Gap found in asylum denial

Gap found in asylum denial

Baltimore Sun
31 Jul 2006

WASHINGTON // Immigration judges vary sharply in their willingness to grant asylum to foreigners seeking to live in the United States — with denial rates ranging from 10 percent to more than 98 percent, according to researchers who reviewed federal... read more...

Family judges learn from Australian approach to battles over children

Family judges learn from Australian approach to battles over children
Clare Dyer Legal editor
The Guardian
31 Jul 2006

Senior family judges and civil servants are studying new research findings from Australia on how to minimise lasting psychological damage to children whose parents are caught up in post-separation battles. A growing body of research shows that taking... read more...

Judge moves up date of Grasso pay trial

Judge moves up date of Grasso pay trial
By Gaston F. Ceron
The Wall Street Journal Europe
28 Jul 2006

ANew York state judge moved up the start of one ofWall Street’s most heated confrontations—New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer’s excessive-compensation lawsuit against former New York Stock Exchange Chairman Dick Grasso. At a hearing, State... read more...

Volkswagen files lawsuit related to bribery probe

Volkswagen files lawsuit related to bribery probe

The Wall Street Journal Europe
27 Jul 2006

A WALL STREET JOURNAL NEWS ROUNDUP Volkswagen AG said yesterday that it filed a lawsuit related to investigations by public prosecutors of bribery and kickback payments in the auto-supplier industry. As is sometimes done in German courts, the lawsuit... read more...

EU lays down the law

EU lays down the law

Bangkok Post
26 Jul 2006

TIntel AMD MicrosoftCorpintwoyears, Mozilla.org Microsoft heEuropeanUnion, soft-hearted to a fault, announced it would never fine more than 3 million euros a day no matter how egregious the monopoly acted — 144.6 million baht. After constructing a... read more...

Solicitor says law schools ‘dumbed down’

Solicitor says law schools ‘dumbed down’
KURT BAYER
The Herald
22 Jul 2006

ONE of Scotland’s leading lawyers has accused universities of “dumbing down” their law schools to increase student numbers. Professor Alastair Bonnington also claimed law schools at universities such as Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee were... read more...

Animal rights group asks high court to lift ban on ‘political’ broadcasts

Animal rights group asks high court to lift ban on ‘political’ broadcasts
Clare Dyer Legal editor
The Guardian
24 Jul 2006

The ban on “political” advertising on radio and TV, which prevents thousands of campaigning organisations from airing their views through the broadcast media, will be challenged in a test case that goes to the high court today. Animal Defenders... read more...

The long arm of US law

The long arm of Us law

Business
23 Jul 2006

David Carruthers discovered the hard way last week the influence that the United States now has over British businesses. The Scottish chief executive of BetonSports, a UK-registered company listed on the London Stock Exchange, was arrested as he... read more...

Ex-Lobbyists Say Justice Dept. Urged Their Firing

Ex-Lobbyists Say Justice Dept. Urged Their Firing
By Walter Pincus
The Washington Post
22 Jul 2006

Two former pro-Israel lobbyists allege that Justice Department prosecutors pressured their employer, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to fire them and stop paying their legal fees to make it more difficult for them to defend... read more...

New boss to seek judicial reforms

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New boss to seek judicial reforms
Chris Merritt Legal affairs editor Daubney
Australian
21 Jul 2006

NEWLY installed Queensland Bar Association president Martin Daubney has given notice that reforming the judicial appointment system has become one of the Bar’s top priorities. Mr Daubney took office on Wednesday after the presidency of his predecessor... read more...

How the Tate broke the law in buying this £600,000 Ofili work

How the Tate broke the law in buying this 600,000 Ofili work
Charlotte Higgins Arts correspondent
The Guardian
19 Jul 2006

The Tate has broken the law by buying art produced by serving trustees, including a 600,000 work by Chris Ofili, the Charity Commission has ruled. Other museums, including the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert... read more...

US lawyers deal online body blow

US lawyers deal online body blow
Simon Bowers and Andrew Clark New York
The Guardian
19 Jul 2006

BetonSports, the London- listed online gambling group, is accused of being at the hub of a multibillion-dollar illegal gambling operation, according to a grand jury indictment detailing a raft of Wire Act, racketeering, conspiracy, fraud and tax... read more...

Review to advise stiffer sentences for fraud

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Review to advise stiffer sentences for fraud
Simon Bowers
The Guardian
18 Jul 2006

A government-commissioned review of the way fraud is dealt with by the British courts is expected to recommend heavier sentencing, specialist fraud judges and dedicated fraud courts when it is published this week. It will also put forward proposals for... read more...

Rewards from Coke not so sweet, suit says

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Rewards from Coke not so sweet, suit says
By CHRISTOPHER LEONARD
Houston Chronicle
14 Jul 2006

clayton, mo. — A St. Louis weight-loss instructor is suing the Coca-Cola Co. over its product loyalty campaign, claiming the program might encourage children to drink so much of the soft drink that they could die. The campaign, called “My Coke... read more...

KPMG faces lawsuit by former partners

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KPMG faces lawsuit by former partners
By David Litterick in New York
Business
14 Jul 2006

SIXTEEN former partners at KPMG have filed a civil lawsuit against the accounting firm, seeking payment of legal fees after a judge ruled that prosecutors wrongly pressured the firm to cut off the expense of defending themselves. The partners have... read more...

Why the Street is watching the Sears case

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Why the Street is watching the Sears case

Globe and Mail
12 Jul 2006

An Ontario Securities Commission hearing room was so packed with lawyers last week that extra chairs were added in the adjacent waiting room, and the doors were propped open so more onlookers could follow the proceedings. The audience included not... read more...

Removing sex scenes violates copyright law

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Removing sex scenes violates copyright law
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS SALT LAKE CITY
Calgary Herald
10 Jul 2006

Sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and several companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, an appeals judge has ruled. Editing movies to delete objectionable language, sex and... read more...

Judge: Sanitizing movies a dirty business

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Judge: Sanitizing movies a dirty business

Chicago Sun-Times
10 Jul 2006

SALT LAKE CITY — Sanitizing movies on DVD or VHS tape violates federal copyright laws, and several companies that scrub films must turn over their inventory to Hollywood studios, an appeals judge ruled. Editing movies to delete objectionable language,... read more...

Legal crisis erupts over paedophile sentencing

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Legal crisis erupts over paedophile sentencing
by Mark Townsend and Jamie Doward
The Observer
09 Jul 2006

LORD GOLDSMITH, the Attorney General, is expected to spark a major new row between politicians and judges by rejecting calls to refer the case of Craig Sweeney, a paedophile who kidnapped and sexually assaulted a three-year-old girl, to the Court of Appeal.

The decision not to refer the highprofile case of Sweeney, 24, to the higher court will represent an embarrassing rebuke to the Home Secretary, John Reid. Last month Reid wrote to Goldsmith claiming the minimum five years and 108 days’ sentence handed down to Sweeney was ‘unduly lenient’ and should be reconsidered by the Court of Appeal.

His request for the sentence to be referred drew support from the public and media and was defended by Downing Street, who said Reid was ‘rightly articulating’ public concern . But the Home Secretary’s intervention antagonised judges and prompted a national debate on sentencing.

The Attorney General is now expected to tell parliament the tariff handed down at Cardiff Crown Court by Judge John Griffith Williams was within the sentencing guidelines and must therefore remain... read more...

ABOUT-FACE ON U.S. PATENT DECISIONS

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ABOUT-FACE ON U.S. PATENT DECISIONS
BY JULIUS MELNITZER
National Post
05 Jul 2006

Whateveranyonemight say about the Eastern District of Texas, the jurisdiction did provide one key ingredient to companies that litigated patent disputes there. That ingredient was certainty, a fairly rarecommodityinthe courts. Plaintiffs who were... read more...

How the crisis unfolded in the Attorney General’s Office

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How the crisis unfolded in the Attorney General’s Office

Irish Independent
07 Jul 2006

November 2: CC case is first notified to the Attorney General’s (AG) Office by the Chief State Solicitors Office (CSSO) as it is due for a court hearing on December 16. Two other associated cases are also flagged. December 5 2002: AG appoints... read more...

Firm in drug trial that went wrong collapses (The Herald, 05 Jul 2006, Page 2)

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Firm in drug trial that went wrong collapses

The Herald
05 Jul 2006

THE company which manufactured the drug that left six people seriously ill in hospital in a drug trial has filed for insolvency. The German company TeGenero said yesterday that the “unforeseeable adverse reactions” caused by the drug TGN1412 “ have... read more...

Canadian lawyers outsourcing to India

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Canadian lawyers outsourcing to India
JANICE TIBBETTS CANWEST NEWS SERVICE OTTAWA –
The Gazette, Montreal
04 Jul 2006

Canadian lawyers are quietly starting to outsource legal work to India, where they can pay substantially less per hour and enjoy a faster turnaround time than they would by paying junior lawyers in Canada.
Legal work, ranging from research for court cases to contract drafting and patent applications, is one of the newest services being sought offshore, following in the footsteps of such flourishing businesses as call centres, data processing and accounting.
India – with almost one million English-speaking lawyers trained in common law, the same type of law that is practised in Canada outside of Quebec – has been referred to in international business publications as “global counsel” because of its massive potential.
“It’s early days, but I would not think this is overblown rhetoric,” said Simon Chester, a Toronto lawyer and legal trend watcher, noting that sending legal work to India is thriving in the U.S. “If this model proves attractive to American businesses, there’s no reason it wouldn’t be attractive to Canadians,” he said.
The National, the in-house magazine of the Canadian Bar Association, recently published an article about the “commoditization” of legal services, and warned that Canadian lawyers may have no choice but to change their business practices to compete in a world where India is offering work at substantially reduced costs and clients can access do-it-yourself kits online to do such things as draft wills and, in the United States, obtain divorces.
Farming out legal work to the other side of the world, where companies say they provide hourly savings of up to 75 per cent, appears to be still in its infancy in Canada.
Two officials with companies in India said in interviews that they have about 10 clients between them and another outsourcing company reported it is talking to several interested Canadian companies. Clients are either law firms or the inhouse legal departments of large companies, not individual Canadians.
“Canada is where the United States was about 18 months ago,” said David Perla, one of two chief executive officers for the firm Pangea3, a Mumbai-based company that expects to employ 150 to 200 lawyers by the end of the year and 500 people by the 2010.
Pangea3, which provides savings of 30 to 75 per cent, depending on the service, has two Canadian clients and is talking with several interested companies, he said.
“Primarily smaller law firms are starting to embrace it, but we have had some inquiries from the Canadian legal departments of large... read more...