Business Development

US will pay tribes nearly $1B under settlement approved by judge

A federal judge in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has approved a settlement in which the federal government will pay nearly $1 billion to settle claims by Native American tribes. U.S. District Judge James Parker gave final approval to the $940 million settlement Tuesday, the Associated Press reports. Another Associated Press article…

Feb 26, 2016 5:45 AM CST

Suit claims Quinn Emanuel didn’t comply with fee agreement

A lawsuit filed last week claims Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan overbilled for its defense of a home sales executive who pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit bank fraud. The suit (PDF) filed in San Francisco on Feb. 19 claims Quinn Emanuel violated a fee agreement for the…

Feb 25, 2016 6:15 AM CST

Woman who OK’d $900K settlement in phone call with her lawyer is bound by it, federal judge rules

The mother of a 22-year-old man shot to death in 2014 by police in a Utah city is bound by her oral agreement to a $900,000 settlement, a federal judge has ruled. Susan Hunt initially agreed to the pact in a recorded phone call with her lawyer. But she then…

Feb 23, 2016 1:05 PM CST

Federal judge orders lawyer to pay almost $116K for pursuing baseless employment discrimination case

A Pennsylvania lawyer with what a federal judge called a “consistently problematic track record” was ordered on Friday to pay nearly $116,000 in legal costs for the two defendants in an employment discrimination case determined by the court to be baseless. The initial opinion (PDF) by U.S. District Judge Matthew…

Feb 22, 2016 11:05 AM CST

As law firm billing rates increase, realization rates drop—but not in bankruptcy court

Law firm billing rates nearing $1,500 an hour are getting some press, but the reality is that realization and collection rates have plummeted. Am Law Daily columnist Steven Harper points to the collection figures in a report (PDF) by Georgetown University Law Center and Thomson Reuters Peer Monitor. By the…

Feb 17, 2016 6:15 AM CST

Top partner billing rates at BigLaw firms approach $1,500 per hour

Despite efforts by corporate clients to curtail legal expenses over the past decade, rates have risen steadily at many of the nation’s BigLaw firms. Although a billable rate of $1,000 per hour was newsworthy only five years ago, top partners at the nation’s biggest and best-known corporate law firms are…

Feb 8, 2016 4:00 PM CST

Lawyer who won $390K for clients at trial must pay $11K for alerting media about case

An Ohio lawyer is appealing a judge’s order requiring him to pay $11,000 to the defense, after winning $390,000 for the plaintiffs in a tort case, because he alerted a newspaper about the lawsuit. Attorney Peter Pattakos was sanctioned for telling a friend who is a Cleveland Scene editor about…

Feb 1, 2016 4:45 PM CST

BigLaw firm billed for ‘outlandish’ Ritz-Carlton stays, first-class airfare, suit alleges

Updated: A suit filed by a bankruptcy trustee alleges Williams & Connolly’s legal bills for an arbitration “exceeded the bounds of reasonableness” and the expenses it incurred were “outlandish.” The suit (PDF), filed last Wednesday by a trustee for the corporate owner of several vocational training schools, also targets Duane…

Jan 25, 2016 7:42 AM CST

Judge’s battle to stay on bench ends at SCOTUS, but ethics case is still ongoing

The U.S. Supreme Court refused Monday to hear an appeal by a former Florida judge of the state supreme court’s decision to remove her from the bench last year. However, while the denial of former Broward Circuit Judge Laura Watson’s certiorari petition ends her quest to get her judicial job…

Jan 12, 2016 4:45 PM CST

BigLaw firm to review Chicago in-house team after police shooting defense verdict is struck

The longtime chief of a major Chicago-based international law firm has been put in charge of a third-party review of the conduct of a division of Chicago in-house lawyers. Announced last week, in the wake of a stunning civil rights trial loss, the review is to be headed by Dan…

Jan 11, 2016 11:50 AM CST

Federal judge sanctions lawyer for ‘litigious necromancy’ and ‘see what sticks’ approach to briefing

A federal judge in Pennsylvania has ordered an Allentown lawyer to pay attorney fees for filing an employment discrimination case that was “nothing more than an illusion.” U.S. District Judge Matthew Brann sanctioned lawyer Donald Russo in a Dec. 29 decision (PDF), report the Legal Intelligencer (sub. req.) and Pennlive.com.…

Jan 5, 2016 8:12 AM CST

Chief justice: Judges and lawyers should heed speedy justice idea in ‘big deal’ civil rule changes

Changes in the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure highlight lawyers’ affirmative duty to work together to achieve prompt and efficient resolutions of disputes, according to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. In his Year-End Report on the Federal Judiciary (PDF), Roberts called for “a change in our legal culture that…

Jan 4, 2016 9:51 AM CST

Federal judge criticizes BigLaw firm’s ‘unorthodox approach’ in New Jersey bridge scandal

A federal judge is taking Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher to task for failing to preserve contemporaneous interview notes in an investigation that found no wrongdoing by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie in a lane closing scandal. In a decision (PDF) on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Susan Wigenton of Newark said…

Dec 17, 2015 8:19 AM CST

Federal judge says lawyer and client must pay $19K for filing baseless civil rights suit

The plaintiff’s lawyer should have known that the purported facts on which a civil rights suit against the New York City police department was predicated weren’t true, a Manhattan federal judge says. So both attorney and client are on the hook for over $19,000 in sanctions, to help offset the…

Dec 16, 2015 11:25 AM CST

SCOTUS agrees to decide if company sued by EEOC can collect attorney fees in tossed case

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a trucking company sued for alleged discrimination by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission can collect attorney fees for claims dismissed as a result of the agency’s “sue first, ask questions later” strategy. The court granted certiorari on Friday, report the National…

Dec 7, 2015 7:16 AM CST