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In a decision one justice called "a major upheaval in Sixth Amendment law," the Supreme Court ruled today that lawyers have a constitutional obligation to advise clients of the collateral immigration consequences of a guilty plea in a criminal case. The ruling came in Padilla v. Kentucky, which was eagerly awaited by bar leaders who have focused attention on the professional obligation of lawyers to alert clients about the growing array of consequences that flow from pleading or being found guilty.
The "hot news" tort was successfully applied to content aggregator Flyonthewall.com under the New York common law of misappropriation, acknowledged attorney Stephen M. Kramarsky, but the tort is out of sync with intellectual property law and the flow of information on the internet.
A class action suit over the merger of drug giants Merck and Schering-Plough has ended in a settlement that pays nothing to the class but $3.5 million in fees to class counsel. A federal judge approved it nevertheless, finding counsel provided a substantial benefit to the class because the suit, alleging "material deficiencies" in the proxy statement sent to shareholders before the merger vote, triggered the disclosure of additional information.
The American Lawyer's Corporate Scorecard ranks firms according
to the amount of transactional work they handled in nine key areas --
although in 2009's sluggish economy, the real story was how little work
firms did. M&A work was off 34 percent from an already difficult 2008,
and the volume of asset-backed securities work fell by 88 percent. The
exception was bankruptcy: Forty-two firms with assets of $1 billion or
more filed for Chapter 11 protection in 2009.
The investment industry declared victory Tuesday as the Supreme Court ruled in a closely watched case that investor advocates had hoped would make it easier to challenge high fees charged by advisers in the $9 trillion mutual fund business. But industry critics also claimed a win, saying the decision allows plaintiffs to use the kinds of fee comparisons that could help them prove the fees are excessive. The disagreement over the meaning of the ruling likely foreshadows another wave of litigation over adviser fees.
The San Francisco district attorney's office is combing through the files of all of its 1,400 open narcotics cases to determine what can be saved and what needs to be dumped in the wake of an expanding scandal emanating from the police crime lab, a spokesman for the office said Monday. Prosecutors have already dropped more than 350 narcotics cases amid allegations that a former technician had stolen and used cocaine from evidence samples she tested. Police are now investigating additional crime lab employees.
Novell won a software copyright trial against SCO Group on Tuesday, ending a seven-year war that ignited the religious passions of open-source programmers. Represented by Morrison & Foerster and Workman Nydegger, Novell persuaded a Utah federal jury that Novell -- and not SCO -- owns the rights to the Unix operating system. "It was really the first suit, and I think to date one of the only suits, about an open source being infringing," said Heather Meeker, an open-source expert at Greenberg Traurig.
The Federal Trade Commission's crusade against "pay for delay" patent settlements between brand-name and generic drug makers got a boost Monday when a district court judge refused to dismiss a 2008 antitrust suit against Cephalon Inc. The case, now consolidated in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, involves reverse payment settlements over the drug Provigil. The medicine, used to treat excessive sleepiness in people with sleep disorders, had sales of more than $920 million in 2008.
A Georgia legislator wants to begin the impeachment process against his state attorney general for refusing to sue the federal government over health care reform. Republican state Rep. Mark Hatfield filed a bill Tuesday against Democratic Attorney General Thurbert Baker. Georgia's Republican-led House would have to approve the resolution by a simple majority. The state Senate would then hold a trial; two-thirds must vote for impeachment.
The 9th Circuit ordered a new trial Monday for 23 Latino and Southeast
Asian women who say Nibco Inc., a piping system manufacturer, violated
their civil rights by firing them after they failed to pass an
English-language test of their job skills. The panel said the district
court erroneously allowed attorneys for Nibco to use peremptory
challenges to boot three Hispanic jurors. Shortly after the initial
lawsuit was filed, Nibco sold the plant to new owners, who rehired about
two-thirds of the plaintiffs.
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