Legal Pad

Gibson Snags Heller Partner With Mad Math Skills

Anybody got a tourniquet? Another lawyer has left Heller Ehrman, this time to Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher.

Complex securities litigator George Brown, who has been with Heller since 1997, has joined Gibson’s Palo Alto office, the firm announced on Wednesday. Brown works on securities litigation, complex contractual disputes and class actions, according to Heller’s soon-to-be-updated Web site. A former certified public accountant, Brown has represented directors, officers and companies in SEC and grand jury investigations involving accounting issues and has represented accounting firms in litigation and investigations.

"People with George’s skill set are few and far between even in our firm, where we do a ton of work with the accounting firms," said Russell Hansen, head of Gibson's Palo Alto office. “What’s most attractive to us about him is that he has very strong experience and depth in the accounting area. including having worked as a CPA for one of the big firms before going off to law school.”    

Brown had headed the firm’s diversity efforts with Warrington Parker. If he hopes to take a similar role at his new firm, he'll have his work cut out for him. A Stanford student group gave the firm low-to-mediocre marks on diversity, and the firm has apparently lost at least one client in the past for its lack thereof.

 

Legal Pad wasn't able to reach Brown at the time of posting.

— Niraj Chokshi

Muralist's Uncommon Suit Nets $1.1 Million Deal

An L.A. artist has received a $1.1 million settlement after his mural was painted over, an amount his attorney believes is the largest settlement ever under a seldom-invoked artist right act.

The case stemmed from contractors painting over a 70-foot tall mural of Ed Ruscha, an L.A. based pop artist, on a downtown L.A. building. If you want to get rid of a work of art on say, a building or a wall — and it can be removed — you have to give the artist 90 days’ notice, according to federal and state laws (the Federal Visual Artists Rights Act or the California Art Preservation Act).

The case will likely set a precedent, since it’s a significant amount of money paid in a settlement for an artist who had his rights violated, said William Brutocao, a Pasadena-based attorney with IP law firm Sheldon Mak Rose & Anderson.

“We think it’s important that people know and realize you’re supposed to respect rights of artists,” he said.

Supreme Court Rejecting Ounces of Prevention

A little something tucked into the LA Times' front section (discovered via Slate's indispensible Today's Papers column): David Savage takes a look at recent Supreme Court rulings and analyzes a key trend in the rulings of the Roberts Court — an unwillingness to strike down wrongs that haven't wronged anyone yet.

To those of us who like to apply homespun similes to complex legal concepts (some of us grew up on TV lawyer shows, okay?), that might seem a little like not locking the barn door because the horse hasn't run away yet. Or not keeping sharp objects away from the baby, 'cause she hasn't lost an eye so far.  Or not taking away a drunk driver's keys because he hasn't plowed through a crowded school crossing yet. And there'd be no such thing as attempted murder. (Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I could do this all day.)

Savage, leading with the Indiana voter ID deal and the Kentucky lethal injection thingy, succincts it up like this:

Just When She Thought She Was Out ...

Getting indicted must feel pretty freakin’ awful for anybody. But former Mercury CFO Sharlene Abrams might have felt doubly bad: she apparently had a deal cooking with the SEC for stock options backdating when the U.S. Attorney’s office filed a surprise tax indictment earlier this month. Judge Jeremy Fogel referred to a possible Abrams agreement at a hearing last week in the SEC case, lawyers in attendance said, but Fogel did not spell out the terms. Abrams’ lawyer, Douglas Young of Farella Braun Martel, declined to talk about it with Legal Pad.

White collar lawyers say it wouldn’t be surprising if federal prosecutors didn’t tell the SEC about the impending indictment, and even if they did, the criminal charges don’t involve securities fraud. But for Abrams, the tax indictment dashed any hope she could extricate herself from the Mercury mess with just a relative regulatory slap on the wrist.

—  Dan Levine

Assembly Panel an Antidote to Little Blue Pills

If Big Pharma sells you on the uplifting benefits of its little blue pills, should it also have to tell you directly about their side effects?

Yes, the state Assembly Judiciary Committee said today when it voted to neuter the so-called learned intermediary doctrine. The doctrine generally protects drug-makers from having to tell consumers about their products’ potential dangers so long as they spell out those very risks to prescribing doctors –- the learned intermediaries to patients.

DMV Told 'No — 'Cause We Say So'

At the DMV, there are no shortcuts. And for the DMV, there are no shortcuts.

For a governmental bureaucracy that makes a living out of making people take a number, stand in line and fill out endless forms, there’s a little bit of schadenfreude to seeing the Department of Motor Vehicles get dinged on a procedural point.

In an opinion today, the Second District slapped down (.pdf) an attempt to take away someone’s class C license because the DMV had allegedly caught her cheating on the exam to get her class B license. She was never criminally prosecuted, the opinion says, because the evidence wasn’t sufficient for that.

The DMV tried arguing that the Vehicle Code allows it to revoke one license if it has any basis for denying a different license. And the court just, well, found something a bit off about that. Though it couldn’t really point to any precedent. It just had a feeling that’d be a bad idea: “We have found no case on point, but we conclude that the DMV’s interpretation cannot be correct, because it would lead to untenable results.”

—  Pam Smith

Legal Aid Group In Need Turns to Associates

Times are hard with the economy going down the drain — especially for organizations that rely on donations.

So one legal aid organization — The Law Foundation of Silicon Valley — that normally relies on law firms and partners for funding is also turning to associates for help.

“The firms are little more conservative; a little more reluctant to plunk down the big bucks, although some of them have,” executive directory Jim Bower told Legal Pad.  “Since many of the associates at big firms are well-compensated, we’re asking them to participate by donating or assisting in pro bono cases.”

The law foundation, which provides free legal services to people in need in Santa Clara County, is issuing a challenge to big firm associates to outgive their competitors. So far, associates at seven firms have stepped up to the plate:

Sheppard Lateral Sees Growth Beget Growth

Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton has been on a Century City hiring spree. In the past month, the firm has announced five new hires there.

Legal Pad recently caught up with one of those new hires: Eric Klein, a Sheppard partner who joined from Katten Muchin, where he was the leader of their West Coast M&A and securities practice (and who joined this month with special counsel John Molloy).

It looks like the growth is fueling more growth. Klein said one of Sheppard’s selling points: A California-based firm that was actively expanding.

“Sheppard has gone through a lot of growth as a firm recently, and the corporate group here is top-notch,” said Klein, who has expertise in health care M&A deals, such as hospital acquisitions. 

And, moving to a California-based firm was a big difference from Chicago-centered Katten.

Complex Case? Allow Three Years for Appeal

Could the California Supreme Court be feeling a little sensitive about criticism over the glacial pace with which it decides cases? On Thursday the court issued City of Hope v. Genentech, a little more than three years after granting review in the closely watched case.

"In this complex case, which has 25,567 pages of reporter’s transcript plus 12,267 pages of clerk’s transcript and has generated 18 friend-of-the-court briefs. ..." was how Justice Joyce Kennard began the second paragraph of the 28-page opinion.

Complex or not, 38 months still seems like a long time to us, particularly for a 7-0 opinion. By our count it works out to 33 pages of trial transcript per day over the three-plus years, which seems manageable (though -- disclaimer! -- we've never worked as a Supreme Court research attorney).

A much greater waste of time was the court's recent handling of Marvell Semiconductor v. Jasmine Networks.

Brown, Assembly Locked in Budget Stare-Down

Even though his minions endured a verbal beat-down in the state Senate a couple of weeks ago, Attorney General Jerry Brown continues to play budget chicken with the Legislature.

The governor, as you might recall, told state agencies to whack at least 10 percent of their budget spending because of a projected multibillion-dollar deficit. Most department heads have fretted and complained, but then they’ve begrudgingly given lawmakers a menu of possible cutbacks.

Not Brown. AG aide David Harper told an Assembly budget subcommittee late Wednesday that the Department of Justice doesn’t think the 2008-09 budget the governor gave them is fair. Brown wants to “first, have resolution on that” and then talk cuts, Harper said.