Merck & Co. must pay more than $253 million to the family of a Texas man who died after taking the company’s Vioxx painkiller, a jury ruled in the first personal-injury case over the drug to come to trial. Jurors deliberated more than 10 hours in Angleton, Texas, before awarding $24.4 million in actual damages […]

A federal grand jury yesterday indicted the former publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times and prosecutors signaled that he is cooperating with a criminal investigation into alleged improper dealings by media tycoon Conrad M. Black. F. David Radler, who was Black’s second in command at Hollinger International Inc., is assisting the authorities and is expected to

Partners at pioneering international law firm Coudert Brothers have voted to let the firm break up after failing to reach a merger agreement with another firm. “After exploring various options, the partners of Coudert have authorized the Firm to enter into combinations of offices and practice groups with other firms to reflect the strengths of

A federal judge found a former attorney for Aaron Patterson in civil contempt Wednesday for staging two tearful walkouts during the former death row inmate’s trial on drug and firearms charges. Defense attorney Demitrus Evans, 37, first stormed out of the courtroom after one of Patterson’s many emotional outbursts in June during his pretrial hearings.

America’s new Class Action Fairness Act seeks to curb frivolous class-action lawsuits against companies in areas such as product liability and labour law, mainly by redirecting more of them to federal courts and so denying lawyers scope to “forum-shop” among biddable state courts. But before companies declare victory, they should reflect that the law of

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

Four former Wall Street brokers have been indicted for a scheme allowing day traders to eavesdrop on internal communications and profit by trading ahead of large share orders and subsequent price movements, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday. The brokers were accused of securities fraud, conspiracy, and receiving commercial bribes, according to an indictment unsealed in

Membership in a megafirm isn’t the only ticket to living high on the hog. The partners in The Am Law 200’s Second Hundred — firms number 101 to 200 on the American Lawyer’s list of the nation’s highest-grossing firms — are doing just fine, despite the fact that their average size is just 260 lawyers.

No need to brace yourself — yet — for the reappearance of the hostile-takeover sharpies of the 1980s or even the foosball-and-flip-flop gazillionaires of the late-’90s tech boom, but recently law firms have been gleefully watching their profits climb of late to levels not seen in years. Plumped up by healthy litigation practices, Sarbanes-Oxley work

One of the country’s top law firms has been fined almost £40,000 for refusing to allow a woman employee to work flexible hours, in a case experts say typifies the failure of some employers to adapt to new family-friendly rights for white-collar staff. The Equal Opportunities Commission said yesterday the case involving Herbert Smith, a