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Archive for July, 2010

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Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP has added three partners

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP has added three partners to the firm's Labor and Employment practice group: Thomas R. Kaufman, Michael L. Gallion and Gregg A. Fisch.  Kaufman, Gallion and Fisch join Sheppard Mullin's Los Angeles/Century City office from Seyfarth Shaw in Los Angeles, where Kaufman was co-chair of Seyfarth's national wage/hour class action practice group.  

"We are very excited to welcome Tom, Mike and Gregg.  They are tremendously talented and collectively bring a wide range of labor and employment law experience, including a specialization in wage-and-hour law – an area the firm is already known for," said Guy N. Halgren, chairman of Sheppard Mullin.  "We have one of the biggest and best employment practices in California, and this group further strengthens the capabilities of one of our signature practice groups."

"We look forward to joining Sheppard Mullin, a top-notch full service firm with a strong footprint in Los Angeles and throughout California," Kaufman commented.  "I am impressed with the firm's marquee labor and employment practice, including the group's continued growth in recent years and firm management's support in growing it further."  

"I am very excited to continue to practice with Tom and Gregg at Sheppard Mullin.  We are thrilled to be part of a firm with such a distinguished labor and employment group and one with such a strong California platform," said Gallion.  "Sheppard Mullin's labor and employment practice has been well known in California for years and the firm has done an excellent job expanding this brand nationally.  The firm's unwavering commitment to client service, diversity, and its top notch practice groups outside of labor and employment were also big draws."

Kaufman is a wage/hour specialist and has handled more than eighty class actions for a wide variety of industries, including banks and mortgage lenders, hospitals, large newspapers, information technology companies, restaurants, and other retailers.  Kaufman also is experienced in litigating employment discrimination cases, including winning several jury trials.  He received a J.D. from University of California, Los Angeles in 1995.

Gallion is a seasoned employment litigator and counselor.  He has significant experience handling complex employment litigation, including California wage and hour class actions and nationwide discrimination class actions.  Gallion has also developed a significant counseling practice, regularly advising clients on the most challenging aspects of employment law, including workforce reclassifications, mergers and acquisitions, reductions in force, and high-profile investigations. He has been recognized as a Southern California Super Lawyer and was recognized by Chambers in 2009 and 2010 as a leader in his field.  Gallion received a J.D., Order of the Coif, from the University of Tennessee in 1995.

Fisch has extensive experience in all aspects of employment litigation, and has successfully defended management before federal and state courts and administrative agencies in defense of complaints for class action and single-plaintiff matters, involving wage-and-hour violations, wrongful termination, age, race, gender, and national origin discrimination, sexual harassment, retaliation, and other statutory, contract and tort-related claims, as well as in relation to union campaigns and elections.  He received a J.D. from New York University School of Law in 1996.  

Sheppard Mullin has 200 attorneys based in its Los Angeles offices and its Labor and Employment practice group includes 75 attorneys firmwide. 


About Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton LLP

Sheppard Mullin is a full service AmLaw 100 firm with 550 attorneys in 11 offices located in the United States and Asia.  Since 1927, companies have turned to Sheppard Mullin to handle corporate and technology matters, high stakes litigation and complex financial transactions.  In the U.S., the firm's clients include more than half of the Fortune 100.  For more information, please visit www.sheppardmullin.com. 

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Posted in Legal Marketing | No Comments »

Conn. man found incompetent in ‘92 is held again

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A 76-year-old Connecticut man has been arrested after authorities discovered he was released from a mental hospital in 1992 after being found incompetent to stand trial for a 1991 murder.

Prosecutors say they should have been notified 18 years ago when Pedro Custodio was released from a state hospital in Newtown. Authorities had expected Custodio to be committed to the hospital for much longer.

A judge had asked about the status of the case this month because it had been open for almost two decades. Custodio was arrested Monday and ordered held on $200,000 bail during a court appearance Tuesday.

Custodio's sister tells the Republican-American newspaper that the state approved his release from the hospital. She says his arrest this week amounts to a death sentence.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Posted in Criminal Law | No Comments »

Woman sentenced to prison for faking breast cancer

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A judge sentenced a Chattanooga woman to 42 months in prison for faking breast cancer and told her it was "reprehensible" that she took donations of sick leave, money and cancer patient support services for five years.

"It seems like to me some confinement is necessary," Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole said Monday after a four-hour hearing in which attorneys for 39-year-old Keele Maynor asked for a probation sentence that would allow her to work and pay about $54,000 in restitution.

Poole added 10 years of probation to the sentence for Maynor, a mother of three, and ordered her taken into custody immediately. She will be eligible for parole after serving one-third of the prison sentence. He ordered her to start making $300 monthly restitution payments after her release.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Posted in Corporate Governance | No Comments »

Tribune confident it will leave Ch. 11 in 2010

Wednesday, July 28th, 2010

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

Tribune Co. believes it will still emerge from bankruptcy protection this year even though a court-appointed examiner concluded that talks leading up to a leveraged buyout of the company had bordered on fraud.

In a memo to employees, Tribune CEO Randy Michaels and Chief Operating Officer Gerald Spector said they agreed with only some of the conclusions in Monday's report, while disputing others. They did not go into specifics, saying it would be premature to comment while the full examiner's report remains under court seal.

A hearing on whether to release the nearly 700-page document was scheduled for Thursday in Wilmington, Del.

The 2007 leveraged buyout took the company private and ultimately helped land it in Chapter 11. The deal has drawn scrutiny from bondholders who are trying to recover more of their money.

Real estate mogul Sam Zell led the deal, which piled on what turned out to be an unsustainable amount of debt. The company, which owns the Chicago Tribune, Los Angles Times and other properties, filed for Chapter 11 protection in December 2008.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Posted in Bankruptcy | No Comments »

Spinal cord injury treatments suggested in recent research

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

By Atlanta Injury Law Blog , Ken Shigley.

Spinal cord injury survivors may someday have more hope for functional recovery. An article in Brain by James Fawcett at Cambridge University summarizes research papers reporting functional recovery following a variety of treatments. These have included interventions that affect myelin inhibitory molecules and their receptors, or inhibitory chondroitin sulphate proteoglycans, and treatments in which the regenerative potential of axons has been stimulated through growth-factor receptors or manipulation of internal signalling pathways. The article suggests  it is probable that much of the useful recovery seen following treatment of animals with partial spinal cord lesions is due to the stimulation of plasticity.  However, there is a wide gap between basic research with lab animals and clinically useful treatments.

 

Ken Shigley, author of Georgia Law of Torts: Trial Preparation & Practice, is  a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been listed as a "Super Lawyer" (Atlanta Magazine), among the "Legal Elite" (Georgia Trend Magazine), and in the Bar Register of Preeminent Lawyers . He practices law at the Atlanta law firm of Chambers, Aholt & Rickard, and has broad experience in catastrophic personal injury, spinal cord injury, wrongful death, products liability,  brain injury and burn injury cases. He is also president-elect of the State Bar of Georgia. This post is subject to our ethical disclaimer.

Originally posted at Atlanta Injury Law Blog . Please visit http://www.atlantainjurylawblog.com/ .

Posted in Spinal Cord Injury | No Comments »

Doctors and Financial Records

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

By Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog, Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog.

This doctor in a case John Bratt tried recently was not, ah, particularly comfortable with his own explanation of why he destroyed 1099s that came to him. Gee, I wonder why that would be? Could it be because there is not an accountant in history that actually recommends not looking at and then destroying tax documents?

This is the testimony at trial:


I'm not going to name the expert because I don't think it is right to raise these issues online because the expert does not get to argue his position. (This blog typically does not name any non-public figures.) But, really, how do you defend this answer?

Originally posted at Maryland Injury Lawyer Blog. Please visit http://www.marylandinjurylawyerblog.com/.

Posted in Auto Accidents | No Comments »

Ambac case lawyers, advisers get $18 million

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

With more than $67 billion of its insurance coverage placed into a special receivership fund, Ambac Assurance Corp. is flirting with financial ruin. Yet at the same time, lawyers and consultants helping Wisconsin regulators navigate the complex case have collected nearly $18 million for their efforts.

And the meter is still running.

At the top of the billing list, state records show, is Foley & Lardner, the Milwaukee-based law firm with close ties to Gov. Jim Doyle. Employees of Foley have contributed $355,596 to Doyle's campaigns since 1999, more than any other group from one employer, according to data analyzed by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign at the Journal Sentinel's request.

Foley, the state's largest law firm, has billed the state $6.6 million for its work on the Ambac case since it was hired in February 2008 - more than four times the next highest sum paid to an outside special counsel for one case since Doyle took office in 2003, according to the state attorney general's office.

Three Foley attorneys, including David Walsh, a longtime friend and major contributor to Doyle, have billed more than $1 million each for their Ambac work. Walsh and members of his family have contributed $64,520 to Doyle's campaigns since 1999, including $40,520 since 2003, topping the list of all individual contributors to Doyle, according to the Democracy Campaign, which analyzes campaign finance reports filed with the state.

Marc Marotta, a Doyle confidant who chaired his 2006 campaign and served on the governor's cabinet, is a Foley partner who has billed 24 hours on the Ambac case. State Insurance Commissioner Sean Dilweg, who hired Foley for the Ambac case, was a top aide to Marotta in the state Department of Administration before being named insurance commissioner in 2007.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Posted in Legal Business | No Comments »

NH ex-teacher pleads guilty on nude photo charge

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A former New Hampshire high school teacher has pleaded guilty to a charge she e-mailed nude photographs of herself to a 15-year-old student.

Forty-one-year-old Melinda Dennehy of Hampstead entered the plea Monday to a misdemeanor charge of indecent exposure.

As part of a plea agreement, Dennehy was given a suspended jail sentence on the condition that she remain on good behavior and have no contact with the child or go to the high school.

In court, Dennehy apologized for her actions and poor judgment. She told the court she's continuing counseling and hopes to lead a productive life.

Dennehy was arrested in March after the photos were found circulating around the high school. She resigned three weeks later.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Posted in Criminal Law | No Comments »

Jury finds Texas man guilty of beheading children

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

A South Texas man accused of beheading his common-law wife's three children was found guilty of capital murder Monday at his second trial.

A state appeals court had overturned John Allen Rubio's previous conviction and death sentence in 2007, saying the children's mother had wrongly been allowed to testify. A second jury deliberated for about three hours before convicting him again.

Rubio, 29, of Brownsville, had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and his defense attorneys had argued that the sheer brutality of the crime showed he was not in his right mind. Defense attorney Nat Perez described it during his closing argument as "overkill."

Evidence showed Rubio made increasingly ferocious attempts to kill the children, strangling and stabbing them, then finally cutting off their heads. Rubio initially said he killed the children, all under age 4, because they were possessed.

Police discovered the bodies of 3-year-old Julissa Quesada, 14-month-old John E. Rubio and 2-month-old Mary Jane Rubio on March 11, 2003, in a squalid Brownsville apartment.

Rubio was convicted on four counts of capital murder. Each death was covered by one count, and the fourth count included all of them.

The trial will now move to a punishment phase, in which prosecutors plan to again seek the death penalty.

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Posted in Court Watch | No Comments »

Many lawyers aren’t aware of new rules

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

By Breaking Legal News, Breaking Legal News.

Many lawyers are still unaware of the upcoming enforcement of new Medicare reporting rules, let alone versed on how to prepare clients.

And some insurers, fearful of running afoul of the rules, are engaging in practices that have delayed getting awards to plaintiffs.

New Medicare Secondary Payer reporting rules require attorneys, insurers and even plaintiffs to report any personal injury settlement, judgment or other award to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) in cases where Medicare has rendered payment or could render future payments for care based on the injury alleged in the case. Failure to do so could result not only in CMS slapping a lien on the award for Medicare reimbursement, but also fines of up to $1,000 per day.

Due to the confusion over the rules, the government has postponed enforcement twice. Now, the reporting requirements are set to go into effect Jan. 1, 2011.

But the reporting rules apply to one-time payments made on or after Oct. 1, 2010 and ongoing-care settlements and awards made on or after Jan. 1, 2010, so lawyers who have yet to prepare for them are already behind the ball.

All of this has personal injury and elder law attorneys, insurers and clients on edge.

“The reason everyone is so scared is because as soon as you touch the money, you are on the hook,” said Christine Alsop, a partner at the Webster Groves, Mo. elder law firm Oelbaum, Brown & Alsop, where she works with plaintiffs’ and defense attorneys as well as insurers on Medicare reporting requirement issues and set-aside trust creation.

“Many times insurance companies — because of their fear about the rules — have said ‘we’re going to put Medicare’s name on the draft of the check,’” said Mark C. Joye of the Joye Law Firm, a personal injury firm in North Charleston, S.C.

Such a move creates problems that can delay the settlement process or stop it altogether, because negotiating such a payment is difficult if not impossible for the client or CMS. “That will scuttle the settlement,” Joye said.

Read full article here

http://wislawjournal.com/article.cfm/2010/07/26/Medicare-setaside-rules-continue-to-baffle-Many-lawyers-arent-aware-of-new-rules

Originally posted at Breaking Legal News. Please visit http://www.breakinglegalnews.com/.

Posted in Elder Law | No Comments »

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