Legal News

By Susan Decker – Jan 11, 2012 12:00 AM ET Eastman Kodak Co. (EK), seeking to sell or license a portfolio of more than 1,100 patents, sued Apple Inc. and HTC Corp. (2498) in an expansion of a legal strategy that may help boost the value of its inventions to fund a turnaround. Two infringement lawsuits [...]

By Margaret Cronin Fisk and Laurel Brubaker Calkins – Jan 10, 2012 10:52 AM ET KBR Inc. (KBR) settled a lawsuit brought by an injured convoy driver who claimed the company sent civilians into a battle zone in Iraq in 2004 knowing they would be attacked and possibly killed, according to a court filing. Reginald Cecil [...]

By Tom Schoenberg – Jan 10, 2012 10:14 AM ET Virginia officials, sued by presidential hopeful Rick Perry, were ordered to refrain from mailing absentee ballots or printing regular ones for the state’s Republican primary pending a Jan. 13 hearing. U.S. District Judge John A. Gibney Jr. in Richmond yesterday said the process must be halted [...]

By Michael Riley – Jan 10, 2012 9:54 AM ET China-based hackers rifled the computers of DuPont Co. (DD) at least twice in 2009 and 2010, hunting the technological secrets that made the company one of the world’s most successful chemical makers. It’s not something investors would have learned from DuPont’s regulatory filings, or from those of [...]

By Sanat Vallikappen and Netty Idayu Ismail – Jan 10, 2012 5:24 AM ET Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc was sued for wrongful dismissal by a former Singapore-based trader who said the bank accused him of improperly trying to influence the setting of London interbank offered rates. Tan Chi Min said the British Bankers’ [...]

By Kit Chellel – Jan 9, 2012 6:42 AM ET Suninder Sandha bought his luxury apartment in Coleorton Hall, a 19th century country mansion near Leicester in central England, using a 1.2 million-pound loan ($1.86 million) from Barclays Plc (BARC) in 2005. When the property market collapsed two years later, Sandha couldn’t make his mortgage payments and Barclays [...]

By Ranjeetha Pakiam and Manirajan Ramasamy – Jan 9, 2012 4:04 AM ET Malaysia opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim was acquitted of sodomy by the Kuala Lumpur High Court after a trial he said was politically motivated, paving the way for him to contest elections that may be held this year. The victory caps a second judicial [...]

By Margaret Cronin Fisk, David Voreacos and Jef Feeley – Jan 9, 2012 12:00 AM ET Johnson & Johnson (JNJ), which has lost judgments of almost $660 million over the marketing of its antipsychotic drug Risperdal, goes to trial today facing a demand by Texas for damages of more than $1 billion. State Attorney General [...]

By Thom Weidlich – Jan 9, 2012 12:00 AM ET Stephen and Cissy McComb say they managed their Italian eatery in Park City, Utah, for more than two decades without running afoul of security rules of Visa Inc. (V) and MasterCard Inc. (MA) — until they were accused of mishandling data and opening the door to $1.26 [...]

By Michelle Yun – Jan 6, 2012 5:26 AM ET China Forestry Holdings Co. (930), the Chinese timber company whose shares have been suspended since January last year because of accounting irregularities, said its auditor KPMG LLC resigned citing valuation concerns. China Forestry needs to verify the ownership and valuation of its plantations and log inventories, [...]

By Chris Cooper – Jan 6, 2012 4:52 AM ET Olympus Corp. (7733)’s former Chief Executive Officer Michael Woodford said he’s suing the Japanese camera maker over his dismissal as he abandoned plans to wage a proxy battle for control of the company. Woodford, 51, filed a case in the U.K. last week seeking damages for [...]

By Jun Yang – Jan 6, 2012 1:27 AM ET Samsung Electronics Co. (005930), the maker of the Galaxy mobile devices, failed to win a sales ban on Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s latest iPhone in Italy, as a global patent dispute between the two companies continues. A Milan court yesterday rejected the Suwon, South Korea- based company’s bid [...]

By Patricia Hurtado and David Glovin – Jan 6, 2012 12:01 AM ET Rajat Gupta, the former Procter & Gamble Co. (PG) director indicted last year for insider trading, illegally tipped now-convicted hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam about P&G’s 2008 sale of Folgers Coffee Co. to J.M. Smucker Co. (SJM), federal prosecutors said. J.M. Smucker, the Orrville, Ohio-based [...]

By Christopher Palmeri, Edvard Pettersson and Karin Matussek – Jan 5, 2012 9:32 AM ET A man accused of setting a series of fires that terrorized Los Angeles over New Year’s weekend needed the help of deputies to stand at his first court appearance as new information surfaced about his home life. Harry Burkhart, 24, appeared [...]

By Shinhye Kang and Jun Yang – Jan 5, 2012 5:55 AM ET Chey Tae Won, the chairman of South Korea’s third-largest industrial group, was indicted on charges that he embezzled funds from SK Holdings Co. (003600) affiliates to cover investment losses by him and his younger brother. Seoul prosecutors, who held a televised briefing on Chey’s [...]

By Sophia Pearson – Jan 5, 2012 12:01 AM ET Sullivan & Cromwell LLP (1147L) regained the top spot among legal advisers on mergers and acquisitions in 2011 as deals rose by 3.7 percent in a year lawyers said was marked by volatility tied to European debt and regulatory enforcement. The law firm ranked No. [...]

By Patricia Hurtado and David Glovin – Jan 5, 2012 12:00 AM ET Ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) director Rajat Gupta is trying to bolster his defense to federal insider- trading charges by using prosecutors’ own words calling accused accomplice Raj Rajaratnam a liar. Prosecutors are likely to argue at Gupta’s April trial that Rajaratnam told [...]

By Linda Sandler and Patricia Hurtado – Jan 4, 2012 8:46 AM ET Plaintiffs including funds and retirement systems are competing to lead a lawsuit against Jon Corzine, MF Global Holdings Ltd (MFGLQ).’s former chief executive officer, over the collapse of the commodity brokerage. Corzine is the defendant in at least nine lawsuits before a federal judge [...]

By Phil Milford – Jan 4, 2012 8:27 AM ET Trident Microsystems Inc., a provider of integrated circuit chips and software for computers and television set-top boxes, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in Delaware, citing an economic slowdown. In petitions today, the Sunnyvale, California-based company listed debts and assets of as much as $500 [...]

By Joel Rosenblatt – Jan 4, 2012 12:12 AM ET Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) director charged with insider trading as part of the Galleon Group LLC probe, asked a judge to dismiss some of the counts against him. The government’s indictment focuses on two instances in which the U.S. said Galleon co-founder [...]