Good morning. A new list ranking the top 50 most-cited legal scholars is out, but it includes just two women. Plus, the details on a clerk hired despite a “history of nakedly racist and hateful conduct,” and a landmark settlement in the litigation over Flint, Michigan’s water contamination. And it’s the return of Penalty Box! Step right up and get your legal news!
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There are some big names on a new ranking of the 50 most-cited legal scholars of all time — retired Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner is one, as is Harvard Law’s Cass Sunstein.
But there are very few women. Just two, to be precise — and they appear towards the bottom of the list.
Yale Law librarian Fred Shapiro, who put the ranking together, said three factors were to blame for the lack of women on his list: scarcity of women in the legal academy, prejudice against women law professors and the greater demands women face outside of the workplace.
Read more about who claimed the top spots on Shapiro’s ranking, and the women who were included.
- Democratic lawmakers on the U.S. House Judiciary Committee are urging the federal judiciary to investigate the conduct of two Republican-appointed federal judges — including one on the 11th Circuit — who had hired a law clerk with a "history of nakedly racist and hateful conduct." (Reuters)
- A 7th Circuit panel appeared skeptical of arguments by Japanese pachinko billionaire Kazuo Okada, represented by Dentons, that he shouldn't be forced to pay $50 million in legal fees stemming from an earlier court fight with Wynn Resorts. An arbitration panel awarded the fees to Bartlit Beck by default in 2019. (Reuters)
- Law firm travel is at 30% of where it stood in 2019 — and it’s unlikely it will ever return to pre-pandemic levels, experts say. (Reuters)
- Fox Rothschild said it is formally opening an office in Kansas City, bringing together labor and employment and intellectual property lawyers to spearhead its growth in the Midwest region. (Reuters)
That’s the size of a settlement approved by U.S. District Judge Judith Levy in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to resolve thousands of claims from Flint residents impacted by the city’s contaminated water supply. Cohen Milstein Sellers & Toll; Pitt, McGehee, Palmer, Bonanni & Rivers; Susman Godfrey; Bronstein, Gewirtz and Grossman; Weitz & Luxenberg; Motley Rice; and Teresa Bingman were approved as settlement class counsel. Read more about the settlement.
Now more than ever, legal teams are distributed both geographically and organizationally.
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Join the exclusive Legal Leaders webinar on Nov. 11 at 1 pm EST to hear from GCs at Bristol Myers Squibb, Dutchie and HP Enterprise about how they have delivered legal services in challenging times.
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Jury service doesn’t have to be such a drag. As in-person trials resume after the pandemic-induced hiatus, Jenna Greene considers how to make jury duty less onerous and more rewarding. It comes down to valuing jurors’ time, whether that means paying them a market wage or taking pains not to allow judges, lawyers and witnesses to waste it at trial. As a retired federal judge who penned a juror’s bill of rights put it, the key question should be “WWJW” or “What would jurors want?”
Edelson says Real Housewife Erika Girardi got money from Lion Air victims. The law firm that blew the whistle on famed plaintiffs’ lawyer Tom Girardi’s alleged embezzlement of millions from his clients launched a new bombshell in a brief filed Tuesday in Girardi’s bankruptcy proceedings. Edelson claims that financial records produced to a bankruptcy trustee show that Girardi’s estranged wife, reality TV star Erika Girardi, received money that should have gone to plane crash victims. Her lawyer says Edelson — which was Girardi’s co-counsel in the Lion Air cases — has no authority to go after his client and “is seeing monsters in closets.” Alison Frankel has the story.
- A panel discussion that is part of The Federalist Society's 2021 National Lawyers Convention will look at "the potential antitrust revolution," amid new legislation and policy initiatives that could redefine marketplaces. Panel speakers include Makan Delrahim, the Trump-era head of the Justice Department's antitrust division; Judge Douglas Ginsburg of the D.C. Circuit; Diana Moss, president of the American Antitrust Institute; and William Baer, a former head of DOJ's antitrust division.
- The New York City Bar’s small law firm symposium will host panel discussions on topics including assessing coronavirus-driven behavior changes, marketing planning, the basics of accounting and how lawyers can use social media as a brand-building tool.
- The Texas attorney general’s office faces a close-of-business deadline today in the 5th Circuit to file any reply papers backing the state’s arguments that the New Orleans-based appeals court should pause the Biden administration’s COVID-19 vaccination rule for large employers pending appeal. The U.S. Justice Department on Wednesday disputed the assertion from Texas that the rule, which applies to companies employing more than 100 workers, “flouted the Constitution, the limits of statutory authority and the foundational principles of administrative law.” DOJ lawyers said in their filing that “petitioners cannot show that their purported injuries outweigh the harm of staying a standard that will save thousands of lives and prevent hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations.”
Court calendars are subject to last-minute docket changes.
"Had you gone to trial, I don't think there's any jury that could have acquitted you."
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., imposing the longest prison term yet—41 months—in a U.S. Capitol riot case. The defendant, Scott Fairlamb, a former mixed martial artist, was filmed punching a police officer during the Jan. 6 attack. Fairlamb was the first rioter sentenced for violence against the police during the riot. Read more about the sentencing.
Welcome back to the Penalty Box, where The Daily Docket highlights new and notable attorney and judicial discipline orders, hearings, articles and more. We’re looking out for cases and issues of importance, so please do share any observations with us.
- A 7th Circuit panel next week will take up a dispute over whether costs associated with an ethics panel’s case against a lawyer are dischargeable in bankruptcy. “Nearly every federal court to address that issue—including every court in this circuit and three of this court’s sister circuit courts of appeal—has held that they are not dischargeable under the bankruptcy code’s discharge exception for fines and penalties owed to the government,” lawyers for the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation told the appeals court. Counsel for the lawyer whose bankruptcy is at issue said in his brief to the appeals court that “fines and penalties that reimburse the government for its costs and expenditures are dischargeable.”
- A New York state appeals court has suspended Richard Liebowitz, who courts have called a "copyright troll" for filing thousands of low-value copyright infringement complaints on behalf of photographers, from practicing in New York. Liebowitz has already been sanctioned by several courts for misconduct, including the Manhattan-based Southern District of New York, where he has filed more than 1,000 complaints and was suspended from practice on an interim basis last year. Liebowitz was "disappointed" about being suspended before having his case at SDNY heard on the merits, but he looks forward to the "opportunity to present all of the relevant evidence" at his hearing, Michael Ross of the Law Offices of Michael S. Ross, an attorney for Liebowitz, said.
- A Michigan attorney discipline board has reprimanded Susan Fairchild, a longtime federal prosecutor, over her trial statements concerning evidence that a judge earlier had suppressed, marking a rare public rebuke of a U.S. government lawyer. Fairchild, a Detroit-based prosecutor for nearly 20 years, consented to the Oct. 22 sanction in an agreement she reached with Michigan bar authorities that said she "engaged in conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice." The board called Fairchild's remorse, character and lack of any prior discipline "substantial" mitigating factors.
- Bar regulators in Washington, D.C., have the authority in certain instances to negotiate reduced punishment for misconduct that otherwise would require disbarment. The District of Columbia Court of Appeals panel unanimously approved a negotiated three-year bar suspension for lawyer Paul Mensah, who had "recklessly misappropriated" client funds in two matters and violated a rule on fee-splitting. The court said it expressly was not taking a position on cases involving intentional misappropriation. Mensah’s case was closely watched among lawyers in the professional responsibility bar.
- A jury ordered Bayer AG to pay $62 million to students and others who say they were exposed to toxic chemicals known as PCBs made by the company's predecessor, Monsanto, at the Sky Valley Education Center in Monroe, Washington. Counsel for the group, Richard Friedman of Friedman Rubin, had asked for at least $180 million in damages, while Bayer, represented by Adam Miller of Shook, Hardy & Bacon, argued there was no evidence of unsafe levels of PCBs at the school. (Reuters)
- U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Craig Whitley in Charlotte, North Carolina, put nearly 40,000 legal claims that Johnson & Johnson’s talc-based products cause cancer on temporary pause, but handed the drugmaker a potential setback by moving the cases to a New Jersey court where the outcomes might be less favorable. Johnson & Johnson entity LTL Management LLC, represented by Jones Day, entered bankruptcy in a bid to consolidate and resolve the claims. (Reuters)
- The chief electrician on the set of the movie “Rust” who witnessed the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins has filed a negligence lawsuit against actor Alec Baldwin and the film's producers. Serge Svetnoy, who is represented by Gary Dordick of Dordick Law, says in the suit that Hutchins died in his arms. (Reuters)
- Apple struck out for the second time as it tried to revive challenges to three of chipmaker Qualcomm's patents at the Federal Circuit after the appellate court said a 2019 settlement of the companies’ patent dispute blocks Apple from taking action. Apple is represented by Lauren Degnan of Fish & Richardson, while Qualcomm is represented by Jonathan Franklin of Norton Rose Fulbright US. (Reuters)
- U.S. District Judge Edmund Sargus in Columbus will allow Ohio ratepayers who claim they were wrongly charged on their electricity bills to bail out failing nuclear power plants to sue electric utility FirstEnergy as a class. The class will include Ohio residents, represented by Murray & Murray and The Kerger Law Firm, who got a monthly surcharge on their bill from FirstEnergy, represented by Jones Day. (Reuters)
- Cloud-communications firm Twilio has expanded its management team with the addition of Dana Wagner, the top lawyer from Impossible Foods. (Reuters)
- Two former Bryan Cave partners have shut down Swartz, Binnersley & Associates, the Hong Kong boutique firm they founded in 2018, to join DLA Piper and Hauzen LLP. Kristi Swartz joined DLA Piper as a partner in its intellectual property and technology practice, while Nigel Binnersley joined Hauzen LLP. (Reuters)
- Reed Smith said Julia Nestor has joined the firm’s global regulatory and investigations practice as a partner in New York. Nestor formerly was a longtime AUSA in the Eastern District of New York, where she recently served as deputy chief of the business and securities fraud section. (Reed Smith)
- A 10-lawyer real estate team, including partner Agata Jurek-Zbrojska, has left Greenberg Traurig to join CMS Legal in Warsaw. Joining the firm with her are two partners, Małgorzata Madej-Balcerowska and Dominik Rafałko, and seven other lawyers from Greenberg Traurig. (Reuters)
- Sanjay Bhandari, Bryn Spradling and Gary Spradling have joined Buchalter in the firm’s San Diego office. Bhandari, who was previously at McNamara Smith, is a litigation shareholder. Bryn Spradling and Gary Spradling, who were both previously at Duckor Spradling Metzger and Wynne, will be a shareholder in the corporate and health care practice group and a counsel in the health care practice group, respectively. (Buchalter)
Predisposition in the workplace can lead to biased results in hiring, especially when many organizations identify non-diverse employees to conduct candidate interviews, writes Brian Seaman of Stradley Ronon Stevens & Young. How do organizations overcome barriers to ensure all candidates are given equal opportunities? Asking a standard set of questions is one starting point. Read more about three ways to reduce bias.
Correction: An Industry Moves news item on Nov. 10 misidentified the number of lawyers working in the Munich office of Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner. Finnegan has hired three attorneys and three legal professionals apart from Dr. Jochen Herr, not six attorneys as previously mentioned.
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