Just over four years after Enron became the largest bankruptcy in corporate history, costing employees and investors billions of dollars, the company’s founder and its former chief executive will finally get their day in court. Jeffrey Skilling’s role in the collapse of the former energy giant is examined in the documentary film “Enron: Smartest Guys […]
For drama there is not much to match the trial of Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants. But this is not supposed to be about drama – it is supposed to be about establishing whether Saddam Hussein and senior members of his government are guilty of crimes against humanity. There has been precious little of
Former Wal-Mart Stores Inc.’s vice chairman Tom Coughlin is expected to plead guilty to fraud and failure to pay federal taxes in a court appearance on Tuesday, the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported on Friday. The newspaper, quoting unnamed sources, said a proposed plea agreement with prosecutors called for him to plead guilty to five counts of
Exxon Mobil’s appeal of a $5 billion judgment Alaska jurors levied as punishment for the 1989 Valdez oil spill was heading back to a federal appeals court today. The case, one of America’s longest-running civil disputes, stems from a 1994 decision by an Anchorage jury to award the punitive damages to 34,000 fishermen and other
British Prime Minister Tony Blair believes that the criminal courts are failing. The person who spits at the old lady is not prosecuted because it takes too many police hours, he says. If there is a trial, the outcome is a fine. The upshot? The police don’t bother. Likewise, to prove that a person carrying
The mass murder trial of Saddam Hussein and his seven co-defendants proceeded with its usual chaos Wednesday, with the proceedings were peppered with outbursts from Saddam and his half-brother. Defense attorneys questioned the validity of the memories of the witnesses and accused the witness of being coached, as Barazan Ibrahim al-Tikriti and Saddam Hussein lectured
Many executives dream of dominating their industries the way BAR/BRI does the business of helping law school graduates prepare for bar examinations. Every law student knows BAR/BRI. Hundreds of thousands of them have taken its courses to pass the bar, an essential step in most states before a law school graduate can practice law. Some
Linklaters, SJ Berwin, Macfarlanes and Diageo’s legal team were among the big winners at the 2005 Legal Week Awards. Linklaters was named International Firm of the Year with Legal Week’s editorial team citing a year of international expansion, impressive financial performance and slick management. SJ Berwin narrowly beat the highly-rated Berwin Leighton Paisner (BLP) to
Holland & Knight, which has long been Florida’s largest law firm and the nation’s eighth biggest, will exit four markets next year, consolidating offices in three metro areas and reducing its work force by about 50 lawyers and 70 support staff members. Among the markets targeted for consolidation is the Tampa Bay area, where Holland’s
Sullivan & Cromwell has kicked off the year-end bonus season by informing associates they will receive additional compensation starting at $30,000 for first-years and ranging up to $50,000 for senior associates. The bonus, which pushes total first-year compensation to $155,000, is unchanged from last year, a fact likely to disappoint many associates, especially since bonuses
