Monday, March 27, 2006
MORGENSTEIN & JUBELIRER WINS VERDICT ON BINDING ARBITRATION FOR MORGAN STANLEY
John Worden and Adrienne Leight of San Francisco's Morgenstein & Jubelirer won a verdict for their client Morgan Stanley in a binding arbitration.
The claimant alleged that her accounts sustained losses due to unsuitable recommendations and that investment advice was administered through fraudulent and deceptive practices on a number of unspecified technology stocks. She sought damages of $525,000 plus interest, lost income, arbitration fees, punitive and exemplary damages.
The arbitration panel concluded that all of the claims are dismissed, except for a $375 reimbursement for the claimant's filing fee.
This is John Worden's 15th straight verdict victory in binding arbitration.
Friday, March 10, 2006
ALSCHULER GROSSMAN STEIN & KAHAN CLIENT AWARDED MILLIONS AGAINST ONLINE COUNTERFEITER
The United States District Court District of New Jersey entered default judgments and issued two separate permanent injunctions against New York-based Rational Fashion, Inc., stemming from its on-line sales of counterfeit premium denim jeans manufactured by Los Angeles-based Seven For All Mankind, LLC, and Rock & Republic Enterprises, Inc. Seven was awarded $4 million in damages for Rational Fashion's trademark counterfeiting, $450,000 for Rational Fashion's willful copyright infringement, and attorney's fees and costs. Rock & Republic was awarded $1,000,000 in damages plus attorney's fees and costs. Permanent injunctions were entered against Rational Fashion on behalf of both companies. Seven for All Mankind, LLC and Rock & Republic Enterprises, Inc., were represented by Michael Heimbold with local counsel Dreier, LLP.
"We are sending a strong message to on-line counterfeiters," said Michael Heimbold, a partner with Alschuler Grossman Stein & Kahan LLP, who represents the two trendy jean lines, Seven For All Mankind and Rock & Republic. "We are aggressively targeting counterfeiters throughout the U.S. and the world who are harming the good name and reputation of our clients. The Court's judgments in these cases demonstrate that sellers of counterfeit branded products via the Internet face damages into the millions of dollars, even if their purported profits are only a fraction of this amount."
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
KELLY CORR (CORR CRONIN MICHELSON BAUMGARDNER & PREECE) FEATURED ON COVER OF WASHINGTON LAW AND POLITICS MAGAZINE
The Network's former chair, founding member and Washington State member firm senior partner Kelly Corr adorns the cover of the latest issue of Washington Law & Politics, Spring, 2006 edition. The magazine is distributed to all 26,000 registered attorneys in Washington. The full article is as follows:
Bogle'd And Bewildered
Seven years after the venerable law firm vanished without a trace, the ex-Boglers have settled into fast-track careers. Still, they can't quite let go--of friends, recriminations, even the old 'office' parties.
by Bob Geballe
As usual, James F. Tune hosted the annual office holiday party at the Rainier Club last December. The plush banquet room filled, as always, with 50 or so lawyers chatting, sharing tales of families, putting a ribbon around another year’s practice. And as usual, there was just one catch: The “office” doesn’t exist.
The venerable Bogle & Gates, around since 1891 and for many years the largest law firm in the Puget Sound region, in 1999 underwent the quickest, most stunning disappearing act in the history of regional law practice. It officially breathed its last breath on Dec. 31, 2005, the date the firm legally ceased to exist.
The dissolution of the nearly 200-member Bogle & Gates firm seven years ago was the legal community’s version of the eruption of Mount St. Helens. The memory is a touchstone for everyone involved. The events that led up to it were dwarfed by the magnitude of the explosion, and the landscape around it is forever changed. Unlike St. Helens’ eruption, though, everyone survived. In fact, most have gone on to very successful careers, and the alumni include a 9th U.S. Circuit Court judge, Richard Tallman.
But talking to the participants well into a decade after Bogle’s demise gives a glimpse into lives that, if not necessarily scarred, were deeply and lastingly impacted by that week and a half.
One bright afternoon, Kelly Corr gingerly picks his way through the craggy emotional landscape as he sits in the small conference room of his successful post-Bogle firm, Corr Cronin Michelson Baumgardner & Preece. “I’m still baffled by it,” he says, a bit wistfully. “It should have survived.” Corr was co-chair of the litigation group at Bogle and one of just two partners out of 96 (the other was his partner, William Cronin) who voted against dissolving the firm that February morning in 1999.
“We were ready to sign a new lease, and the Portland office was beginning to turn a profit,” he recalls. “But within 10 days, the firm disappeared.” Like virtually everyone else, Corr had to decide where to go, and fast. “After the vote, it was a quick race to the doors,” he says. Corr and six colleagues decided to strike out on their own, forming a litigation group that has grown to 18 lawyers and handled some of the biggest cases in town, including representing the Post-Intelligencer in its legal battle with The Seattle Times. “I think Bogle left me soured on big firms,” Corr reflects. “I wanted a lot more control of my own destiny, [a firm] where we could be the captain of our own ship, not where someone on another floor could decide to leave, and the whole thing ends.”
Corr’s firm was one of few startups to arise from Bogle’s ashes, and the only remaining sizable one. Most Bogle refugees fled to large firms; some opted for corporate or government work. Lucy Isaki went to the Washington attorney general’s office when Bogle vanished. Sitting in the quiet of the King County Administration Building, she recalls the chaos of Bogle’s demise. “When I heard about the first people leaving, I didn’t see the dissolution coming. It was pretty fast moving. I thought about staying in the private world,” Isaki continues, “and I had some calls from firms. But I knew people at the attorney general’s office.” Isaki was tapped in January by Gov. Christine Gregoire as the assistant director and legal counsel for the State Office of Financial Management.
Kimberly Osenbaugh was the longest-standing female partner at Bogle & Gates. “I’d been there for 26 years. I had never looked sideways. At the time of the dissolution, I was shocked,” she recalls. Osenbaugh had to move quickly and headed for the sanctuary of Preston Gates & Ellis. “I might have looked at boutique firms, but I was handling the bankruptcy of Garden Botanika at the time, and I had to find a home to handle them.”
Whole practice groups moved en masse. Perkins Coie and Stoel Rives absorbed most of the environmental law group. The labor and bankruptcy group found a home at Preston Gates & Ellis. Some people chose to go in-house, finding work with companies such as Microsoft and Amazon. Others, like Isaki, headed for government; and just a few, such as Corr, started their own firms. Virtually everyone has stayed in the Seattle area and continued to practice law, as the reverberations from Bogle & Gates gradually die out.
Looking back now, Isaki says it’s hard for an outsider to understand the frantic nature of those last few days. She fidgets with her glasses as she explains. “People always say, ‘Everybody landed on their feet, and that’s terrific.’ But what people don’t realize—normally when you leave, you have a support system. But at Bogle, everybody was in search mode at the same time. It was difficult to support each other. It made it extremely stressful—your colleagues couldn’t support you.”
Recalls Osenbaugh, “I had a lot of mixed emotions. A sense of panic, personally and professionally, and lots of anger.” Isaki adds, “I was angry then, but I have no real anger about it now—though the people who left first ... they’re not at the top of my list of friends.”
Bob Kaplan might be pretty far down the list. The quick gloss was that Bogle fell apart when Kaplan and seven other partners from the business group decamped to Dorsey & Whitney. But it’s more accurate to think of their departure as the landslide that triggered the horizontal blast at Mount St. Helens. It may have been the proximate cause, but pressure had been building inside for a long time.
In his Dorsey & Whitney office on the 34th floor of the US Bank Centre building, with fellow former Bogle partner Bryce Holland (now partner-in-charge at Seattle’s Dorsey), Kaplan explains that he saw the defunct firm as increasingly incapable of meeting the needs of his clients. “Bogle was shrinking, and that made things harder. There was a slow slipping away of talent, predominantly on the business side.” Kaplan, who spent 30 years at Bogle, adds, “The emergence of technology—the dot-com expansion—was clearly recognized by colleagues at other firms. Other people saw this as opportunities, but Bogle didn’t. That, plus the whole internationalization of the economy.”
Says Holland, “Let me put it this way: “Dorsey & Whitney is a 21st-century law firm. Bogle wasn’t.”
Bogle’s ability to change with the times, Kaplan says, was compromised by its inability to make decisions. “Bogle’s governance was inclusive, but things didn’t always get done. Dorsey has a very centralized management structure—it allows us to get things done without a lot of navel-gazing.”
Although Kaplan and Corr don’t share a lot of other common ground on the Bogle story, this they agree on. “At Bogle & Gates,” Corr says, “we had endless meetings. It had historically operated on consensus. For instance, we talked for two years about creating a Website but never got it going. Here [at the new firm] it took us less than six weeks.”
Tune spent 25 years at Bogle, where he was managing partner from 1986 to 1993. When it imploded, he went to work for Dorsey, then switched in 2001 to Stoel Rives, a firm that had actively recruited him, and whose style he found less corporate and better suited to his personality. Last fall, Tune left the legal arena to head the Seattle Corporate Council for the Arts/ArtsFund. Sporting a bow tie, a genteel nature and a lilt—all befitting his southern Virginia upbringing—Tune thoughtfully considers days gone by at Bogle. “What went wrong? I really can’t say,” he says. “It became dysfunctional, the glue melted and the centrifugal forces became too great.”
It’s one thing to pick your time of departure from a firm. It’s a much different experience when you’ve been blasted away from an organization and a group of professional colleagues. And generally, as welcoming as the new firms have been, many ex-Bogle partners say they miss the relationships that formed over decades of working together. “Preston Gates & Ellis is more than willing to form those relationships, but you don’t have that long-term relationship,” explains Osenbaugh. “You can’t re-create it . . . I’ll never practice another 26 years, so I’ll never have that again.”
Isaki, interviewed while still at the attorney general’s office, has similar feelings. “I don’t miss the pressures of private practice, but because you spend a lot of time with family, it’s . . . not family . . . but you create personal relationships over time. I’ve been here five years—it’s not the same.”
So it’s not surprising that, even now, the memories of the firm exert a centripetal force on its former members, drawing them together a few times a year. To illustrate, Corr picks up a bright green sheet of paper—a mock subpoena compelling former colleagues to attend his annual St. Patrick’s Day party. Corr is continuing a 20-year tradition from his Bogle days. “The first year after the breakup, we did it at our old offices. It was like a ghost town—the firm dissolved in February and people moved out. March 17th, we had a party there. The offices were empty. It was like an Irish wake—a party in a morgue.”
Tune still puts on the annual holiday luncheon for former Bogle folks at the Rainier Club. “Bogle & Gates was very important to me,” he says. “I think it’s fairly important to stay in touch. It’s kind of encouraging to see how well everyone is doing. Talking about the breakup isn’t taboo, but we’re more interested in catching up.”
Even though rehashing past glories is not part of the conversation, many believe Bogle’s demise left a hole in the region’s legal community that has yet to be filled. “When I look around town,” Tune says, “I don’t think there’s been a better collection of legal talent than Bogle & Gates.”
Says Isaki, “I went to Bogle because it had the best litigation practice in the city . . . I look now and don’t see another firm that has taken its place.” She pauses and glances away. “We had some very distinguished litigators. It takes a long time to earn a reputation like that. Maybe in twenty years, another firm will be there.”
Friday, March 03, 2006
CHICAGO'S WILDMAN HARROLD HELPS TOYS "R" US PREVAIL IN CLOSELY-WATCHED E-COMMERCE CASE
Michael Dockterman led the Wildman Harrold team that, together with Toys "R" Us counsel, represented Toys "R" Us in the closely watched E-commerce case with Amazon.com. The court issued an opinion today granting Toys "R" Us' request that its 10-year agreement with Amazon be terminated.
In 2000, Toys "R" Us signed a 10-year agreement with Amazon.com that designated Toysrus.com as the exclusive online retailer of toys, games and baby products on the Amazon site. Toys "R" Us agreed to make all of its online sales through Amazon.com. After several years, Amazon began bringing other retailers onto the Amazon site to sell toys, games and baby products in direct competition with Toys "R" Us. When mediation failed, Toys "R" Us filed suit in May 2004, claiming Amazon had breached the contract. The case went to trial in September 2005 before Judge Margaret Mary McVeigh in Chancery Court in New Jersey.
Following a 131-page review of the evidence, the court found that Amazon's refusal to provide Toys "R" Us with exclusivity since 2004 constituted "a material shift in the configuration of the partnership which creates a breach at the heart of the Agreement."
"Amazon had added dozens of new toy and baby stores to its site, eroding Toys "R" Us' exclusive right to sell toys and baby products, threatening the Toys "R" Us brand and requiring us to get to trial quickly," said Michael Dockterman of Wildman Harrold, lead trial lawyer for Toys "R" Us. "The court's decision has restored control of the Toys "R" Us brand to Toys "R" Us." The verdict comes less than two years after suit was filed.
"Wildman Harrold's strategy was sound throughout the progress of the case, from the initial filings to final arguments," said David J. Schwartz, Toys "R" Us Senior Vice President and General Counsel. "They understood that this case was crucial to our business, and there were absolutely no surprises at trial. Everything went exactly as they predicted."
Other members of the Wildman Harrold team include Vilia M. Drazdys, Richard M. Hoffman, David M. Simon, John A. Luburic, Aaron Solomon, Deborah L. Morgan and Kathleen Murphy.
Thursday, March 02, 2006
CONSOLING PAINFUL MEMORIES
The day Daska Babcock received her bar card, she called the San Francisco Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights to ask about conducting pro bono work for asylum seekers. Four years later, the Morgenstein & Jubelirer associate is handling her fourth case for Guatemalan women who have fled to the United States after years — in one case decades — of sexual abuse or incest.
Earlier this month, the Lawyers Committee honored Babcock with The Father Cuchulain Moriarity Award, in recognition of her extraordinary contribution to the Lawyers' Committee Asylum Project. It is far different from the regular work she does at Morgenstein, where she specializes in construction defect, product liability and insurance coverage litigation.
But Babcock has done work to help immigrants since her days as a student at Boalt Hall School of Law. "I think lawyers as a profession are not that happy," she says. "I think there is a basic human need to make oneself of service to people in a direct person-to-person way. That is the need this really fulfills for me."
Although the Asylum Project handles cases on behalf of victims from as close as Mexico and as far away as Africa, all of Babcock's clients have been Guatemalan. "Guatemala is geographically close enough that if a woman is determined and resourceful, she can walk here," says Babcock. Babcock adds that since the country's 36-year civil war ended in 1996, sexual violence against women has become alarmingly prevalent. "Something has gone terribly wrong in Guatemala as a result of their civil war," she says.
Asylum seekers must prove they have suffered past persecution or have well-founded fear of future persecution on account of race, religion, national origin, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Babcock says the challenge is preparing her clients to testify about excruciating life histories. "It is hard to tell a story like my brother raped me for 19 years, to remember what he said," says Babock.
Sometimes clients face cognitive difficulties. Trauma erases their memories. Babcock elicits one detail at a time. "My lawyer wrung me like a washcloth," Babcock said one client said to describe her line of questioning. Babcock recalls, "As we wrung out her story, it emerged that her brother targeted her because of her low intellectual ability: 'I can do this to you because I am entitled to. You don't know your letters.'" Still, the woman testified beautifully on the day of trial.
"We had an exciting win in that case," says Babcock. After three years, "the judge ruled that Guatemalan females stigmatized as mentally deficient can be a particular social group."
