Legal News

By Elizabeth Amon - May 24, 2013 7:13 AM ET Latham & Watkins LLP’s Zachary Fardon was nominated by President Obama to be U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois in Chicago. He would replace Patrick Fitzgerald, who left last June and joined Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP. Before joining Latham in 2007, Fardon was a former [...]

By Brian Womack & Sara Forden - May 24, 2013 12:04 AM ET Google Inc. (GOOG) is facing a new antitrust probe by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission into whether the company is using its leadership in the online display-advertising market to illegally curb competition, people familiar with the matter said. The fresh inquiry, which follows the FTC’s decision to close [...]

By Patricia Guthrie & Joel Rosenblatt - May 24, 2013 12:01 AM ET Intuitive Surgical Inc. (ISRG) convinced a Washington state jury that it wasn’t negligent in its training of a doctor who performed a robot-assisted surgery on a patient who later died. Jurors in Port Orchard, Washington, reached their verdict yesterday by a 10-2 vote after a five-week trial. Intuitive owes no [...]

By Christie Smythe - May 24, 2013 12:01 AM ET Target Corp. (TGT) and Macy’s Inc. (M) joined with 15 other retailers in suing Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc. (MA) over credit-card and debit-card fees after dropping out of a multibillion-dollar settlement of a similar case. The biggest U.S. payment card firms illegally restrained competition for interchange fees by setting default rates [...]

By Saijel Kishan & Patricia Hurtado - May 24, 2013 12:01 AM ET Four senior executives at Steven Cohen’s SAC Capital Advisors LP received subpoenas as part of the U.S. multiyear probe into insider trading at the hedge fund firm, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Subpoenas were sent to Tom Conheeney, president of SAC; Steve Kessler, head of compliance; and [...]

By David J. Lynch & Richard Rubin – May 24, 2013 12:00 AM ET On July 22, 1998, President Bill Clinton signed into law a reorganization of the Internal Revenue Service designed to “give the American people an IRS that reflects America’s values and respects America’s taxpayers.” That didn’t work out so well. As the [...]

By Richard Rubin - May 24, 2013 12:00 AM ET The Internal Revenue Service has replaced Lois Lerner, the official at the center of the controversy over the agency’s scrutiny of small-government groups seeking tax-exempt status. Lerner was placed on paid administrative leave after she refused to resign, Senator Charles Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in a statement. [...]

By Steven Church – May 23, 2013 9:08 AM ET Ally Financial Inc. (ALLY) agreed to pay $2.1 billion to avoid lawsuits by unsecured creditors of the auto-lender’s bankrupt mortgage unit, Residential Capital LLC, according to a court filing today. Creditors who have agreed to settle include noteholder Paulson & Co., MBIA Insurance Corp. and a [...]

By Hans Nichols & Roger Runningen - May 23, 2013 12:01 AM ET “There’s been some legitimate criticisms about how we’re handling this” White House press secretary Jay Carney said yesterday. “We take the path we’ve taken and accept that it’s got some potholes in it. ” Photographer: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza The almost daily disclosures by the [...]

By Phil Mattingly, Annie Linskey & Michael C. Bender - May 23, 2013 12:01 AM ET A Florida man was shot dead in a confrontation with law-enforcement officers who were questioning him about a triple murder two years ago that has been linked to a Boston Marathon bombing suspect, according to two officials familiar with the matter. One of the alleged bombers, Tamerlan [...]

By Elizabeth Amon – May 23, 2013 12:01 AM ET Seyfarth Shaw LLP hired Steven R. Meier for its corporate department in Chicago. Meier joins Seyfarth from Jenner & Block LLP, where he was the co-chairman of the real-estate securities practice and a member of its tax department, the firm said in a statement. Meier’s practice [...]

By Michael Riley - May 23, 2013 12:01 AM ET Several major U.S. utilities are under “constant” cyberattack and haven’t taken precautions to protect critical systems from Iran, North Korea and other adversaries, according to a congressional survey of more than 100 companies accounting for much of the nation’s power system. The survey shows the nation’s electrical grid remains “highly [...]

By Jesse Drucker – May 23, 2013 12:01 AM ET Apple Inc. (AAPL) Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook provided a figure to Congress on Tuesday that U.S. companies rarely disclose: its federal tax bill. Apple paid $6 billion last year — a rate of 30.5 percent. “That’s more than $16 million each day,” Cook said. “We pay all [...]

By Jennifer Oldham & Jim Snyder - May 23, 2013 12:00 AM ET Stan Dempsey, an oil and gas lobbyist, raced from one committee hearing to another in Colorado’s statehouse this spring, defending the industry against an onslaught of bills. While only one of 10 measures passed, the flurry of activity is one of several worrying signs to Dempsey and others in [...]

By Asjylyn Loder, Stephanie Bodoni & Rupert Rowling – May 22, 2013 10:55 PM ET A customer fills an automobile at the fuel pump of a gas station, operated by Statoil Fuel & Retail ASA, in Malmo, Sweden. Photographer: Linus Hook/Bloomberg Statoil ASA (STL) sold a tanker of Norwegian crude valued at about $63 million to BP Plc [...]

By David Voreacos - May 22, 2013 11:06 AM ET A New Jersey businessman avoided prison after admitting he conspired with five HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA) bankers to hide his Indian bank accounts from U.S. tax authorities, getting credit for helping prosecutors. Vaibhav Dahake was sentenced to one year of probation today in federal court in Trenton, New Jersey, where [...]

By Phil Mattingly – May 22, 2013 10:40 AM ET A man was shot dead in Orlando, Florida, while being questioned by the FBI in connection with the Boston Marathon bombings. Law-enforcement officials were interviewing the man this morning when a violent confrontation ended with a shooting involving a Federal Bureau of Investigation agent, said Paul Bresson, a spokesman [...]

By Jesse Drucker - May 22, 2013 12:15 AM ET U.S. Senate scrutiny of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s tax strategies turned the spotlight on a unit with $30 billion in profit since 2009 that’s incorporated in Ireland, controlled by a board in California, and doesn’t pay taxes in either place. Apple officials acknowledged yesterday at a congressional hearing that the [...]

By Susan Decker - May 22, 2013 12:01 AM ET Nintendo Co. (7974), the world’s biggest video-game maker, won a second U.S. patent-infringement case this month, successfully defending its Wii system and adding to a trend of companies fighting royalty demands and winning. Nintendo didn’t infringe Copper Innovations Group LLC’s patent for a method of interaction between a [...]

By Andrew Harris - May 22, 2013 12:00 AM ET The U.S. law requiring employers to provide health insurance coverage for birth control is set to come before an appeals court in cases brought by two businesses whose owners say they operate according to Catholic doctrine. The businesses, a construction firm from southwestern Illinois and an auto-parts maker in southeastern Indiana, [...]