Low-budget ads might seem fitting for a consumer bankruptcy law practice, one supposes:
According to the YouTube-watcher who called this to the attention of reader R.T., “it seems to be a franchise”:
Posts Tagged ‘bankruptcy’
Chrysler’s White-House-assisted bankruptcy
What a bad precedent it set. [Prof. Bainbridge] More: Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, WSJ (via Stoll).
May 10 roundup
- Failure to warn? “Non-Child Sues For Slide-Related Injury” [Lowering the Bar]
- “AG Cuomo Sues Lawyer for Fraud, Says He Sold His Name to Debt Collector for $141K” [ABA Journal]
- Ted Frank on his move to the Manhattan Institute and Point of Law [CCAF]
- “Viacom is becoming a lawsuit company instead of a TV company” [Doctorow, BoingBoing]
- UK: “NHS pays £10,000 to family of psychiatric patient who committed suicide” [Times Online]
- American Cancer Society: federal advisory panel’s chemicals-cause-cancer alarms are overblown [NYTimes] More: Taranto, WSJ.
- “Who Knew Bankruptcy Paid So Well?” [NYTimes]
- Famed sleuth Bloomberg Holmes on the case: was the Pathfinder headed for a vile sodium den? [IowaHawk]
March 9 roundup
- From attorney Bob Ambrogi, on Twitter: “This felt wrong: Shortly after heated call with lawyer saying he’d sue my client, he sent me invite to connect on LinkedIn.” Related: Amy Alkon.
- “Spot the lawsuit in this commercial” [Louis Vuitton vs. Hyundai; Trademark Blog]
- Video: “Community swimming pool closes due to lawsuit” [Hazleton, Pa.; U.S. Chamber Faces of Lawsuit Abuse series; plaintiff’s side of things]
- Recycling, found materials, and why so much “green building” won’t last [Sippican Cottage and followup]
- German ban on homeschooling not a compelling reason to grant asylum to affected family [Krikorian, NRO, Volokh]
- Ted’s Center for Class Action Fairness files objections to a Costco fuel class settlement; related reflections from the judge in the recent Honda case;
- “Photographing Public Art: A Legal Waltz in Seattle” [Citizen Media Law, earlier]
- “Big Bankruptcies’ Big Fees Raising Questions” [Asarco, Station Casinos; Baxter, AmLaw Daily]
Bounteous bankruptcies, Lehman division
Yes, it’s probably the biggest and most complicated bankruptcy ever. Fees so far: $310,791,000, including $296,631 per day for lead counsel Weil Gotshal. [AmLaw Daily, Business Insider]
Judge: bankruptcy lawyer’s conduct “inexcusable”
“U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Joan Lloyd ruled Friday that attorney Bruce Atherton and [financier] Randall Scott Waldman ‘blatantly breached’ their duty to the owner of a Louisville tool machinery company by forcing him out of business and seizing his assets. …Atherton was suspended from practicing law last month by the Kentucky Supreme Court based on his guilty plea in September in Pennsylvania federal court to charges that he aided a scheme in which other defendants allegedly ‘busted out’ small businesses by pretending to buy them, then draining their assets before the deals were completed.” [Louisville Courier-Journal via ABA Journal]
Update on Mraz v. Chrysler
Readers might remember the Mraz case, where a driver was run over by his own truck because he failed to engage the parking brake, and a jury nevertheless awarded $55 million. (March 8 and March 21, 2007.)
The Chrysler bankruptcy threw a wrench into the appellate process. Given the number of unsecured (and secured!) creditors who were taking a haircut on what Chrysler owed them, and the weakness of the case, one would expect the claim to be extinguished. But Chrysler unilaterally (and almost certainly politically) decided not to extinguish product-liability lawsuits against it, and the Mraz case has settled for $24 million. (Amanda Bronstad, “Chrysler bankruptcy judge approves $24 million personal injury settlement”, National Law Journal, Sep. 25). Of course, the likely $8-$10 million attorneys’ fee in this case is being funded by taxpayers’ bailout money.
Golden receivers, cont’d
Critics including the Securities and Exchange Commission dispute whether receivers really deserve $27 million for their work through May in cleaning up after the collapse of Texas businessman R. Allen Stanford’s empire. [AP/USA Today; earlier]
“Golden receivers”
Fees for receivers, administrators and other professionals are eating up too much of the remaining assets of Madoff and other collapsed investment ventures, critics charge: “in one recent $6.6 million fraud, the receiver distributed 43 percent of the assets to the victim — the rest went to professionals.” [NY Post]
August 10 roundup
- Annals of legal marketing: law firm says its flyers offering to sue landlords over sexual assault on premises were left indiscriminately on car windshields, and it didn’t mean to target the woman who found it on hers and assumed it referred to her case [New Jersey Law Journal, Legal Blog Watch, Legal Ethics Forum]
- “The Bankruptcy Files: Inside Michael Vick’s ‘Excessive’ Legal Bills” [AmLaw Daily]
- Panel spanks U. of Illinois law school for admitting students at behest of politicos, but goes easy on the pols themselves [Ribstein, more, earlier here, here, here]
- Youths who obtained big settlement in San Francisco Zoo tiger attack are having more encounters with the law [SF Chronicle, earlier]
- Czech Republic: Suit by communist professor against critical students still in progress after 18 years [Volokh]
- More thoughts on Florida lawmakers’ criminalization of purported gang signals, on MySpace and elsewhere [Citizen Media Law, earlier]
- RIAA case: does the Constitution restrain unreasonable statutory damages? [Kennerly]
- Eager law grad hoping to make a career of suing foodmakers over obesity [six years ago on Overlawyered]