Greg Mermelstein, appellate division director for the Missouri State Public Defender’s Office, leaves the Court of Appeals building in Kansas City on Thursday. The public defender system has asked the court to uphold a rule allowing it to turn away ...
Read More »Husch lets go 17 attorneys
Decision not linked to economy, firm says Husch Blackwell Sanders let go 17 attorneys and 45 staff members firmwide on Thursday, citing performance and consolidation. The cuts are not being made for economic reasons, Co-Chairman David Fenley said in a ...
Read More »Carnahan sues Stifel Nicolaus
Shirley Weiss of Olivette, talks about the frustration she feels at not being able to withdraw her money from the auction-rate securities she bought from Stifel, Nicholaus & Co. Listening to her relate her story at the press conference are ...
Read More »Madoff to move from penthouse to big house
Bernard Madoff is escorted into federal court in New York on Thursday. Madoff, who defrauded thousands of clients out of billions of dollars and becoming a symbol of investor distrust in the global recession, pleaded guilty to directing the largest ...
Read More »BP wins court approval of $50 million plea deal
Bloomberg News BP won federal court approval of a $50 million criminal plea deal, ending prosecution over a 2005 explosion at its Texas refinery that killed 15 and injured hundreds. U.S. District Judge Lee Rosenthal in Houston on Thursday rebuffed ...
Read More »Hamby: Going to trial can be a waste of time
Americans hold a romantic view of what suing for our rights or defending ourselves against scurrilous attacks in a court of law is like. We wait for the Perry Mason moment that shocks the other side into submission. We offer ...
Read More »How to try a patent case on a budget … and win
Tough economic times have forced companies across the country to trim budgets in all areas of operation. Legal budgets are no exception. This article provides tried and true tips for maximizing your legal budget by making strategic decisions about the ...
Read More »Panel named for Western District vacancy
The Appellate Judicial Commission on Friday named the first of three panels of candidates for openings on the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District. The panel consists of Judge Jacqueline A. Cook, Cynthia L. Reams Martin and Mark D. Pfeiffer. ...
Read More »Committee choice could decide fate of defender bill
The seemingly routine procedure of referring a bill to committee could have a sizable impact on the fate of legislation altering the state’s public defender system. Most notably, Sen. Jack Goodman’s bill codifies an administrative rule allowing the Public Defender ...
Read More »Law firm battles insurers over two large settlements
The jury’s or judge’s verdict is rarely the end of the story, as a pair of lawsuits recently filed by Davis, Ketchmark & McCreight show. In one lawsuit, filed Feb. 17, the Kansas City plaintiffs’ firm sued The Bar Plan ...
Read More »Exxon ruling may stem punitive damage ratios
The days of large punitive-damage awards may be coming to an end. Erwin Chemerinsky, law professor and founding dean of the University of California-Irvine School of Law, said the U.S. Supreme Court moved litigants down the road to lower punitive ...
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