Tag: Rupert Murdoch

Neutral reporters? Yeah, and I'm the Queen of Sheba.

* With productivity in decline, are we set to see a boom in alternative fee arrangements. No… but isn’t it pretty to think so? [American Lawyer]

* Alex Spiro is arguing that Elon Musk’s false tweets were just “technical wordsmith inaccuracies.” Not sure how it’s a technicality to say “funding secured” when funding had not, in fact, been secured, but kudos for trying. [Ars Technica]

* Rupert Murdoch faces questions in the ongoing Dominion defamation case where he’ll testify like Mr. Burns negotiating with kidnappers, “$5000? $6000? I swear, that’s all I’ve got.” [Reuters]

* After forcing Hector LaSalle to suffer the foregone indignity of getting rejected by the committee, Kathy Hochul has at least taken a tentative step back from her threat to sue fellow Democrats on “because you made me sad” grounds. [Bloomberg]

* Flo Rida wins $82 million in dispute with energy drink company. Much like the club, the company’s lawyers couldn’t handle him. [Billboard]

WSJ names Rupert Murdoch as investor in blood testing business.

Paul Weiss may have accomplished what MSNBC has only dreamt about.

* Interesting take on how the union strategy floundered in Friedrichs. [The Seventy Four]

* Think you know the cutting edge of copyright law? Because it is apparently about tractors. [Slate]

* Ah, progress. The site of the Salem Witch Trials now overlooks a Walgreens. [Pictorial]

* Rich people problems: Rupert Murdock’s new fiancee means a new will. [Law and More]

* Let’s talk about liability insurance… for dummies. [Coverage Opinions]

* Planned Parenthood goes on the offensive against the group making undercover videos, filing a federal lawsuit. [Huffington Post]

* The number of women arguing before the Supreme Court is still small, but most of its appellate practitioners follow sage advice like this: “Clerk, work, and don’t be a jerk.” [National Law Journal]

* If you were curious about whether gays and lesbians could be excluded from juries on the basis of their sexual orientation, the Ninth Circuit is about to lay down the law. [New York Times]

* Now that the Supreme Court has ruled in Windsor, Cozen O’Connor will be forced to give a deceased partner’s profit-sharing benefits to her wife, and not her parents. [Legal Intelligencer]

* Who are Biglaw’s top innovators of the last 50 years? There are many familiar names, but one of them is near and dear to our own hearts at Above the Law: It’s our managing editor, David Lat. Congratulations! [Am Law Daily]

* If you’re making a career change to go to law school, you should think about why the the hell you’d do such a thing right now — or try to leverage it in applications. [Law Admissions Lowdown / U.S. News]

* In a surprise move, Wendi Murdoch, better known as Rupert Murdoch’s soon-to-be ex-wife, has hired William Zabel to represent her in the divorce. This is going to get very, very messy. [New York Times]

* “Why you mad, bro?” Brian Zulberti, the man with the muscles, is trying to make the most of his 15 minutes of fame. He’s lined up several job interviews, so wish him good luck. [Delaware News Journal]

Rupert Murdoch is old, but he's not stupid. He's got to have a prenup, right?

* When SCOTUS cases involve public companies and rulings are misinterpreted, it can lead to some pretty volatile stock performance, as was evidenced by yesterday’s highs and lows for Myriad Genetics of BRCA1 patent fame. [Washington Post]

* The ethics complaint against Judge Edith Jones of the Fifth Circuit has been transferred to the D.C. Circuit after receiving a blessing from the Chief Justice of the United States. Uh oh, that’s serious business if Roberts is involved. [Times-Picayune]

* The number of women working in the NLJ 350 is sad. They make up only one-third of all attorneys working in Biglaw, and we’re stuck celebrating the tiniest positive changes. Sigh. [National Law Journal]

* Proskauer Rose’s former CFO, Elly Rosenthal, settled her $10M disability discrimination suit against the firm in anticlimactic fashion, “without costs to any party as against the others.” [Am Law Daily]

* California is obviously trying to one-up New York with this one. In addition to a 50-hour pro bono requirement, they’re pushing for 15 hours of real-world training before bar admission. [The Recorder]

* Try to stop a man from throwing a pie in your husband’s face and in return you’ll be served with your wifely walking papers a few years later. Aww, Rupert Murdoch is such a kind old man. [Bloomberg]

* A White House petition started by a young lawyer asking that at least student loan interest be tax deductible like interest on a mortgage to help out those folks like, frankly, most lawyers, who make too much money to deduct their student loans. [WhiteHouse.gov] * Antoinette “Toni” Bush, partner-in-charge of Skadden’s communications group, is leaving the firm to become global head of government affairs for Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. Free tip: brush up on your hacking law. [Am Law Daily] * The Department of Energy may adopt a new “commercial maturity test” to get rolling on the backlog of liquid natural gas export license requests. And that, of course, will spur the inevitable lawsuits. [Breaking Energy] * Apparently, President Obama dreams of “going Bulworth and resents the “Harry Potter theory of the presidency,” that the President can wave a wand and make things happen. So he’s pro Pras, Maya, and ODB, and anti-Hagrid. Who’s anti-Hagrid??? [New York Times] * Lois Lerner, the manager at the center of the IRS “scandal,” has backed out of delivering the keynote at the WNEU Law commencement. I’m pretty sure Staci would do a better job… of running the IRS. [Boston Herald] * Overlawyered blasts the Daily Caller for trying to tie Lerner to Obama via her husband, Michael Miles of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan because the large firm had some ties to Obama. Blerg. Meanwhile, this “partisan scandal” is turning out to be bipartisan entirely based on which IRS office the groups dealt with. [Overlawyered] * Congratulations to this guy. Must have been a hell of a feast. [WDRB]

* Who needs a Declaration of Internet Freedom when the government supports protesting citizens who go buckwild in the streets? The European Union voted against ratification of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. [Associated Press]

* Kenneth Schneider, the former Debevoise & Plimpton associate serving a 15-year sentence for forcing a Russian teenager to be his sex slave, was suspended from practice pending further disciplinary proceedings. [New York Law Journal]

* Glenn Mulcaire, the investigator who intercepted voicemail messages on behalf of News of the World, lost a bid to remain silent about who commissioned his services. Rupert’s gonna be sooo pissed. [New York Times]

* Congratulations to the team from the University of Chicago Law School that won the United States Supreme Court Prediction Competition. They won $5K for betting on their Con Law nerd-dom. [SCOTUS Competition]

* Judge Kenneth Lester Jr. is expected to rule on George Zimmerman’s motion for bond today, and perhaps he won’t be so quick to forget that the defendant already lied to the court to get out of jail. [Orlando Sentinel]

* “You can’t just arbitrarily add anything you want to a sentence.” Well, it looks like you can, because in addition to jail time, a judge in South Carolina tacked on a Biblical book report to this woman’s sentence. [Daily Mail]

It might have seemed impossible, but things have gotten worse for those involved in the News of the World phone hacking scandal. In addition to all the other evidence against the now defunct newspaper, which was run by James Murdoch, the son of everyone’s favorite terrifying Australian media baron, new email evidence — that investigators […]

History is littered with examples of Aussies sticking it to the Brits: from early convict rebellions to the time Rupert Murdoch bought our favourite tabloid newspaper, The Sun, and had a photo of a topless woman placed on its inside page each day — a tradition that continues to this day (semi-NSFW link). Last week […]

“Privacy is for paedos,” announced tabloid journalist Paul McMullan, formerly of Rupert Murdoch’s now defunct British tabloid News of the World, while speaking last week at an enquiry set up in response to this summer’s phone hacking scandal. Firmly unapologetic for having harassed celebrities via an impressive range of mediums, McMullan continued: “Fundamentally, no one […]

To qualify as a lawyer in the U.K., you first have to eat 12 dinners. Seriously. OK, it’s only barristers (British trial lawyers) who must meet this requirement. And they have to pass legal exams as well as eat. But the essence of my slightly sensationalised opening sentence is true: no dinners, no qualification. Here’s […]

* The NBA is suing its players for failing to negotiate in good faith. Funny, I think the players are acting with the same “good faith” NBA owners do when they steal teams from loving fan bases or hold cities hostage until they build new arenas. [WSJ Law Blog] * Having a drunk woman angrily […]

* You’ve got to check out this lawsuit (in case you missed it earlier). An athlete says nonsensical tripe over Twitter, loses his endorsements, and then wants to sue. Yeah, Rashard Mendenhall has the right to say whatever he wants, and we have the right to spend a lifetime calling him an idiot. [Legal Blitz] […]

We haven’t really been covering the News Corp. / News of the World scandal because I want to be invited on to Fox News again (j/k). Whether or not Rupert Murdoch or his company broke various U.K. laws is not something we’ve looked at in depth. And we’ll not look at it in depth here. […]

* Ja Rule, another resident of Lat’s hometown, was sentenced to 28 months in jail, for failing to pay taxes. Rather than making some joke about him not being Always On Time with his tax payments, let’s instead just celebrate the existence of this hilarious picture. [Associated Press] * J. Paul Oetken was confirmed to […]

[Brendan] Sullivan and his law firm certainly have their work cut out for them. [Rupert] Murdoch may have thought the damage was contained, but it appears this scandal will persist for quite a while. — Professor Peter J. Henning, commenting on the decision of News Corp. to hire renowned litigator Brendan Sullivan and his powerhouse […]