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Spotlight

Craigslist Fires Back at eBay With Trademark and Unfair Competition Claims

The Recorder

What began as a boardroom tiff between two leading Internet companies has erupted into a spirited litigation battle. Two weeks after eBay sued Craigslist for diluting its stake in the privately held company, Craigslist has fired back with a suit of its own. The dispute centers around eBay's Kijiji, an online classified site that competes with Craigslist. The complaint claims that, inside eBay, Kijiji was called "craigslist killer" and that eBay put a Kijiji insider on Craigslist's board as a spy.

Bankers Charged With Helping Calif. Billionaire Evade Taxes

Daily Business Review

Two foreign bankers were charged Tuesday with helping a real estate billionaire hide $200 million in accounts in Switzerland and Lichtenstein to avoid taxes. Former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld and New Haven Trust owner Mario Staggl were accused of assisting the billionaire, whom the indictment lists as I.O. with a California corporation. Authorities would not confirm that the indictment referred to Igor Olenicoff, the only billionaire with those initials on a Forbes list of the richest Americans.

MySpace Wins $234 Million Spam Judgment

The Associated Press

MySpace has won a $234 million judgment over junk messages sent to its members in what is believed to be the largest anti-spam award ever. A federal judge ruled against two of the Internet's most prominent spam defendants, Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines, after the two failed to show up at a court hearing Monday. Wallace earned the monikers "Spam King" and "Spamford" as head of a company that sent as many as 30 million junk e-mails a day in the 1990s.

N.Y. Court Rejects Order for Foster Child's Sex-Change Surgery

New York Law Journal

A family court doesn't have the authority to compel New York City's Administration for Children's Services to pay for a foster child's sex-change operation, an appellate court has ruled. The Appellate Division, 1st Department held that while Social Services Law requires the agency to provide "necessary medical and surgical care" to all children under its aegis, regardless of whether or not they receive Medicaid, a family court does not have the power to order that a child receive certain care.

Rehnquist Parody Found at Library of Congress

Legal Times

The late Chief Justice William Rehnquist was known for his love of Gilbert and Sullivan, which even inspired him to add gold stripes to the arms of his black robe. Now, John Barrett of St. John's University School of Law has found a Rehnquist parody of a song from "Mikado" that sat unnoticed for 50 years at the Library of Congress. Some of the ditty's droll references are obscure, but they amount to a fairly biting critique of the Court then led by Chief Justice Fred Vinson.

Burger King Employees Fired Following Controversy Over Blog Posts

The Associated Press

Burger King said on Tuesday that it fired two employees following the disclosure that an executive secretly posted blogs slamming a farmworker advocacy group. The company also said it will stop using a private investigation firm whose president allegedly posed as a student activist to infiltrate the group and its supporters. Burger King is in a public relations feud over how to improve wages and working conditions for Florida's tomato pickers.

Recusals Could Lead to Discipline, N.Y. Judicial Conduct Commission Warns

New York Law Journal

The New York State Commission on Judicial Conduct on Monday warned the state's 1,300 judges that using recusals to protest legislative inaction on a pay raise could result in disciplinary action. The warning was issued despite what the commission called "the judiciary's understandable disappointment at the continuing compensation impasse." The agency also endorsed a pay raise for the judges as "well deserved and long overdue." The warning reinforced a similar caution issued by Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye.

Peace Group Sues Bush Administration, Charging Iraq War Is Unconstitutional

New Jersey Law Journal

An anti-war activist group represented by the Constitutional Law Clinic at Rutgers University Law School-Newark, sued President Bush in federal court on Tuesday, seeking a declaratory judgment that the war in Iraq is illegal and unconstitutional. The suit concedes that federal courts have been loathe to rule against an administration's use of military force, but goes through a lengthy analysis of early court decisions to bolster its claim that the war is illegal.

Furth Taking Wal-Mart Case to a New Home

The Recorder

Just five months ago, lawyers at The Furth Firm were preparing to move from downtown San Francisco to new offices in Santa Rosa, Calif. Now most of them have been asked to look for work elsewhere. There will be no move to Santa Rosa, veteran antitrust plaintiffs attorney Frederick Furth said Monday. Instead, he and two other Furth lawyers will take their open matters, including the $172 million Wal-Mart meal-break case, to Zelle Hofmann Voelbel Mason & Gette.

Gordon & Rees' Growth Exceeds Goals

The National Law Journal

When Gordon & Rees was founded in 1974, the plan was to grow the law firm to 40 lawyers. As it turns out, those were modest goals. In the past five years, San Francisco-based Gordon & Rees has opened 10 offices outside California. And managing partner Dion Cominos says the next goal is to open an office in the Southeastern U.S., possibly in Florida or Atlanta. "The idea is to have our core practice areas represented in all our major markets so our clients can turn to us in any of those areas," he says.

Time to Bring Legal Work Inside?

GC California Magazine

Little needs to be said about the constantly increasing cost of outside counsel, and there is little hope that the economic downturn will do anything more than temporarily slow the increases. Moreover, the slow economy will step up the pressure on companies to reduce their legal costs. Therefore, it's no surprise that many companies are considering moving more legal work in-house. Consultant Michael C. Ross examines some key issues for companies to keep in mind when deciding whether to make the transition.

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When E-Discovery Is Put to the Test

Pennsylvania Law Weekly

A federal district judge may send electronic discovery toward its most searching scrutiny yet. In a recent decision, Judge John M. Facciola recommended "concept searching," the use of complex search engines to locate electronic data, for a tardy producer to pick up the pace.

Visit Legal Technology

Please Don't 'Smartsize' Me

Fulton County Daily Report

Associates are all sitting on the giant large-firm roller coaster together -- one day giddy with excitement and anticipation as salaries get ratcheted up, the next day (that would be today) hearing that eerie silence before the inevitable downward free fall. Mere months ago, associates were having money hurled at them by "market forces," but now those same market forces are causing them to be laid off. How does this change of economic forces affect you? Humor columnist The Snark has some ideas.

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