Legal News

By Clea Benson - Jun 19, 2013 8:00 AM ET The largest U.S. mortgage servicers, including Citigroup Inc. (C) and Bank of America Corp.,haven’t done enough to upgrade their treatment of customers in danger of foreclosure, a court-appointed monitor said today. The banks need to do more to improve how they handle requests for loan modifications and collect customer records, as [...]

By Sara Forden - Jun 19, 2013 12:01 AM ET Google Inc. (GOOG) urged the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for permission to publish the aggregate numbers and scope of national security requests it receives from the U.S. government. The filing with the secret court, which issues warrants for collecting foreign intelligence inside the U.S., is the latest effort by [...]

By Edvard Pettersson – Jun 19, 2013 12:01 AM ET Eastman Kodak Co. (EKDKQ) said creditors agreed to invest as much as $406 million through a rights offering, which will be used to fund distributions under a revised Chapter 11 reorganization plan. “Attracting this additional funding is a strong vote of confidence in both Kodak’s plan [...]

By Dave Michaels - Jun 19, 2013 12:01 AM ET SEC Chairman Mary Jo White said the change in policy would probably apply to cases in which investors were significantly harmed and the alleged fraud was egregious. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will seek more admissions of wrongdoing from defendants as a condition of settling enforcement cases, [...]

By Elizabeth Amon - Jun 19, 2013 12:01 AM ET Paul Hastings LLP said Douglas Flaum has joined the firm as a partner in New York. He was previously at Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson LLP, where he was head of the securities and shareholder litigation practice. “Doug’s arrival enhances our strong litigation practice, particularly with respect to large, [...]

By Curtis Eichelberger & Karen Gullo - Jun 19, 2013 12:00 AM ET Ed O’Bannon, the college basketball player of the year in 1995, said he isn’t suing the National Collegiate Athletic Association to get rich. It’s about fairness. The former University of California-Los Angeles forward is challenging the right of college sports’ governing body, conferences and schools to keep proceeds from selling the [...]

By Lindsay Fortado - Jun 18, 2013 7:40 AM ET Tom Hayes, the former UBS AG (UBSN) and Citigroup Inc. derivatives trader, was charged as part of the U.K.’s investigation into manipulation of the London interbank offered rate. Hayes, 33, was charged with eight counts of conspiracy to defraud at a central London police station today, the U.K. Serious Fraud [...]

By Bloomberg News - Jun 18, 2013 1:37 AM ET Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO), the largest U.S. Web portal, said it got as many as 13,000 requests for information from U.S. law enforcement agencies, becoming the latest technology company to detail government data collection. The requests occurred in the six months ended May, with the most common types related [...]

By Elizabeth Amon - Jun 18, 2013 12:01 AM ET Arnold & Porter LLP’s Deborah Feinstein was named director of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Competition by FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, who also named six other senior staff members with consumer protection and antitrust law experience. “I am very pleased to have such a strong leadership team at [...]

By Jef Feeley - Jun 18, 2013 12:01 AM ET Sprint Nextel Corp. (S) said it sued Dish Network Corp. seeking to block a buyout of Clearwire Corp. (CLWR), saying Dish’s bid violates rights of investors in the wireless network provider. Sprint, Clearwire’s largest shareholder, said it sued Dish in state court in Wilmington, Delaware, yesterday to try to halt Dish’s [...]

By Richard Rubin - Jun 18, 2013 12:00 AM ET Internal Revenue Service employees tried to treat politically oriented groups the same way as other clusters of non-profits seeking tax-exempt status. That didn’t work, an IRS manager told congressional investigators. According to the transcript of her interview last month, Holly Paz said the IRS identified a pattern of [...]

By Julie Bykowicz - Jun 17, 2013 12:45 AM ET Waving banners calling for the protection of free speech, protesters yesterday marched to the U.S. consulate and the Hong Kong government headquarters, demanding city leaders protect the one-time Central Intelligence Agency technical assistant. Photographer: Luke Casey/Bloomberg White House chief of staff Denis McDonough said that he doesn’t know the whereabouts of [...]

By Ellen Rosen - Jun 17, 2013 12:01 AM ET Amelia Cottrell, a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission investigator who helped build an insider-trading case against a unit of billionaire Steven A. Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors LP, was promoted to a top enforcement position in the agency’s New York office. Cottrell, 39, will help supervise a staff of [...]

By Dune Lawrence & David Voreacos – Jun 17, 2013 12:01 AM ET He is a red-headed hacker who hails from Arkansas, goes by the name “weev,” and seems to delight in being annoying. For years, he broke into computer systems, disrupted blog sites and riled people with personal attacks. Now his case has become a [...]

By Greg Stohr - Jun 17, 2013 12:00 AM ET A year ago it was health care. Now the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to rewrite the nation’s civil rights rules. With cases on gay marriage, affirmative action and voting rights still to be decided in the next two weeks, the court is set to produce another blockbuster June. Chief [...]

Illustration by Matthew Hollister By Martha C. Nussbaum & Charles Wolf –  Jun 16, 2013 6:00 PM ET When William Rainey Harper, president of the University of Chicago, proposed to add a law school to the new university in 1902, he entrusted the project to Ernst Freund, a political-science professor, former practicing lawyer and well-known expert on police power [...]

By Phil Milford - Jun 16, 2013 1:30 PM ET Johnson & Johnson’s (JNJ) DePuy Synthes unit, a maker of artificial spinal repair products, won $16 million in damages from Globus Medical Inc. (GMED) when a jury decided that three of its patents were infringed. A federal jury in Wilmington, Delaware, also decided June 14 after a two-week trial that the [...]

By Chris Christoff, Brian Chappatta & Mark Niquette - Jun 14, 2013 11:45 AM ET Protesters yell after being shut out of a public informational meeting at Wayne State University’s Law School in Detroit, on June 10, 2013. State-appointed emergency manager Kevyn Orr told people attending the meeting that the chances Detroit can avoid bankruptcy are about 50-50. Detroit (9845MF) will suspend [...]

By Lindsay Fortado, Ben Moshinsky & Jesse Hamilton – Jun 14, 2013 8:36 AM ET Global regulators may start overseeing currency rates in a widening response to benchmark-rate setting scandals that began with revelations on the manipulation of Libor, according to two people familiar with the matter. The International Organization of Securities Commissions, a Madrid-based [...]

By Elizabeth Amon - Jun 14, 2013 12:01 AM ET Sullivan & Cromwell LLP and Latham & Watkins LLP advised Safeway Inc. (SWY), the second-largest U.S. grocery-store chain, on the sale of its Canadian stores to Empire Co. (EMP/A)’s Sobeys Inc. unit for about C$5.8 billion ($5.7 billion) in cash. Nova Scotia-based Stewart McKelvey served as co-counsel on the deal. Sullivan [...]