Legal News

By Bob Van Voris and Patricia Hurtado – Oct 10, 2011 9:51 AM ET Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam faces a federal judge this week who will weigh wildly divergent portraits of the disgraced hedge fund manager while interpreting guidelines that may call for one of the longest insider trading sentences in U.S. history. Prosecutors paint Rajaratnam [...]

By Dune Lawrence – Oct 9, 2011 5:00 PM ET A common corporate structure that has allowed dozens of Chinese companies to get listed on U.S. exchanges is drawing increased scrutiny from American audit regulators. Chinese Internet companies such as Sina Corp. and Baidu Inc. have used so-called variable interest entities, or VIEs, to work [...]

By Joe Schneider – Oct 7, 2011 3:44 AM ET Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person, risks losing control over almost a quarter of her mining company, Hancock Prospecting Pty., as three of her children challenge her role in running a family trust. Hope Rinehart Welker, Bianca Rinehart and John Hancock, three of Gina’s four children, sued [...]

By Seonjin Cha – Oct 7, 2011 3:10 AM ET Hana Financial Group Inc. (086790) will push to complete its purchase of Korea Exchange Bank from Lone Star Funds after a Seoul court ruled on a five-year legal dispute that stalled the U.S. buyout fund’s efforts to sell the lender. “We will do our utmost to complete the [...]

By Sophia Pearson – Oct 6, 2011 11:58 PM ET Patent attorneys, who typically have degrees in fields such as engineering as well as law, are in such demand that their specialty may account for more than 15 percent of law firm job openings while representing just 3 percent of U.S. lawyers. Some law firms [...]

By Joe Schneider – Oct 6, 2011 9:57 PM ET Standard & Poor’s, the ratings company accused of bowing to pressure from an Australian bank to issue its highest rating for notes that lost 94 percent of their value, thoroughly investigated the investment and didn’t just “rubber stamp” the bank’s opinion, a court was told. [...]

By Laurence Frost and Heather Smith – Oct 6, 2011 9:01 AM ET Air France Flight 447’s crew reacted badly to an autopilot shutdown and misread instruments showing the plane’s rapid descent before it plunged into the Atlantic, killing all 228 people aboard, a report shows. “I’ve lost VSI,” the junior co-pilot said of the Airbus’s [...]

By Phil Milford – Oct 6, 2011 8:43 AM ET Open Range Communications Inc., formed to provide high-speed wireless Internet service to rural communities in 17 states, sought bankruptcy protection from creditors after failing to retain funding and bandwidth. The Greenwood Village, Colorado-based company won approval in 2009 for a $267 million U.S. Department of [...]

By Kit Chellel – Oct 6, 2011 6:26 AM ET Boris Berezovsky, the Russian billionaire living in exile in the U.K., told a London court today Russia is more corrupt now than it was in the 1990s. “Definitely there was corruption in Russia, much less than now,” he said when testifying in his $5.56 billion lawsuit [...]

By Seonjin Cha – Oct 6, 2011 5:11 AM ET Lone Star Funds was found guilty of stock-price manipulation and the former head of its South Korean unit was jailed after a five-year legal dispute that stalled the U.S. buyout fund’s efforts to sell Korea Exchange Bank. (004940) Paul Yoo was sentenced to three years in [...]

By Jun Yang and Amy Thomson – Oct 5, 2011 6:54 AM ET Samsung Electronics Co. will seek to ban Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPhone 4S in France and Italy on patent- infringement claims, escalating the dispute between the world’s two biggest makers of smartphones and tablets. Samsung will file motions with courts in Paris and Milan seeking the [...]

By Joe Schneider – Oct 5, 2011 1:30 AM ET Standard & Poor’s, bending to pressure from a bank selling investment notes, gave its highest rating to some that resembled a gambler’s tactic of doubling down on losing bets, an Australian court was told. The ratings company, under investigation by the U.S. over the nation’s [...]

By Patricia Hurtado – Oct 5, 2011 12:01 AM ET Galleon Group LLC’s Raj Rajaratnam, claiming that prosecutors overstated how much he profited from directing what they called the biggest hedge fund insider- trading scheme in history, said he should get a prison term of 6 1/2 to 8 years. Rajaratnam, 54, was convicted in [...]

By Chris Dolmetsch, Bob Van Voris and Tiffany Kary – Oct 5, 2011 12:01 AM ET Wall Street protesters arrested in a march across the Brooklyn Bridge sued New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly for allegedly violating their constitutional rights. Five of the protesters, seeking to represent about 700 people arrested in [...]

By Jerrold Colten and Chiara Vasarrr – Oct 4, 2011 8:17 AM ET Amanda Knox left Rome for the U.S. today after the 24-year-old American was acquitted by an Italian appeals court for her British housemate’s murder, ending almost four years in prison. Knox departed on a British Airways flight via London for her nativeSeattle, Italian media [...]

By Stephanie Bodoni – Oct 4, 2011 5:50 AM ET The Premier League’s territorial restrictions on broadcasters such as British Sky Broadcasting Group Plc (BSY) showing its soccer matches breach European Union antitrust rules, the bloc’s highest court said in a ruling that may still limit what pub and bar owners can show customers. The EU [...]

By Novrida Manurung and Berni Moestafa – Oct 4, 2011 2:42 AM ET Bank Indonesia Deputy Governor Budi Mulya became the latest target of probes into the 2008 PT Bank Century bailout that have threatened President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s ability to fulfill his economic agenda. Mulya is under investigation by the state auditor regarding a [...]

By Jef Feeley – Oct 4, 2011 12:01 AM ET Exxon Mobil Corp. (XOM) said it shouldn’t be forced to pay more than $1 billion in punitive damages over a 2006 gasoline leak in Maryland that allegedly fouled residents’ drinking water. The punishment damages, handed down in June to 160 homeowners and businesses as part [...]

By Cullen Wheatley – Oct 3, 2011 11:02 AM ET (Corrects lawyer’s title based on firm’s clarification in headline and first paragraph.) Dewey & LeBoeuf LLP hired Marc Hammerson, formerly of London-based Stephenson Harwood Ltd.’s energy group, to be a partner in its project finance and infrastructure practice. “He has advised on projects around the [...]

By Steven Church – Oct 3, 2011 11:06 AM ET The Los Angeles Dodgers, preparing for a court fight with Major League Baseball, asked a judge for greater access to records of Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig’s treatment of other teams. Last week, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Kevin Gross ruled that the Dodgers cannot seek information from, or about, [...]