The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

The Morning Wrap

Libor Fine: The Swiss banking giant UBS announced a record settlement with global authorities on Wednesday, agreeing to a combined $1.5 billion in fines for its role in a multiyear scheme to manipulate interest rates. The Justice Department also secured a guilty plea from the bank's Japanese subsidiary, sending a warning shot to other big banks suspected of rate rigging, The New York Times reports.

Under Fire: The U.S. gun industry faced a new set of challenges to its financial and political power Tuesday as more of its Washington allies called for gun control and a major investor sought to get out of the firearms business entirely, the Washington Post reports.

Person of the Year: Time Magazine picks Barack Obama, noting that "We are in the midst of historic cultural and demographic changes, and Obama is both the symbol and in some ways the architect of this new America."

Leahy Becomes New President Pro Tem of Senate

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) formally became the president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate on Tuesday, putting the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee third in line for the presidency.

Vice President Joe Biden administered the oath of office to the 72-year-old senator from the Senate rostrum a day after the death of Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), who had held the post since 2010. The president pro tempore (known informally as the Senate's president "pro tem") who officially runs the Senate when the vice president isn't present, is the current longest-serving senator of the party that controls the Senate. Leahy joined the body in 1975.

"There is no doubt that Senator Inouye will be greatly missed in these halls," Leahy said in prepared remarks. "He said he wanted to be remembered as having represented his people and all Americans honestly and to the best of his ability. I know he did, we all know he gave his everything to the Senate and his legacy will live on in the work we will continue to do."

Judge Calls CIA Stance 'Laughable' in Spat Over Drug Lord Case Documents

For more than six years, a progressive think tank in Washington has been pressing the CIA in court for information about the late Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar.

When a judge ruled in part against the agency this summer, telling the CIA to go back and do a more adequate search for documents, the government decided not to appeal the decision. In October, the CIA's lawyers at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia said it would take five years to complete the search for records under the broad terms of the request.

This is how government lawyers put it in a court filing then: "Based on the wording of plaintiff’s Freedom of Information Act request, defendant currently believes that five years will be required to complete the FOIA search."

Today at a hearing in the case, the presiding judge, Royce Lamberth, assailed the government for seeking more time to complete a public records request that was initially filed with the agency in 2004. "I'll tell you up front that you're not getting five years," Lamberth, the chief federal trial judge in Washington, said. He called the government's proposed schedule "laughable on its face."

Judge Orders Syria to Pay $338M in Terrorism Case

A Washington federal judge yesterday awarded $338 million to the victims of a terrorist kidnapping, finding that the Syrian government was liable for supporting the group behind the abduction.

According to the opinion (PDF) from U.S. District Chief Judge Royce Lamberth, Marvin Wilson and Ronald Wyatt were taken hostage in Turkey in 1991 while visiting a possible archaeological site. They were held for 21 days before being released by their captors.

Lamberth found that the Syrian government provided material support and funding to the group behind the abduction, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK. Under the state-sponsored terrorism exception to the federal Foreign Sovereign Immunities, Lamberth awarded damages to Wilson, Wilson's family and Wyatt's family; Wyatt died of cancer in 1999.

Utah AG Finds New Home at Troutman Sanders in D.C.

After 12 years as Utah's attorney general, Mark Shurtleff on January 7 will step down to enter private practice at the Washington office of Troutman Sanders, the firm announced on Monday.

Shurtleff, who decided not to run this year for a fourth term as Utah's chief lawyer, will join Troutman Sanders as a partner in its regulatory compliance and government litigation practice and state attorneys general team.

The Utah attorney general wasn't immediately available for comment. But he said in a written statement released by Troutman Sanders that leaving public service was a "difficult choice" for him.

Former Lead Counsel in D.C. Mass Arrest Case Testifies About Evidence

As part of an investigation into allegations of mishandled evidence from mass arrests in 2002, a former lead attorney for the District of Columbia testified today that while some information wasn't disclosed right away to the court and plaintiffs, she never intended to withhold it indefinitely.

Today's testimony from Monique Pressley, a former senior assistant attorney general in the Office of the Attorney General, was the latest in a series of recent hearings on how police and city officials dealt with certain evidence, especially an electronic record of police activity during the arrests.

On November 28, a computer technician testified that when he found the electronic police activity record on May 3, 2011, he saw that someone had used the "delete" function. But because the "delete" function actually moved the file elsewhere in the system, he could recover it. Pressley said today that the court and plaintiffs' counsel weren't told about the so-called deletion until July 12, 2011, because she hoped they could hear it directly from the technician.

The Morning Wrap

'Aloha': Senator Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii), president pro tempore of the U.S. Senate, died on Monday at age 88 from respiratory complications, Politico reports. His last word was "Aloha."

Connecticut Shootings: A couple of six-year-old boys killed during last week's massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Conn., were the first victims buried on Monday, The New York Times reports. After attending a funeral for one of the boys, Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy (D) said, "You see little coffins and your heart has to ache."

Gun Rights: If Congress opens a serious debate on new federal restrictions on firearms in the wake of the Newtown school shootings, the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark Second Amendment decision will be fodder for proponents and opponents, The National Law Journal reports. "The Supreme Court was clear in Heller that while law-abiding, responsible citizens have the right to a gun in the home for self defense, there is a wide variety of sensible gun laws that remain constitutional," said Jon Lowy, director of the Legal Action Project of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

Auto Parts Maker Hires Wiley Rein to Stop Chinese Battery Deal

With a Chinese company moving closer to acquiring most of a bankrupt U.S. battery maker for $256.6 million, a Milwaukee-based auto parts manufacturer that bid for the firm has hired a team of Washington lobbyists from Wiley Rein as part of an effort to thwart the deal.

Johnson Controls Inc. has enlisted Wiley Rein public policy consultant Scott Weaver and former Representative Jim Slattery (D-Kan.), a partner who leads the firm's public policy practice, to educate members of Congress about how the sale of A123 Systems Inc. to Chinese auto parts maker Wanxiang America Inc. would impact U.S. Defense Department contracts, according to lobbying registration paperwork filed with Congress on Friday. Slattery said he's made contacts with congressional offices about the proposed transaction.

"There's concern" on Capitol Hill about the A123 deal, he said.

Former Texas Congressman Joins King & Spalding Lobbying Team

Updated 1:43 p.m.

King & Spalding has added a former Congressman to its Washington lobbying practice.

Michael Andrews, a Democrat from Texas who served in the House from 1983 to 1995, joins the firm's government advocacy and public policy practice as senior counsel. He was previously of counsel at Levick Communications and in private practice.

Andrews focuses his practice on policy matters related to healthcare and energy. During his tenure in the House, Andrews was a member of the health care subcommittee of Ways and Means Committee and also part of the Budget and Joint Economics Committee.

Judge Rules for DOJ in Dispute over Cell Tower Data

Federal agents acted in good faith in relying on court orders and not a warrant to obtain cell phone tower data associated with the target of a drug trafficking probe, a federal judge in Washington said in a ruling that marked a win for the U.S. Justice Department.

The judge, Ellen Segal Huvelle of Washington federal district court, skirted issuing a ruling on the underlying debate playing out in courts across the country: whether the authorities should be required, under the Fourth Amendment, to first get a warrant to access the location information that mobile phones transmit to towers.

Huvelle said in her ruling that she "need not resolve this vexing question of Fourth Amendment jurisprudence, since it concludes that the good-faith exception to the exclusionary rule applies."

Numerous judges, Huvelle said, have allowed agents to review historical cell-site data via a court order and not a warrant. In the case against Antoine Jones, authorities relied on court orders in 2005 to retrieve prospective data. At the time, Huvelle said, "the state of the law was completely uncharted."