Law Admin

The trial of Richard M. Scrushy, the charismatic founder and former chief executive of HealthSouth who is being charged with fraud, opens next week in a federal district court in Birmingham, Ala. The trial “will be a fascinating soap opera,” said John C. Coffee Jr., a Columbia University professor who specializes in securities law. More

HealthSouth the US hospital operator, on Thursday settled allegations that it defrauded federal health insurance programmes by agreeing to pay $325m. The US Department of Justice said the case covered allegations that HealthSouth had improperly or unlawfully billed Medicare and other federal programmes for a range of patient services dating back to 1991. But the

Former US attorney general Ramsey Clark is to join the defence team of Saddam Hussein, a spokesman for the toppled Iraqi president’s lawyers said today. Mr Clark, who held the office of attorney general under US president Lyndon B. Johnson, “is one of the members of the defence team of president Saddam Hussein,” Ziad Khassawneh

In his harshest criticism of the Kremlin to date, Mikhail B. Khodorkovsky, the businessman who founded Russia’s largest oil producer, Yukos, accused the government of stealing his oil empire and warned in a letter published Tuesday that a continuing crackdown on post-Soviet freedoms would ruin the country. Writing from prison, where he has been held

As managing partners across the country are in the process of tabulating bonuses for 2004, it appears that associates at East Coast firms may have the jolliest holidays of all. Bonuses for new and senior associates this year at many East Coast firms are on the rise, while the year-end perks at some Midwest firms

A senior banker who claimed she was victimised by her bosses has won her legal action for unfair dismissal against the American investment bank Merrill Lynch. An employment tribunal in London ruled that Stephanie Villalba, 42, who earned £1m a year, was unfairly treated. It criticised the bank for trying to grind her down in

Eliot Spitzer may be ready to turn in his badge. After a string of stinging prosecutions that shook up Wall Street, the mutual fund business and the nation’s insurance industry, the New York Attorney General is ready to turn those investigations over to federal regulators, the New York Times reported Saturday. Spitzer told the newspaper

It may be called Camp Cupcake but in the two-and-half months Martha Stewart has been in the federal women’s prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia, she’s found a few things to complain about. Stewart, the founder of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, has been incarcerated in the prison since early October after being sentenced to 10

John G. Rowland, who stepped down as Connecticut’s governor last summer in the face of impeachment, pleaded guilty today to a single federal charge of criminal conspiracy. In the plea agreement, Mr. Rowland admitted to defrauding the Internal Revenue Service by failing to report gratuities, and to defrauding the people of Connecticut by failing to

The European Union (EU) Court of First Instance has upheld sanctions slapped by the European Commission against Microsoft Corporation, ordering the world’s largest software company to change business practices and reveal some trade secrets. The latest ruling by the Luxembourg-based court also forced Microsoft to take steps, including producing a version of Windows without its