Tuesday, May 30, 2006
NIXON PEABODY SECURES SETTLEMENT FOR VICTIMS OF INVESTMENT FRAUD
Kevin Fitzgerald of the Network firm Nixon Peabody LLP has completed a groundbreaking settlement on behalf of victims in the case of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission v. Bradford C. Bleidt, et al. Fitzgerald and his team, including attorneys Steven Fuller and Jeffrey Gilbreth, after asserting a series of innovative claims, worked with three broker-dealer firms with whom Bleidt had relationships to successfully fashion a universal settlement for the benefit of investors.
As the head of an investment firm, Bleidt defrauded clients out of more than $30 million. Bleidt put most of these funds to personal use, including the purchase of Boston radio station, WBIX.
In November 2004, the court approved a nomination by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Boston District Office for Nixon Peabody partner, David A. Vicinanzo, to serve as the federal court appointed receiver. Following Vicinanzo's appointment as counsel to the receivership, Nixon Peabody’s Fitzgerald and Fuller successfully prosecuted these claims and ultimately negotiated and then administered a complex multi-party settlement that culminated this month in payments in excess of $6.3 million.
Other notable work in this case included efforts earlier this year by Fitzgerald and attorneys James Hood, David A. Vicinanzo, Maria Law and Frank Morrissey to successfully preserve the receivership’s interest in Boston radio station, WBIX. Nixon Peabody fashioned and obtained approval for another highly innovative transaction that returned the station to its original owner for value to the receivership totaling more than $9.5 million, discharging the debt incurred in the station’s purchase and netting the receivership excess proceeds of $1.5 million.
In a January 2006 order, Judge Nancy Gertner of the Massachusetts Federal District Court took note of these successes, acknowledging Nixon Peabody’s skillful and effective work on behalf of the receivership and the victims of the Bleidt fraud.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
AKERMAN SENTERFITT BRINGS IN 'DISASTER DAN' CRAIG TO THEIR D.C. OFFICE
Former FEMA directors help launch Florida-based firm's new disaster preparedness and recovery task force group
From the Article by Joe Crea - Legal Times - May 24, 2006
As the head of Akerman Senterfitt's new disaster preparedness and recovery task force group, Daniel Craig is looking to spread the good (or, perhaps, the bad) word about his firm's latest practice initiative. And as the former director of the recovery division for FEMA, Craig is fond of brandishing both his past with the agency and his old FEMA ball cap. He may even wear the lid in New Orleans, he says.
"I'm proud of it," Craig says of his tenure at FEMA.
He joined the Florida-based firm late last year, selling Akerman's crisis management work as a hot new practice area. Now Akerman, which has had a small appropriations practice in Washington, D.C., for two years, is betting that its new disaster wing will make for an even bigger splash in the nation's capital, traditionally not an easy place for regional players to grab a foothold.
"It was not a 'Field of Dreams' kind of thing that you just dream up and develop the practice," says James Miller, office managing partner at Akerman. Miller says the firm already had people doing related activities and realized it had a wealth of experience touching on disaster management.
Akerman believes it can use the past FEMA experience of Craig and Jim Schumann, former FEMA director of legislative affairs and now of counsel at Akerman, to attract more business in the Gulf Coast and in other disaster-prone areas like California and to help cities and municipalities navigate the rocky FEMA shoals both before and after a natural disaster.
So far, Craig has focused on working the circuit, delivering speeches to groups including the American Public Works Association in Tallahassee, Fla., spinning out worst-case scenarios -- earthquakes leveling St. Louis, hurricanes flooding large patches of Manhattan. The tone is movie of the week or, better yet, Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan: Craig as a man grounded in home and family who must, regrettably, remind the country that it faces imminent destruction from natural evils that it would foolishly prefer to ignore.
"When I leave some of these speeches, people say, 'You're Disaster Dan or Dr. Death,' " says the 35-year-old Craig. "You scare the heck out of people. They say I watch too much TV, but the insurance companies watch TV. These are realities."
Craig, a moderate Republican from Connecticut, says that FEMA's not a pariah but merely "in a cycle." Contrary to popular opinion, he says, FEMA was not designed to handle major catastrophes like Hurricane Andrew or Katrina. The agency isn't a first responder, he says. It is there to pay the bills.
Craig's time at FEMA was marked by disasters. He was responsible for overseeing the recovery efforts for the space shuttle Columbia crash and the California wildfires in 2003 and the hurricanes in 2004.
Craig left FEMA in August 2005, a week before Katrina hit, and says he had eight job offers from top law firms and lobby shops in D.C. (which he would not name). He contemplated starting his own practice but decided against it because his wife was seven months pregnant. That was also one of the reasons he left FEMA, as the travel and lack of time at home were becoming too much for his family.
Still, Craig says the disaster practice at Akerman is a natural fit. The firm has 450 lawyers and consultants working within its sizable corporate, labor, employment and intellectual property practices. Outside of its many Florida offices and the D.C. shop, Akerman has a location in New York City. The firm's clients include a number of private companies and government entities interested in disaster management, the city governments of Miami and Orlando, Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami and the California Farm Bureau Federation.
Craig argues the firm is unique in that, while many shops -- such as Blank Rome Government Relations -- already have homeland security platforms, Akerman is the first to tailor a practice around disaster recovery. Though FEMA will be the main focus, Craig says the practice will reach out to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Craig is even interested in breaking a major logjam to any good recovery: debris removal. He's looking to start a trade association for the debris-removal industry.
During his short tenure at Akerman, Craig has already registered to lobby with the U.S. Senate for several businesses, including DRC Emergency Services in Mobile, Ala., for debris removal; Cheniere Energy in Houston, for disaster preparedness; Beck Disaster Recovery in Orlando, Fla.; and Mount Sinai Medical Center in Miami Beach, for disaster reimbursements and pre-disaster and hazard-mitigation grant programs.
Read the full article on LAW.COM here.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
THREE WINS IN THREE WEEKS FOR SANDBERG, PHOENIX & VON GONTARD'S KEN BEAN
Ken Bean of Sandberg, Phoenix & von Gontard, P.C. has received three straight defense verdicts. The first suit was a wrongful death medical malpractice action against a neurologist over the alleged interaction between Provigil and Coumadin. Assisted by Jennifer Miller-Louw, this case resulted in a directed verdict for the defendant doctor at the close of the plaintiff's evidence. During the next week, Ken, along with Chellie Butel, successfully defended our hospital client on an MRSA death case. Their efforts resulted in a 12-0 defense verdict after 40 minutes of deliberation. Ken's third win involved a medical malpractice suit against a general surgeon for a bile duct injury during a laparoscopic cholecystectomy. The jury was out 35 minutes and returned a unanimous defense verdict. Interestingly, afterwards the jury said they voted for the defense within the first minute but then wanted to eat the lunches the clerk brought!
Monday, May 15, 2006
LIGHTFOOT, FRANKLIN & WHITE RECEIVE JURY VERDICT FOR FORD MOTOR COMPANY
Harlan Prater and Chandler Bailey of Lightfoot, Franklin & White received a jury verdict for their client, Ford Motor Company, in a case involving a 1995 Mercury Tracer in Montgomery County, Alabama. The jury was asked by the plaintiffs to award $15 million in damages, and the jury deliberated for two hours before rendering a verdict for Ford. The lawsuit was brought by the parents of Amanda Williams, who died of neck injuries in an accident that occurred on May 10, 2002, on Vaughn Road outside Montgomery. Ms. Williams, the driver of the Tracer, was a 16-year-old student at Macon East Montgomery Academy, where she was on the girls’ basketball team.
In the accident, Ms. Williams was on her way to school when her Tracer swerved across the center line and collided head-on into a 2002 Chevrolet Trailblazer being driven by Kandis Ragland. Ms. Ragland was returning home from dropping off her children at Macon East. At the time of the collision, the Tracer was traveling approximately 45 miles per hour, and the Trailblazer was traveling approximately 25 miles per hour.
Ms. Williams’ parents claimed that Amanda’s seat belt, an automatic shoulder belt with a manual lap belt, had an improper geometry, which caused her to submarine under her belt and suffer a “hangman’s fracture” of her upper neck. The parents alleged that this fracture was caused by Amanda’s shoulder belt. Amanda was maintained on life support for approximately 24 hours so that her organs could be harvested for donation.
Ford produced evidence that the 1995 Tracer complied with all Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, and that its seat belt design, which promoted belt usage, has saved lives in the field. In fact, in testing conducted by the U.S. Government in 1995, the Tracer met government neck load requirements that were not imposed on manufacturers until 2003.
JOHN FITZPATRICK, BROUGHT IN AT ELEVENTH HOUR, SAVES SURGEON
Thirty days before trial, John Fitzpatrick of our Virginia member firm, LeClair Ryan [& Fitzpatrick soon] got the call. An orthopaedic surgeon had done back surgery on a 60 yr old male in December, 2000 fusing four levels in the lumbar spine using rods, plates and screws.
Within a month, collapse occurred at the level above the fusion because of a prior surgery. The patient was taken back to surgery and six additional levels were fused.
That evening a nurse noted that the patient was alert but couldn't move his legs. He appeared paralyzed. Fitzpatrick’s client doctor didn’t review the nursing notes but argued that the patient "couldn't have been alert" after 14 hours of surgery. So he testified that the nurse was wrong in her assessment.
For the next 12 hours, Fitzpatrick’s client doctor did nothing further on the case, and he went home to sleep. He testified that even if the patient had been alert and unable to move his legs, it would've been a red flag for possible paralysis requiring an immediate CT scan or MRI.
The next morning, Fitzpatrick’s client doctor realized that the patient was not moving his legs. However, rather than order a STAT CT scan or MRI, he wrote the order and went back to his office to see patients all day. He returned to the hospital late that evening to take his patient back to surgery.
In that surgery, the doctor discovered a hematoma compressing the spinal cord thereby causing the paralysis. The hematoma was removed but the patient remained paralyzed.
Plaintiff argued that if the patient had been taken back to surgery that evening, he would not have been paralyzed.
The doctor had $3 million in professional E&O coverage and his group had an additional $3 million. In addition, the Judge allowed a punitive damage charge to go to the jury – only the second time that's happened to Fitzpatrick in 20 years.
So with a punitive charge, the client doctor’s personal lawyer kept screaming at Fitzpatrick to settle with policy limits and protect his doctor's assests which plaintiffs demanded ($6 million in policy limits).
The case was tried for one week during which time Fitzpatrick destroyed plaintiff's expert on cross examination using prior depositions. Fitzpatrick convinced the jury that the plaintiff could not have been alert immediately following surgery; that when problem was discovered the next morning, the doctor still brought the patient back to surgery within 12 hours (and all the medical literature says that if a patient is taken back within 24 hours there is no affect on the outcome).
The paralysis was an unfortunate complication of surgery that was timely addressed and nothing that the doctor could do was going to change that outcome.
The jury was out one hour (but had lunch during that time) before bringing in a defense verdict.
Friday, May 12, 2006
NIXON PEABODY PARTNERS FEATURED IN REAL ESTATE WEEKLY -- "LEGAL PEACE-MAKERS ARE PLEADERS OF THE PACK"
Make peace, not war could be the mantra of Nixon Peabody LLP attorneys, Marc Fried and Adam Gilbert. Despite an enviable record of landmark cases — three of which generated new laws — the partners view their role among the city’s top real estate litigators as one of peacemakers intent on finding a solution to a problem. "We don’t fight for the sake of fighting," said Gilbert, former general counsel to Insignia Financial Corp. whose 1992 case, Bass vs. Tax Commission not only resulted in a $33 million judgment against the City of New York, but generated a new law concerning the way property is valued when asbestos is present. . .
See the full article HERE
ANOTHER TRIAL SUCCESS FOR NIXON PEABODY'S MASSACHUSETTS PRODUCTS TEAM
After a seven day trial the jury returned a verdict on Tuesday, May 9, in favor of Nixon Peabody's client, Sigma-Aldrich. The plaintiff claimed serious injury due to exposure to an allegedly contaminated research reagent. Plaintiff's original settlement demand was $2 million reduced to 925K before trial. The trial team was Joe Leghorn, Chris Allen and Tavares Brewington, ably assisted by Mike Swiatocha, Judy Barnes and April Bonwit. This team has brought in two successful verdicts in two trials over the last five and a half weeks!
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
DON DEVRIES (GOODELL, DEVRIES) INDUCTED INTO IATL
On April 8, 2006, Donald L. DeVries, Jr. of the Network's Maryland Member Firm, Goodell, DeVries, Leech & Dann, was inducted into the International Academy of Trial Lawyers (IATL). Membership in the Academy is limited to 500 attorneys in the United States. Outstanding skills and extensive experience as a trial lawyer, unimpeachable personal and professional character, and integrity and honesty, are a few of the necessary qualities of every nominee. Don was evaluated by his colleagues and the judges in his jurisdiction and was highly recommended by them.
IATL's purpose is to develop jurisprudential issues, promote reforms in the law, facilitate the administration of justice, and elevate standards of integrity, honor, and courtesy in the legal profession. "We are very pleased, but not surprised, that the International Academy of Trial Lawyers has recognized Don as a top practitioner among national trial lawyers," said Linda Woolf, Managing Partner at Goodell, DeVries, Leech & Dann, LLP in Baltimore.
Mr. DeVries is a founding partner of Goodell, DeVries, Leech & Dann, LLP.
