The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

DOJ's Top Environmental Lawyer to Step Down

After an action-packed tenure that included litigating the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, Ignacia Moreno, the head of the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division, announced today she is stepping down June 7.

On her watch, the 490-lawyer division won a record-setting $29 billion in court orders and settlements. The division also scored nearly $3.4 billion in civil penalties and other relief, including more than $1.4 billion for the Superfund.

“Over the last four years, Ignacia Moreno has been a powerful champion for the mission of the Environment and Natural Resources Division,” Attorney General Eric Holder Jr. said in a statement. “Under her leadership, the division has achieved extraordinary results on behalf of the American people.”

D.C. Attorney General Testifies in Evidence Dispute

In an unusual scene, District of Columbia Attorney General Irvin Nathan took the stand this morning in Washington federal court to testify about his office's handling of a longstanding wrongful arrest case. During occasionally contentious exchanges, Nathan fielded questions about his compliance with ethics rules as the city government's top lawyer.

Nathan was the final witness in a series of hearings about how city officials handled evidence in the case, which stemmed from mass arrests in 2002 at Pershing Park in downtown Washington. Nathan, who’s led the office since January 2011, was called to testify about a document filed by his office that included inaccurate information.

Nathan said he wasn't personally involved in preparing the document, but had no reason to believe attorneys in his office acted unethically or knew they were filing incorrect information at the time. Jonathan Turley, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs and professor at George Washington University Law School, asked Nathan why he didn't order an investigation once he learned his office had filed inaccurate information. Nathan said he believed he had met his ethical obligations and had "no regrets."

Fannie Mae Settles Securities Fraud Class Action

Updated at 3:33 p.m.

A sprawling securities fraud class action against Fannie Mae and its former auditor, KPMG LLP, is coming to a close. The parties filed notice with a Washington federal judge late yesterday that they had reached a settlement in the case.

Fannie Mae and KPMG agreed to pay $153 million to class members—former Fannie Mae shareholders from 2001 to 2004—according to a motion filed yesterday for preliminary court approval of the deal.

Fannie was accused of violating established accounting principles and publishing misleading financial reports and statements. The settlement comes on the heels of a string of losses for the plaintiffs, in which the judge dismissed several former Fannie executives as individual defendants in the case. U.S. District Judge Richard Leon had yet to rule on the defendants' joint motion for summary judgment.

The Morning Wrap

Kidnap Questions: Euphoria over the rescue of three Ohio woman from a decade-long kidnapping ordeal gave way to questions of how their captivity inside a house on a residential street in Cleveland went undetected for so long, Reuters reports.

Pipeline Protest: Much of the opposition to the $5.3 billion Keystone XL pipeline has centered in Nebraska, where Jane Kleeb, the head of Bold Nebraska, is working to organize families along the 274-mile route through the state, Bloomberg reports.

Second Chance: Mark Sanford, the former Republican governor of South Carolina whose political career imploded after an extramarital affair, won a special election to fill a vacant House seat that he once occupied, CNN reports.

Mary Jo White Talks Budget on Capitol Hill

Making her first appearance on Capitol Hill as chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White today urged members of a House panel to approve her agency’s request for $1.566 billion as part of President Barack Obama's budget. White testified before the Financial Services subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations.

Republicans on the subcommittee, including the chairman, Representative Ander Crenshaw (R-Fla.), criticized the budget request as being 33 percent more than the sequester amount. The SEC funds its budget using securities transactions fees collected by the agency.

Representative Jose Serrano (D-N.Y.) asked White about the effects the sequestration has had on the agency. White said that while the SEC anticipated the budget cuts, the agency does not dilute its responsibility to oversee more than 35,000 entities.

Daily D.C. Lateral Roundup

A trio of former Hogan Lovells partners have moved to Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton’s Washington office. Gardner Gillespie, Dave Thomas, and Paul Werner have joined as partners in the firm's business trial practice group and communications team.

Gillespie focuses his practice on cable television and telecommunications regulation and litigation. Thomas, formerly the practice group leader of Hogan Lovell’s communications group, focuses on the telecommunications and broadband communications industries, specifically on the deployment of competitive networks and services. Werner is a seasoned litigator and has represented cable operators and other broadband providers in matters involving communications law issues.

A former congresswoman has moved to Bracewell & Giuliani’s Washington office. Anne Northup (R-Ky.) has joined the firm’s policy resolution group as a strategist and advisor. She focuses on clients in the consumer products, health, international trade, energy, environment, and manufacturing sectors.

CFPB Charges Two Lawyers in Debt Relief Scam

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau today filed suit against two lawyers and two debt relief companies, alleging they charged thousands of consumers illegal advance fees and left some worse off financially.

One of the lawyers, Michael Levitis, also faces mail and wire fraud charges brought by the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s office - the first-ever criminal charges stemming from a CFPB referral.

Brooklyn-based Levitis and his company, Mission Settlement Agency, as well as New Jersey lawyer Michael Lupolover and Premier Consulting Group, allegedly sold debt-relief services to consumers, promising to renegotiate or settle their debts, according to the complaint filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

Republicans Attack DOJ Deal in Whistleblower Case, Again

Republicans stepped up their criticism of Assistant Attorney General Tom Perez on Tuesday, saying he misled the Senate about a controversial whistleblower case at his confirmation hearing for Secretary of Labor.

Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), a longtime defender of whistleblower laws, is among a group of Republicans in Congress who say their oversight investigation already has uncovered an inappropriate quid pro quo deal orchestrated by Perez in the Minnesota whistleblower case last year. Perez leads the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division.

Republicans say their investigation found the Justice Department had agreed to a "secret deal" to not join the whistleblower case against the city of St. Paul, ultimately dooming the case. In exchange, the city dropped its appeal in the U.S. Supreme Court in an unrelated case that could have affected the department's ability to use the disparate impact theory in fair housing cases.

In D.C. Circuit, Lobbyists Fight Obama Lobbying Ban

Laying out their case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit for the first time, lawyers for a half-dozen lobbyists contend the Obama administration's prohibition on federal lobbyists from sitting on agency boards and commissions has "punished" their clients.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington got it wrong when she upheld the Obama administration's ban in September, Mayer Brown special counsel Charles Rothfeld and associate Joseph Minta wrote in their opening brief, filed Monday night, in the appellate court.

The lobbyists, who sought appointment or reappointment to Industry Trade Advisory Committees (ITAC) overseen by the Commerce Department and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, appealed the ruling in November.

"It would seem self-evident that the ability to serve on a government advisory committee is a desirable and beneficial opportunity that many would regard as valuable," the lawyers for the lobbyists wrote. "And that opportunity is withheld from plaintiffs here solely because they engage in the constitutionally protected activity of petitioning the government, thus both punishing and discouraging that constitutionally protected activity."

Michael Jackson’s Ex-Publicist Sues for Legal Malpractice

Updated at 1:48 p.m.

Deceased pop megastar Michael Jackson's former publicist is suing a Florida law firm for legal malpractice, accusing her former attorneys of botching her lawsuit against Jackson's estate for what she claimed were $44 million in unpaid fees.

Raymone Bain, who runs a D.C.-based public relations firm, served as Jackson's publicist beginning in late 2003 and helped run his business affairs through The Michael Jackson Company LLC. In the complaint Bain filed May 3 in District of Columbia Superior Court, she claimed her former lawyers with Gary, Williams, Parenti, Watson & Gary in Stuart, Fla., breached their duties to her at various stages of the litigation against Jackson's estate.

Bain is seeking $300 million in damages. She's being represented by Steven Pavsner of Joseph, Greenwald & Laake in Greenbelt, Md.