There was an interesting article last week in the Wall Street Journal concerning recent developments in the Checvron Ecuador litigation, and substantial changes to the plaintiffs’ litigation strategy that new counsel Patton Boggs has been implementing in the wake of revelations of possible fraudulent conduct by another lawyer involved with representing the plaintiffs. I don’t…
Category Archives: Fraud
Increased Criminalization of Business Practices No Bonus For Investors
That’s the general thesis of a very interesting article in the Winter 2008 issue of The City Journal. The criminalization of bad business decisions, previously dealt with in civil courts through claims for civil fraud or other liability theories, has been a troubling trend since the spectacular collapse of Enron. If recent reports concerning the…
Countrywide’s Underwriters Sued for Fraud
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and 23 more underwriters of Countrywide Financial Corp. were sued by three New York agencies for allegedly helping the home lender defraud investors. New York’s city and state comptrollers and their pension funds added the securities firms, two accounting firms and Countrywide officers and directors…
Barnes Foundation Headed For More Litigation
Seems like the saga of the Barnes Foundation, a venerable institution in the art world, isn;t over quite yet. Three years ago a Pennsylvania state coirt judge gave the institution, which has been on financial life support, permission to move from its location in the Philadelphia suburbs to new, as yet to be constructed quarters,…
Lord Black – Victim of the Government’s Anti-Business Jihad
As you likely know by now, Lord Conrad Black, former CEO of Hollinger International and owner of, among other media properties, The Chicago Sun Times and The National Post, was convicted last week on 3 counts of money laundering and 1 count of obstruction of justice. He was acquitted on the remaining 9 counts of…
Black Case Could Be Headed For Mistrial
Jurors in the trial of media mogul Conrad Black have advised the judge that they are unable to reach a verdict, and added in their note to the court that they have “read the jury instructions very carefully.” The New York Times provides this report: A jury in the racketeering and fraud trial of fallen…
Court Refuses to Dismiss Claims Against NYSE’s Thain
A New York state trial judge has denied a motion to dismiss fraud and breach of fiduciary duty claims against the New York Stock Exchange’s CEO, John Thain, the New York Law Journal reported this morning. The claims against Thain arise out of the Big Board’s merger with Archipelago Holdings in 2005, and its related…
Government Will Re-Persecute Three Merrill Lynch Executives on Enron Related Charges
Federal prosecutors in Houston will re-persecute prosecute three Merrill Lynch executives on charges arising out of the so-called”Nigerian barge” deal, the Associated Press reported this week. The Fifth Circuit Court of appeals had reversed convictions on most of the counts against the three investment bankers. Lawyers for the defendants have apparently engaged in discussions with…
The Government’s Never Ending Enron Jihad
According to news reports the SEC on Wednesday filed charges against two former Enron in-house lawyers. The SEC filed its complaint 7 years after the occurrence of the events out of which the claims arise, and more than 5 years after Enron’s stock tanked. One has to wonder whether there will ever be an end…
Dallas Law Firm Settles Tax Shelter Charges With the SEC and Plans to Close Its Doors
The New York Law Journal reported today that Dallas-based law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist has reached a deal with the SEC over charges related to the firm’s development and marketing of illegal tax shelters. The firm willa void criminal prosecution under the deal, but, having lost approximately two thirds of its lawyers, plans to shut…