http://www.law.com/newswire/ The day's top legal stories accompanied with summaries. en-us 02/09/2010 Copyright 2009. Incisive Media US Properties, LLC. All rights reserved. http://www.law.com/service/terms_conditions.shtml http://www.law.com/img/newswire/newswire_rss.gif http://www.law.com/newswire/ New York federal Judge Jed S. Rakoff grilled attorneys for the SEC on Monday about a proposed $150 million settlement that would bring an end to two actions against the Bank of America Corp. stemming from its $50 billion takeover of Merrill Lynch in 2008. The actions accuse the bank of failing to disclose to shareholders that it had authorized Merrill to pay up to $5.8 billion in bonuses in 2008 and of keeping shareholders in the dark about "extraordinary" losses Merrill sustained two months before the merger. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442986867&rss=newswire A formidable team of lawyers has lined up to defend Dr. Conrad Murray, who was charged Monday with involuntary manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson. Murray's lead lawyer is Ed Chernoff, a partner at criminal defense firm Stradley Chernoff, who is handling the case with firm partners Matthew Alford and William Stradley. Also on the defense team: California lawyers Michael Flanagan and Joseph Low. Murray faces up to four years in prison if convicted. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442984107&rss=newswire The largest individual award to a former Florida smoker against the tobacco industry will not stand, a Broward Circuit judge ruled Friday. Calling the $300 million jury verdict "shocking," Judge Jeffrey Streitfeld said he would determine a lower award later against Philip Morris USA. The jury's decision to award $56.5 million in compensatory damages and $244 million in punitive damages stemmed from anger, said Streitfeld, who faulted tobacco company attorneys for putting on a "blame the smoker" defense. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442974829&rss=newswire Electronic privacy in the workplace is a tangled subject, with only a few sure footholds for employers. Attorneys are hoping a Supreme Court ruling will provide unifying guidance on employer monitoring of employee text messages in a case currently under consideration by the justices. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442982294&rss=newswire Robert Matthews, a commercial litigation partner in Faegre & Benson's Boulder office, died Saturday when a small plane he was piloting collided in midair with another plane some 8,000 feet over the Colorado city, according to the Daily Camera of Boulder. The crash killed the 58-year-old Matthews, his 56-year-old brother Mark and the pilot of the other plane, which CNN reports was a single-seat Piper Pawnee towing a glider. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442997192&rss=newswire More Chicago partners are jumping to new law firms or seriously contemplating a move after a year in which demand for profitable partners outstripped the number willing to leave stable positions, the city's recruiters and law firm managers said. Lawyers are more willing to take the risk as they see an uptick in client demand in the corporate, litigation and transactional areas. "2010 will not be a dead year," says Chicago-based legal recruiter Amy McCormack. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442994233&rss=newswire A federal judge in Chicago late last week gave final approval to the allocation of $6.2 million among 235 former Sears, Roebuck & Co. employees in the largest settlement ever reached by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in an Americans with Disabilities Act class action. The former workers, who said the company fired them after they went on disability leave, will receive between $2,500 and $122,500 each, depending on their individual circumstances. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442994001&rss=newswire Industrial gas producer Airgas filed suit against Cravath, Swaine & Moore on Friday over the firm's role as legal adviser to rival Air Products on that company's $5.1 billion bid for Airgas. Air Products announced on Friday its unsolicited offer for Airgas, which for months has resisted its larger rival, including rejecting an offer whereby Air Products would assume $1.9 billion in Airgas debt. Airgas has retained takeover defense experts from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz to deflate the Air Products bid. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442992876&rss=newswire The three-decade legal career of a former federal prosecutor, Marine Corps Reserve investigator and one-time candidate for Georgia attorney general has turned into a nightmare. James R. Harper III stands accused of racketeering and theft from his former client, international gun maker Glock Inc. A grand jury has charged Harper and two others with conspiring to take $3 million of the company's money while they worked on an investigation of other executives accused of stealing from Glock. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442982347&rss=newswire After the Association of Corporate Counsel launched a rating system that included members-only access to performance evaluations of law firms, some critics cried foul. Now, law firms that have been critiqued by in-house counsel can also see their ratings online. Since the ACC began its "value index" in October, in-house lawyers from dozens of countries have submitted more than 1,800 evaluations of some 600 law firms. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442981500&rss=newswire At the heart of a mortgage fraud trial that opened Monday in San Francisco are millions of dollars in loans that never should have been made, the lawyer for a family estate told the jury in opening statements. U.S. Bank sued on behalf of a mortgage pool to try to recover $1 million from the estate following its sale of a property. The estate, in turn, has countersued the mortgage pool and others, claiming it shouldn't have to pay because the loan was allegedly given under fraudulent circumstances of which it was unaware. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442988162&rss=newswire A California appeals court came down on a Superior Court judge in a strongly worded opinion, criticizing the way the trial court handled the contempt case of an elderly, cash-strapped attorney who failed to pay $10,000 in discovery sanctions and was ordered to serve five days in jail on three occasions. The appeals court wrote that judges need to know the due process rights associated with different types of contempt, and that the court's actions "did not measure up to that law, not by a long shot." http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442978816&rss=newswire Three litigation partners have signed on to join King & Spalding's Washington, D.C., and New York offices. The team, which is joining the firm from Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, includes Diana Weiss, James Capra Jr. and James Cusick. Weiss will be based in Washington, and Capra and Cusick will work from King & Spalding's New York office. Weiss said the opportunity to work alongside former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who leads King & Spalding's appellate practice, was a plus for the group. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442979250&rss=newswire Winston & Strawn has expanded its restructuring practice by hiring a three-lawyer team from Dewey & LeBoeuf: partners Lawrence A. Larose, who acted as lead counsel for MBIA Insurance in its restructuring effort last year, and Samuel S. Kohn, who was counsel at Dewey. Associate Sarah Trum also made the move. In addition, Winston has hired a former M&A partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher as senior counsel. The hires come as Winston & Strawn looks to grow its New York office to 300 attorneys from nearly 200. http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202442985408&rss=newswire Who's getting hired? What practice areas are showing particular strength? Are law firms picking up partners who've been laid off? These were just some of the issues on the agenda during a roundtable discussion involving the chairs of three top firms -- J. Warren Gorrell of Hogan & Hartson, R. Bruce McLean of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld and Thomas Milch of Arnold & Porter -- and prominent legal recruiter Lynn Mestel, who noted that the lateral partner market "is the most robust it's been in 22 years." http://www.law.com/jsp/law/careercenter/lawArticleCareerCenter.jsp?id=1202442697833&rss=newswire Federal prosecutors have been stepping up their Foreign Corrupt Practices Act enforcement efforts in recent months, and on Friday they landed a big catch they'd been targeting for some time. BAE Systems, the largest military contractor in Europe, has agreed to pay nearly $450 million as part of a global settlement with the U.S. Justice Department and the U.K.'s Serious Fraud Office that will resolve longstanding allegations of foreign corruption. http://www.law.com/jsp/law/international/LawArticleIntl.jsp?id=1202442633248&rss=newswire