Legal Ethics News

A General Motors Co. lawyer demanded the widow of a car-crash victim drop a plan to seek punitive damages from the auto maker, even though the company's government-brokered overhaul doesn't bar plaintiffs from going after such legal penalties.

US Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN)--who I've been tough on in the past as you will read here--criticized lawyers who work on asbestos cases at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Courts, Commercial and Administrative Law last week.

Given U.S. District Judge Richard Kaplan's previous rulings in Chevron's racketeering case against plaintiffs lawyer Steven Donziger and others, it would have been a surprise if the judge granted a motion by Donziger's lawyers at Keker & Van Nest to dismiss the case outright. And indeed, on Monday Kaplan refused to throw out the case--though he did toss related claims of fraud and tortious interference.

Chevron Corporation went to U.S. federal court in Miami on May 4 seeking the records of eight accounts at Banco Pichincha in Ecuador. The oil company maintains that these records could prove that an Ecuadorean geological engineer, who was hired by the court to be an independent expert in the case of Maria Aguinda y Otros vs. Chevron, was bribed by plaintiffs lawyers. Both the expert and the plaintiffs lawyers deny the charge.

New fraud charges have been added to the criminal case against a former part-owner of a New York litigation funding firm arrested in March in a kickback scheme that allegedly defrauded his former business partners out of about $1 million.