Dell filed a mandamus petition with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, urging the court to block the entire Desmarais LLP law firm from accessing proprietary information Dell must provide to Round Rock during discovery. Dell is concerned that founder John Desmarais will use confidential information for business purposes.

Manhattan district judge Scheindlin: "As I (and others) have repeatedly stated, the fact that damages must be calculated on an individual basis" is not fatal to class certification.

We weren't the only ones disgruntled at the relatively small fine the SEC levied against BofA to settle charges that the bank lied to investors about Merrill Lynch bonuses when BofA acquired Merrill last September. On Monday, Manhattan federal district court judge Jed Rakoff will grill lawyers from the agency and the bank on the details of the proposed settlement--including why it's so small and whether taxpayer money will be used.

We can't remember the last time a defendant won a motion to dismiss a class action in multidistrict litigation, so we took note of a decision last week by Los Angeles federal district court judge Philip Gutierrez in a case against the pharmaceutical giant Amgen and two dialysis service providers, DaVita and Fresenius Medical Care North America. The plaintiffs, seven health benefit plans, claimed in a class action that Amgen and the others conspired to promote off-label uses of two Amgen drugs, violating the federal RICO statute and California consumer fraud laws.

Counsel for Grant Thornton International at Willkie Farr managed to get their client off the hook in a securities class action involving Duoyuan Global Water Inc., but DGW and a group of underwriters represented by Shearman & Sterling are still on the hook.