Overcriminalization News

Prosecutorial misconduct claims have taken a tremendous toll on high-visibility cases in recent years. From the Duke lacrosse case to the dismissal of the 2008 case against former Sen. Ted Stevens to the dismissal last year of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act charges against Lindsey Manufacturing Co., judges have been cracking down on prosecutors.

We haven't spent enough time in the Lone Star State to know whether everything really is bigger in Texas. But when it comes to plaintiffs attorney fees in shareholder M&A cases, it looks like there may be some truth to the cliche.

Fresh off a spike in state-level legal reforms favoring businesses in 2011, on Tuesday Lisa Rickard, the president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform (ILR), visited the CorpCounsel offices to discuss some of her organization's approaches and priorities for 2012.

Two former Synthes Inc. executives were sentenced to nine months in prison and a third sentenced to five months in prison for their roles in the medical-device maker's promotion of a bone cement for unauthorized uses.

Four former Synthes Inc. executives are scheduled to be sentenced Monday in federal court in Philadelphia for their roles in the medical-device maker's promotion of a bone cement for an unauthorized use that the government says was unsafe.

An explosion of criminal prosecutions in the nation's overextended federal courts has left civil litigants from bereaved spouses to corporate giants waiting years for their day in court. The logjam, prompted particularly by criminal cases related to drugs and immigration, as well as by the proliferation of more-obscure federal criminal laws, threatens the functioning of the nation's judicial system, say some judges and attorneys.

Former Deputy Attorney General David W. Ogden threw his hat in Wednesday with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s push to curb the use of increasingly aggressive legal theories to prosecute white collar crime.