Legal Pad

Sue Heller Now, or Hold Your Peace

The estate of Heller Ehrman will spend about $20,000 inviting former clients to sue it now for malpractice or forever hold their peace.

Notices will be printed in major publications in the U.S. and Asia in an attempt to reach over 11,000 former clients of the defunct firm, inviting them to file proofs of claims with the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Northern District of California.

While the date applies to all creditors with potential claims, Heller hopes to draw out potential malpractice claims by the April 27 deadline, because its malpractice insurance will run out in June.

In January, Judge Dennis Montali denied the estate’s request to buy three years of malpractice insurance, agreeing with the creditors committee that the risks did not outweigh the estimated $10.2 million price.

Malpractice claimants would likely receive more money if they file while Heller is still covered. If they file after the insurance runs out, they line up with other creditors seeking to be paid from whatever may be left in the estate.

At a hearing Friday, Thomas Willoughby told Montali that Heller now has tail insurance through June 15, "and it seems appropriate to serve a claim so within the time, on April 25 or 26, the claims can come in and we know what the universe says.”

—  Amanda Royal

San Francisco DA Lays Off Some Lawyers, Staff

San Francisco District Attorney Kamala Harris laid off at least five staffers and two attorneys today, citing the national economic crisis and the city’s more-than $500 million budget deficit.

“The layoffs we are being forced to make are strictly budgetary,” Harris said in a statement released by office spokeswoman Erica Derryck. “This is an extremely difficult and painful process for our entire office. We will continue to pursue justice and public safety with the work we do every day.”

Erika Yuen, an attorney in the DA’s misdemeanor unit, was one of those laid off, said Elliot Beckelman, an assistant DA and vice president in the union that represents lawyers in the district attorney, city attorney and public defender’s offices. Beckelman said Yuen was a talented and well-liked attorney. Beckelman said he couldn’t confirm other layoffs but said he had heard that two or three paralegals lost their jobs.

But according to multiple sources in the DA’s office, Harris also laid off Monique Camperi, another misdemeanor attorney. Office sources said there were at least five other layoffs, too: three paralegals and two investigators.

Derryck declined to discuss specifics, including whether the office thought today’s layoffs will prevent future staff reductions. She said the office had 253 total employees, including 123 lawyers, before the layoffs. She would not say how many staffers or lawyers the office has now.

In recent months of budget negotiations, City Attorney Dennis Herrera and Public Defender Jeff Adachi’s offices have said that they have not had to lay anyone off for budget reasons, but they, like Harris’ office, have cut vacant positions.

—  Evan Hill

Ninth Hits 'Play' on Al-Haramain Case

The Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation’s suit against the U.S. government for warrantless electronic surveillance will keep chugging along, courtesy of a three-sentence ruling (.pdf) handed down today by the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The court denied an emergency motion filed a week ago by the Department of Justice, which wanted to pause the al-Haramain case and get the Ninth Circuit to review a key point of law. The litigation now returns to Northern District Chief Judge Vaughn Walker’s court.

Tony Coppolino, one of the government’s lead trial attorneys, did not return a call seeking comment. But with a separate DOJ brief due in Walker’s court by midnight, al-Haramain attorney Jon Eisenberg said on Friday afternoon that he was waiting to see what direction the department would take.

By tonight, the government had filed that brief (.pdf), and it appeared the direction hadn't changed much: The DOJ is still asking Walker not to disclose any classified information to the plaintiffs without giving the government a chance to fight further.

The DOJ had sought a stay and an appeal in the wake of a decision Walker made in January, in which he wrote that he planned to review a classified government document accidentally disclosed to Al-Haramain in 2004 in order to decide whether the now-defunct international charity had been spied upon. According to a Washington Post reporter who saw the document, it contained "a summary of one or more conversations intercepted by the government." Eisenberg has theorized in court motions that the government listened in on conversations between U.S.-based al-Haramain lawyers and a charity official who was staying in Saudi Arabia.

—  Evan Hill

How Can Both Minority and Non-Minority Judge Counts Be Up? More Labeling

Here’s a curious bit of judicial diversity news: In a report (.pdf) issued Friday, the Judicial Council reports that the number of minority judges has increased over the last two years. But oddly, so have the number of Caucasians.

African-American, Asian American and Latino jurists now comprise 16.8 percent of the bench in California, up from 15.1 percent in 2007. But the percentage of white judges has also increased from 70.1 percent two years ago to 72.6 percent today.

So what gives? The answer appears to lie in the decreasing number of judges who don’t provide information about their race to the Council. The percentage of such racial decline-to-states dropped from 9.9 percent in 2007 to 5.3 percent this year.

The council’s report follows a similar one that the governor issued about his 2008 appointments on Thursday. A third analysis by the Commission on Judicial Nominees Evaluation is expected Monday.

—  Cheryl Miller

Brocade Cases to End With Arbitrary Whimper

The last bit of the Brocade backdating mess is gong to be settled in arbitration.

Dewey & LeBeouf’s Ralph Ferrara has been pursuing ex-Brocade execs — with mixed results — to pay back the company for money lost during the huge backdating scandal at the company. Although half of the ten execs got themselves dismissed from Ferrara and Brocade’s derivative suit, there were still five others, including prison-bound former CEO Greg Reyes, remaining in the case. Former CFO Antonio Canova and another exec settled out of the case for a few hundred grand. Now, Reyes and two former Brocade directors, Seth Neiman and Neal Dempsey have agreed (.pdf) to be judged by a three-arbitrator panel.

What do you think? Is it better for Brocade or the execs? Certainly, Reyes didn’t fare too well before a jury last time around.

— Zusha Elinson

Judge Applications Down, esp. Among Non-Whites

The number of lawyers applying for judgeships in California last year dropped 37 percent from 2007, according to numbers released today by the governor’s office.

Just 262 attorneys submitted applications in 2008, down from 414 the year before and 325 in 2007. Rachel Cameron, a spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said no one is sure why the numbers fell.

“We don’t have one particular thing we can point to one way or another,” Cameron said.

Only white guys still apply. All kinds of blame, after the jump.

S.E.C. Expects More Money to Fight More Crime

If any of your clients are cooking the books, now would be the time to tell them to stop.

The WSJ’s Kara Scennel is reporting that the SEC is getting a 13 percent bump in funding — the first increase to the agency’s budget in years.

There are a few obvious reasons for the move: 1) The SEC has been roundly criticized for falling asleep while the likes of Bernie Madoff ran wild, stealing everything but the lunch money from poor defenseless children (oh, we’re told there might be an investigation into that as well) and 2) the Dems are back in power.

Legal Pad is sure that our local SEC lawyers are happy. When we spoke to Mike Dicke, head of enforcement in the SEC’s San Francisco office, in September he told us he wasn’t a fan of the static budget.

"It's a simple proposition: Our budget's been flat, and you can't keep the same amount of people with the cost-of-living increases," Dicke said. "It sucks, because we have a lot of great investigations that we'd like to do, but we're not able to."

— Zusha Elinson

Lose Some, Win One: Keker Picks Up A Patent Litigator

Kwun

Michael Kwun, the Electronic Frontier Foundation's resident patent buster, is leaving the nonprofit world for Keker & Van Nest.

Kwun was an associate at Keker and worked as an in-house lawyer at Google before joining EFF last summer.

Our immediate thought upon hearing the news, after the jump ...

STATE CHANGES MIND ON DEATH PENALTY REVIEW

Remember the state’s stubbornly held stance that it didn’t have to publicly vet its death penalty protocol? Well if you do, never mind.

The governor and corrections leaders have changed course and decided that they will submit California’s lethal injection procedures for review under the Administrative Procedure Act. The move, first reported in the San Jose Mercury News last month, was confirmed by the Department of Corrections over the weekend.

Seth Unger, a spokesman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said allowing the review is the “most expeditious” way of restoring the death penalty in California.

Share your thoughts on the death penalty with the state, after the jump.

Pillsbury to Its People: Let's Make a Deal

Ah, Pillsbury. Like the commenters on Above the Law, we don’t know what to make of your latest HR move.

Following last week’s train revelation about layoffs coming in March, the firm is now asking attorneys and staff to raise their hands and volunteer to take a three-months’-severance buyout package, according to Above the Law. But at the same time, the firm is still warning its people that layoffs (the involuntary kind) will happen no matter what. (An aside here: ATL, churning out the layoff news today, has Sheppard Mullin confirming that it's gradually let go of about 25 lawyers over the first two months of the year, some "performance-related" terminations and others "true" layoffs.)

But back to Pillsbury. I guess if I knew I were going to be out of a job and and I was offered a face-saving way of “choosing” that option, maybe I’d take it. But in this job market, I'd need some really, really specific information that I’d be laid off either way (like, maybe if a trusted partner above me did some serious, serious hinting).

Interestingly, Pillsbury’s memo, as posted on ATL, doesn’t spell out what severance the involuntarily let-go will get. Making it kind of like that old game show “Let’s Make a Deal.” Will those who get pushed out next month against their will also get three months’ severance? Or something more like a goat?

—  Pam Smith