CONCORD,N.H. - A federal judge says New England College in Henniker, N.H., mayproceed with its lawsuit accusing a poet of stealing one of itsmaster's programs and its faculty and recreating it at a rival schoolin New Jersey.
New England College is suing Anne Marie Macari ,the former director of its low-residency Master's of Fine Arts inPoetry program , and Drew University, where Macari now directs asimilar program.
Drew University asked U.S. District Court JudgeJoseph Laplante to either dismiss the case or move it to New Jersey.Laplante denied both motions. The judge says even though no one fromDrew ever came to New Hampshire, Macari was acting on Drew's behalf andthe school authorized or at least knew about her actions in NewHampshire.
Michael Bialys, a Los Angeles DUI lawyer also known as theDUI Guy, is the former managing partner of a large criminal defense firm.In his time in that role, he saw manymismanaged DUI cases and realized his true calling was to go into DUIdefense.Mr. Bialys’s philosophy is thateveryone should be able to get a comprehensive and aggressive defense, and withthat ideal in mind he opened up his own DUI defense law firm.
Mr. Bialys prides himself on offering client orientedservices, focusing on one-on-one personal relationships with his clients.He has a full understanding of the long termeffects of criminal records on areas of life such as employment opportunitiesand knows how important it is to get records expunged.If you have been in a related accident andwish to be fully and comprehensively defended by a premier Los AngelesDUI lawyer, call Michael Bialys today at 1-888-DUI-1-GUY.
Kuwait-based telecom firm Zain is not concerned over a lawsuit by South Africa-based Econet Wireless disputing the ownership of Zain Nigeria, Zain's chief executive said in remarks published on Monday.
"Saad al-Barrak affirmed that the group is not facing any risk from a legal dispute over Zain Nigeria," al-Rai newspaper reported. "(This issue ) is old and dates back to before 2006."
Last week, Econet said it disputed the purchase in 2006 by Celtel, now called Zain, of a majority stake in a group called Vee Networks Limited, now Zain Nigeria.
Barrak said that Econet has lost similar cases that it had filed in British courts over past years, the newspaper reported.
Zain Nigeria has traded under various brands since 2001 due to a series of boardroom conflicts.
It has been known as Vee Networks, Vmobile, Celtel and now Zain Nigeria.
Econet -- which has operations in nine countries in Africa, Europe and the East Asia Pacific rim -- said in a statement it was pursuing arbitration proceedings because it believed it had been denied its right of first refusal over the stake.
It has now appealed to legal authorities including an international tribunal operating under the auspices of the United Nations for the transaction to be unwound.
Zain, a hot but tricky potential acquisition target for stagnating Western telecoms groups, has invested more than $12 billion in Africa.
Nigeria is the group's biggest market, contributing 21 per cent of customers and 17 per cent of revenues.
The litigation equivalent of Halley's comet is about to streak into view in Manhattan federal district court. Yes, folks, when trial in the shareholder suit against Vivendi and two of its former executives begins this week before Judge Richard Holwell, it may be your once-in-a-lifetime chance to witness a so-called f-cubed securities class action trial, involving foreign investors who bought shares of foreign companies on foreign exchanges. Paul Saunders of Cravath, Swaine & Moore giving the opening statement for the defendants and Arthur Abbey of Abbey Spanier Rodd & Abrams is appearing as lead counsel for the plaintiffs. James Quinn of Weil, Gotshal & Manges, our most recent Litigator of the Week, is cocounsel for the defense.
Plaintiffs in the case, which has been around since 2002, are shareholders across the U.S. and Europe who allege that Vivendi--then known as Vivendi Universal--made false and misleading statements in 2001 and 2002, when Vivendi's former CEO, Jean-Marie Messier, was transforming the French water company into a media conglomerate through a mad dash of acquisitions. Plaintiffs claim that Vivendi, Messier, and former chief financial officer Guillaume Hannezo concealed a liquidity crisis, whose revelation ultimately caused the stock to drop.
It used to be that the only thing lawyers tried to recruit was new clients. But these days, seemingly every firm has a group of attorneys pushing to bring aboard something else entirely: iPhones. And they want them badly.
"I have probably 15 people who continue to e-mail me about it," says the IT director at an Am Law 100 firm who asked not to be identified. "This one attorney, he goes out and finds someone who says he can solve any iPhone problem for $175," he says. "These attorneys, they want this thing so much, they are off trying to solve my problems. God bless them, but they don't know what they're doing."
The issue isn't technical. It's relatively simple to hook an iPhone into a corporate network, since it can use the same Microsoft Exchange Server that most firms already use for their BlackBerrys. Instead, IT directors' reluctance boils down to this: The BlackBerry was designed from the ground up to do one thing: transmit e-mail securely. Other features have been tacked onto newer models, but robust, secure, immediate e-mail was -- and is -- at the BlackBerry's core. The iPhone, on the other hand, is more of a consumer device with e-mail tacked on. Law firms shied away from the iPhone because it couldn't match the BlackBerry on security. And security -- well, that's at the core of a law firm IT director's job. "The original iPhone and the later 3G model had no local encryption, which meant that everything on the device was stored in clear text," says the IT director. "The simple passcodes many users had -- if they used any passcode at all -- could be hacked, and then everything would be viewable. We told our attorneys this was a deal-breaker."
But with the release of the latest iPhone, the 3GS, along with the new iPhone 3.0 operating system, the platform is looking more business-friendly. Forget about the consumer-oriented enhancements (like the upgraded camera on the 3GS, capable of shooting video). The real story, at least for law firms, is the vast array of enterprise-focused improvements. The 3GS phone now has local encryption along with more memory (up to 32 gigabytes) and a faster processor. And with the 3.0 OS, law firms running Exchange can require the use of strong passwords (the complicated ones, with numbers and letters, that no one except IT administrators want to take the time to create and use) and remotely wipe devices that have been lost or stolen. Users get a long-awaited, cut-copy-paste feature (a glaring omission on the iPhone until now), a landscape keyboard option for easier typing, and the ability to search the "from," "to," and "subject" headers (but not, alas, the body) on their e-mail, as well as their iPhone contact list, calendar and notes.
Three Canadian law firms failed to persuade an appeals court to double the C$6.3 million ($5.9 million) fees awarded by a trial judge after settling a group lawsuit against Atlas Cold Storage Income Trust.
Sutts Strosberg LLP, Koskie Minsky LLP and Groia & Co. had sought C$12 million in fees, which they said they were entitled to because they had a contingency agreement with shareholders who sued Atlas, an operator of refrigerated warehouses, in 2004 for overstating its earnings in 2001 and 2002.
Atlas agreed to settle the class-action suit by paying C$40 million, which paid shareholders as much as C$4.50 for each share they held. Ontario Superior Court Judge Joan Lax in a Feb. 12 ruling concluded that the lawyers couldn’t justify payment for 7,400 hours billed for a three-day pleading motion, preparation for a certification motion that was never argued and three days of mediation.
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