Law Firms

Federal prosecutors here have charged a retired Palm Springs, Calif., lawyer with taking kickbacks from a prominent New York law firm in exchange for serving as plaintiff in dozens of class-action and shareholder lawsuits that earned the firm $44 million over 20 years. The indictment against 78-year-old Seymour M. Lazar, unsealed Thursday, stems from a […]

Merck & Co. should have told doctors and consumers “the good, the bad and the ugly” about Vioxx long before pulling it from the market last year, a plaintiff’s attorney said Wednesday in closing arguments in the nation’s first civil trial involving the once-popular painkiller. Mark Lanier, who represents the widow of a Texas man

ET Merck & Co. will consider settling a limited number of lawsuits over its withdrawn painkiller Vioxx, a spokesman said Friday. The drug’s link to heart attacks and strokes has spawned thousands of lawsuits and a $253 million jury verdict in Texas. As recently as Wednesday, company lawyers were still saying they planned to fight

At his confirmation hearings this week, Judge John G. Roberts Jr. will be asked to respond to questions about documents he wrote as a young government lawyer. The questions are sure to be sharp, but at least he can take solace in the fact that his mentor, and the man whom he seeks to replace,

Technology and communications companies rank third on the list of U.S. and U.K. industries with the most litigation, according a new survey of manufacturing companies. The survey by the law firm Fulbright & Jaworski, a leading intellectual-property litigator based in New York and Houston, found that the average U.S. manufacturer currently faces 40 lawsuits. Of

The federal grand jury investigating the leak of a CIA officer’s identity met for three hours Wednesday with Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and his deputies, adjourning for the day without announcing any action. Fitzgerald is known to be putting the finishing touches on a two-year criminal probe that has ensnared President Bush’s top political adviser

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

Milberg Weiss bills itself as the largest contingent-fee plaintiff-side firm involved in securities suits, and it has negotiated well-known settlements for hundreds of millions of dollars with companies including Rite Aid, 3Com, MicroStrategy and Sunbeam. The 35-year-old firm currently represents the lead plaintiff in shareholder suits against Enron and Dynegy. Senior partners on both coasts

The talks broke off July 24 with management at both firms claiming the split was reached by mutual agreement, despite earlier reports that a merger deal could have been finalised by the end of July. Commenting on the split, one senior Orricks partner said “There are always people and egos and politics in these things,