc. after objectors including the attorneys general of 25 states questioned whether the plaintiffs or their attorneys would benefit most. The deal would have provided 158,000 Civic Hybrid owners with rebates on future purchases of Honda vehicles. The plaintiffs' attorneys would have collected nearly $3 million in fees.
Once the first step in implementing an effective written litigation hold is taken and a trigger event to preserve evidence is identified, the organization needs to analyze the implications of the event, say Howett Isaza partner John Isaza and Goldberg Segalla partner John J. Jablonski.
An Italian criminal court judge has convicted three Google executives,
including chief legal officer David Drummond, for footage on the
company's now defunct video-sharing platform that prosecutors say
violated that country's privacy laws. Though the Google executives don't
face any prison time, the verdict still is a huge setback, especially
considering the liability precedent it could set in Europe, according to
defense attorney Samuel Buffone, who says this is the sort of thing that
could "break the Internet."
The 3rd Circuit has upheld the conviction of Franklin Brown, the former general counsel of Rite Aid, on fraud and obstruction charges in connection with the $1.6 billion accounting scandal that sent half a dozen executives to prison and cut the company's stock price in half. The unanimous three-judge panel rejected Brown's claims that both the prosecutors and judge had engaged in misconduct, and that secretly recorded tapes of his conversation with another executive had been tampered with.
It has not been a good week for the famed Miranda warning at the
hands of the Supreme Court. In a decision Wednesday, the Court
established new, more permissive rules for police who want to question a
suspect for a second time after the suspect invokes his Miranda
rights to remain silent. And in a Tuesday ruling, the justices said that
Florida's alternative wording of the warning is acceptable, even though
it does not explicitly state that a suspect has a right to have a lawyer
present during questioning.
Howett Isaza partner John Isaza and Goldberg Segalla partner John J. Jablonski provide an overview of the first step necessary to implement a legally defensible, written litigation hold in this initial article of a series aimed at helping organizations discharge their duty to preserve ESI.
Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick says there's good reason he can't afford to make a $79,011 restitution payment he owes from a text messaging scandal: He has to maintain a high-class lifestyle for his job. That contention is at the heart of an emergency motion filed this week in an attempt to postpone a probation-violation hearing. Kilpatrick's lawyer contends that Kilpatrick doesn't have the money and that, to earn it, he must "function in the upper echelons of society."
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