Rudolph W. Giuliani’s empire is expanding with a high-profile new venture: Mr. Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, is becoming a partner in a politically connected Texas law firm and will open its Manhattan office in May. The Houston law firm, Bracewell & Patterson, employs several prominent Republicans and former members of the Bush […]

Johnnie L. Cochran Jr., whose fierce, flamboyant and electrifyingly effective advocacy in the O. J. Simpson murder trial captivated the country and solidified his image as a master of high-profile criminal defense, died yesterday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 67. The cause was a brain tumor, said a law partner, Peter J.

Prosecutors called Tuesday for the maximum prison sentence for the former chief executive of the Yukos oil company as the highest-profile criminal case in Russia’s post-Soviet history drew to a close. Prosecutor Dmitry Shokhin asked a Moscow court to find Mikhail Khodorkovsky guilty on tax evasion and other charges after plowing through evidence in a

Sony Corp. on Monday said it was ordered by a U.S. federal court to halt U.S. sales of its PlayStation game consoles and pay nearly $91 million in patent infringement damages to a California company, although the judge immediately put her ruling on hold. The stay in the case means Sony will not actually have

It was a moment that defense attorney M. Gerald Schwartzbach had been working toward for months. As he began closing arguments in the Robert Blake murder trial, the judge asked the 60-year-old attorney to speak up so she and the court audience could hear. “I will try to keep my voice up,” the bifocaled, bow-tied

Over the last four decades, Warren E. Buffett has built Berkshire Hathaway into one of the world’s largest and most successful insurers. Along the way, he has navigated the stock market with legendary prowess and offered folksy guidelines for proper corporate governance. Now, with investigators on three continents examining Berkshire affiliates and a deadline looming

Prosecutors in the sexual molesting trial of Michael Jackson on Friday painted a picture of him riffling through dirty magazines and showing the pictures to two young boys. The prosecution repeatedly projected onto a large screen images of sexually explicit periodicals like Hustler’s Barely Legal Hardcore and had fingerprint experts identify on their glossy pages

Losing still more legal appeals, Terri Schiavo’s father warned Friday that his severely brain-damaged daughter was “down to her last hours” as she entered her second week without the feeding tube that had sustained her life for 15 years. Doctors have said she would probably die within a week or two of the feeding tube

The Internal Revenue Service has collected more than $3.2 billion in back taxes, interest and penalties from participants in a single tax shelter, including $100 million from one taxpayer and $20 million each from 18 others, the agency said today. The total take for the agency from participants in the shelter is expected to top

In a twist likely to further complicate the prosecution’s efforts to convict Michael Jackson, a former bodyguard expected to be a key witness against the pop star is sitting in a Las Vegas jail, facing a slew of felony charges stemming from four armed robberies. A spokeswoman for the Clark County, Nevada, district attorney’s office