Law Firms

The wife of a prominent San Francisco Bay Area lawyer was beaten to death over the weekend, and the investigation into her slaying remains “wide open,” a sheriff’s spokesman said Monday. Pamela Vitale, 52, was found dead Saturday evening. Her husband, attorney Daniel Horowitz, 50, reported finding her dead at a trailer where the couple […]

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a government effort to force tobacco companies to give up $280 billion, leaving the Bush administration with a scaled-back version of its lawsuit. Shares of cigarette makers rose. The high court, without comment, let stand a decision that bars the government from recouping decades of profits it says tobacco companies

Bankruptcy filings in the past few weeks have spiked to record highs as consumers rushed to file before a new, more stringent bankruptcy law takes effect on Monday, Oct. 17. For the week ending Oct. 8, bankruptcy courts reported a total of 102,863 filings, up from the previous record high of 68,387 the week before,

US regulators last night took action against Refco, one of the world’s largest derivatives brokers, as the repercussions of its chief executive being charged with fraud continued to reverberate across Wall Street. In a step that reflected the severity of the situation, the securities and exchange commission placed trading restrictions on the business, limiting Refco

South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd. has agreed to plead guilty to a charge that it conspired to fix the price of memory chips and will pay a $300 million fine, the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday. The Justice Department said the criminal antitrust fine was the second-largest in U.S. history, and it left

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

Phillip R. Bennett, the chief executive and chairman of Refco Inc., who took the futures broker public two months ago, was placed on a leave of absence after an internal review found he owed the company $430 million. Bennett, 57, whose backers include Boston-based buyout firm Thomas H. Lee Partners LP, didn’t disclose that the

The US government has seized almost $9m from Conrad Black, the embattled media tycoon, alleging that the proceeds of his sale of an elegant New York apartment were the result of a fraudulent scheme. FBI agents swooped on Friday night as the $10.5m sale of the Park Avenue property was completed. They seized $7.9m. Earlier

Russian prosecutors have launched a series of raids during the past 48 hours at banks, businesses and offices associated with the floundering oil company Yukos and its founder and former chief executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The raids appear to be the preamble to fresh charges being laid against the jailed oil magnate. On Wednesday, police searched

Seeking to quell unrest on his conservative flank, President Bush mounted a defense Tuesday of Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers, insisting that his friend and former personal lawyer was “the best person I could find” for the job. “I can understand people not knowing Harriet. She hasn’t been one of these publicity hounds,” Bush said