Today's [7/21] Cases

Today, I'll be summarizing six cases/developments.


1. In re: The Oil Spill by the Oil Rig "Deepwater Horizon" in the Gulf of Mexico, on April 20, 2010 - 2:10-md-02179

• On the 20th, Judge Carl Barbier of the Louisiana Federal District Court denied BP a bid to "compel the office of President Barack Obama to surrender e-mails from four aides that discussed the government's response to the Deepwater Horizon disaster" as "'BP has not made a sufficient demonstration of need for the documents'" [Judge Sally Shushan]. The evidence BP has already reviewed suggests that former Obama aide, Carol Browner, "'was personally and substantially involved' in producing the government's estimates" of the flow of oil from the spill. BP wanted access to review the e-mails from Browner who was the Director of the White House Office of Energy and Climate Change Policy until March. {http://www.law360.com/environmental/articles/259344}




BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/About/General/2010/5/8/1273321857108/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-rig-006.jpg



2. Aviles v. Charles Schwab & Co. Inc. - 10-12216 [Court of Appeals, 11th Circuit]

• The 11th circuit upheld the decision for Javier Aviles, a former Charles Schwab employee, "accused of breaching contract and soliciting Schwab clients after jumping ship to Bank of America Investment Services Inc." to fork over a $1.4 million award in trade secrets arbitration. Aviles left Schwab in 2007 and was then accused of a breach of contract. He had had contested the award of $1.4 million back in May 2010 (after moving the matter to the Florida Federal Court in 2009); the 11th circuit agreed with the previous district court's findings, stating, "None of the arguments made by Aviles justify vacating the award". {http://www.law360.com/articles/259307}

3. CBS Television Studios v. Entertainment One Ltd. et al. - BC465573

• CBS Television Studies sued L. Reiter, writer of TV-series "The Firm" (first a novel and movie), accusing him of "breaching his contract to develop [the] TV-series sequel to [the novel] by selling a nearly identical project to rival network NBC". CBS is suing both Reither as well as his "distribution partner, Entertainment One Ltd." Much of the same material Reiter provided CBS with was then distributed to NBC, even using "some identical plot details, dialogue, and camera direction". {http://www.law360.com/ip/articles/259242}



The book that the TV series were based upon.

4. USA v. Petters, et al. - 0:11-cr-00141

• Thomas J. Petters, who ran a $3.7 billion dollar Ponzi scheme run, accrued new charges yesterday. The new charges were heaped onto "one of the scheme's primary fundraisers"; prosecutors also implicated another hedge fund manager. The DOJ (US Department of Justice) "elaborated on the initial charges against Petters’ longtime associate Frank Elroy Vennes Jr., adding 17 counts in connection with the swindle, and dragged James Nathan Fry, the head of Arrowhead Capital Management, into the suit". In April of 2010, Petters was sentenced to 50 years in jail. "The superseding indictment charges Venners with 24 counts of fraud, money laundering and making false statements on credit applications. Fry is accused of five counts of securities fraud, four counts of wire fraud and three counts of lying to the SEC during its investigation of Arrowhead. Two other hedge fund managers, David Harrold and Bruce Prevost, pled guilty to their role in the Petters scam in April and settled a civil suit brought by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.. They allegedly raked in more than $58 million in management fees while funneling about $1 billion of clients’ money from a group of Palm Beach funds into the Ponzi scheme" . {http://www.law360.com/topnews/articles/259142}

5. In re: Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. et al. - 1:08-bk-13555

•  Judge James Peck (NY Bankruptcy judge) approved a settlement between "Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and [its] creditors after the few remaining holdouts withdrew their objections, a major milestone in the long-running bankruptcy". He approved a "stipulation that will stop creditors who collectively hold about $100 billion in claims from pursuing discovery or proposing competing plans of their own. 'As in all things, it is not perfect, but it is a major step forward in the administration of these cases,' Lehman attorney Harvey Miller said of the deal". There is still much to discuss and resolve (in particular, claims against Lehman's foreign entities), but this settlement approval certainly is a huge step towards resolution {http://www.law360.com/topnews/articles/259269}.
  




Read on about the Lehman Brothers' Bankruptcy Filing (Sept. '08): http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122145492097035549.html



6. In the Matter of Wells Fargo & Co. et al. - docket number 11-094

• On the 20th, Wells Fargo & Co. agreed to pay $85 million dollars, the greatest federally-assessed  penalty amount "in a consumer-protection enforcement action", to the Federal Reserve Board.  The multi-million dollar assessment was also the "first formal enforcement action by a federal bank regulator addressing the steering of borrowers into high-cost subprime loans". This sizeable compensation is to be allocated to resolving claims that stated, "members of a shuttered subsidiary pushed customers into costlier subprime mortgages and falsified income information in mortgage applications". The Board claimed that for 4.5 years, Wells Fargo Financial Inc. (now defunct), "pushed borrowers [who] were eligible for lower interest prime mortgages into subprime loans at higher interest rates". Though Wells Fargo agreed to pay the settlement amount, the company neither claimed innocence nor guilt. "The settlement requires Wells Fargo to review the qualifications of all borrowers who took out a subprime, cash-out refinancing loan between January 2006 and June 2008 from its subsidiary and check if they were wrongly steered into the loans, the regulator said. Wells Fargo also must review all customers who took out cash-out refinancing loans between January 2004 and June 2008 from Wells Fargo Financial to determine whether their income statements were falsified under the agreement". {http://www.law360.com/articles/259364/wells-fargo-hit-with-85m-subprime-steering-penalty}

On an unrelated, musical note, I can't wait til the new Justice album drops, whenever it does, later this year. :]
In case you didn't hear this back in March:
Justice "Civilization" High Quality by 1077 The End