Top Legal News
$52 Billion Merger Creates Beer Colossus
It took $52 billion, 23 banks, a $10 billion bridge loan and at least six law firms, but it's finally done: InBev, the Belgian brewer of Stella Artois and Beck's, has finalized its purchase of Budweiser maker Anheuser-Busch to form a beer colossus that will be known as Anheuser-Busch InBev. Lawyers involved said they were surprised and heartened that they were able to close the deal -- said to be the largest hostile cash takeover in history -- amid an unprecedented credit crisis. More »
Plame Seeking Supreme Court Review of Suit Against Cheney, Libby
Lawyers for former CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson plan to petition the Supreme Court to review a lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney and I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, among others, after the D.C. Circuit this week rejected a rehearing en banc. The executive director of a Washington, D.C., watchdog group that participated in representing Plame and her husband, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, said in a statement: "This is an issue worth fighting over and we will not give up." More »
Carnival Settles Class Action Over Ill-Fated Millennium Cruise
A class of Carnival Cruise Lines passengers whose voyage to celebrate the millennium was interrupted by equipment failure has settled a lawsuit against the company with a unique result -- more than $5 million worth of free trips. Under the settlement, about 2,460 passengers will receive a free one-week cruise. Class attorney David Mishael and D. Michael Campbell, who filed the original suit, were awarded attorney fees of $1.75 million, bringing the total settlement value to almost $7.5 million. More »
Greenberg Traurig Trims Five Associates
Greenberg Traurig is the latest large firm to trim its associate ranks. The firm laid off three full-time associates from its real estate practice in New York on Friday. Two additional part-time associates were laid off on Monday, according to a person in the firm who declined to be named. The firm said in its statement that it has grown in recent years, added offices in the United States and Asia, is currently looking to hire laterals and practice groups and will continue to grow. More »
Processing of Patents Increased in Fiscal 2008
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office reported that patent processing increased by 14 percent in fiscal year 2008 compared with the prior year, outstripping the 5.7 percent increase in patent filings during the same time span. The increase continues a pattern established several years ago, according to the report. Despite the high volume, the PTO says the agency met 100 percent of its government performance and results act goals for the first time. More »
Ex-N.J. State Sen. Bryant Guilty of Fraud, Bribery
Former New Jersey state Sen. Wayne Bryant, convicted Tuesday of bribery and pension fraud, is the latest in a string of 132 state officials found guilty of corruption charges recently. The government said Bryant took a job at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey as a bribe for directing more than $10 million to the school. U.S. Attorney Christopher J. Christie called Bryant's actions "simply the most disgusting behavior I've seen by a public official in my seven years as U.S. Attorney." More »
Firms Rethink the Value of Associate Bonuses
Normally around this time of year, associates at New York's big law firms begin gearing up for the annual ritual by which their employers award them year-end bonuses. But this is no normal year. Indeed, with law firms' major financial industry clients in a parlous state, the firms themselves laying off unprecedented numbers of lawyers and the overall economy in doom-and-gloom mode, the subject of bonuses, which are paid on top of base salaries that start at $160,000 for first-years, is an awkward one. More »