The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Venable Sees Net Income, Profits Per Partner Rise in 2012

Bolstered in part by a strong year for the firm's real estate and tax practices, Venable saw a nearly 6 percent increase in gross revenue, up to $376 million from $355 million in 2011, according to our reporting. The firm said profits per partner were up 3.7 percent to $845,000.

Revenue per lawyer was up 2.7 percent, from $730,000 to $750,000, and net income was up 3.1 percent to $134 million. The number of equity partners—159—remained unchanged at Venable. The overall number of partners increased to 265, up 3.5 percent. The total number of lawyers at the firm also went up, from 488 to 501.

"When I look at how we did in 2012, month to month, the second half of the year for us was quite strong," said Venable co-managing partner Robert Waldman, who leads the firm's representation of tax-exempt organizations. "We feel very good about where we are now," he said later. "The firm is very healthy."

Supreme Court Ruling Jeopardizes Encyclopedia Group's Legal Malpractice Lawsuit

Several months after losing a motion for summary judgment, Encyclopaedia Britannica is facing another possible setback in its legal malpractice lawsuit against Dickstein Shapiro.

In an order yesterday, U.S. District Judge John Bates asked Britannica to explain why he should still be able to hear the case, in light of a ruling yesterday from the U.S. Supreme Court that narrowed the ability of plaintiffs to pursue legal malpractice claims involving patent matters in federal court.

The high court found in Gunn v. Minton that state legal malpractice claims over how lawyers managed patent matters couldn't be brought under federal patent law. The justices reasoned that regardless of how a legal malpractice claim resolved, it wouldn't affect the original federal patent litigation.

Complaints Against D.C. Judges Up in 2012

The number of complaints filed against District of Columbia judges jumped for the second year in a row, from 54 complaints filed in fiscal year 2011 to 79 complaints filed during the last fiscal year, according to recent testimony before the D.C. Council.

Cathaee Hudgins, executive director of the Commission on Judicial Disabilities and Tenure, said she thought that the internet had made it easier for lawyers and the public to file complaints. During a hearing before the judiciary and public safety committee on February 14, she testified that the commission didn't find evidence of a rise in judicial misconduct; as was the case in 2011, almost all complaints were dismissed and no complaint led to disciplinary action.

The seven-member commission, which investigates complaints and evaluates judges in Superior Court and the Court of Appeals up for reappointment, did informally resolve two complaints in fiscal year 2012, which means that the commission discussed the complaint with the judge at issue. One complaint was informally resolved during the previous fiscal year. In the first four months of the 2013 fiscal year, the commission received 17 complaints. Details about judicial complaints are kept confidential.

Judge Dismisses Lawsuits Over ATM Fees

A Washington federal judge gave a win yesterday to Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc., dismissing (PDF) a set of lawsuits that accused the two credit card companies of violating federal antitrust laws in how they set ATM fees.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson found that the plaintiffs – ATM operators and consumers who used ATMs – failed to make sufficient claims that they were harmed by how Visa and MasterCard managed ATM fees, and also didn't present enough facts to support a claim that the companies were part of an anticompetitive conspiracy with banks.

A lead attorney for the ATM operators, Washington solo practitioner Jonathan Rubin, said today that his clients are planning to file an amended complaint that would address Jackson's problems with the original case. "This is basically an economic issue that we intend to lay out in greater detail for the court," he said. A lead attorney for ATM users, George Sampson of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro, said in an e-mail that his team also believed they could amend the complaint to address the court's concerns.

DOJ Tells Judge WikiLeaks Investigation Details Should Remain Secret

The U.S. Justice Department today urged a judge in Washington to allow the government to keep secret internal documents and correspondence that would reveal investigative techniques, confidential sources and potential targets of the ongoing WikiLeaks criminal investigation.

The Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center sued the government last year to try to force the disclosure of the names of any WikiLeaks supporters who may have become surveillance targets. The privacy center also wants to see any government communication with Internet and social media companies about those advocates.

Today, DOJ filed papers in Washington's federal trial court asking a judge to shut down the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

In support of the request, the government submitted a series of secret declarations to the chambers of the presiding judge, Richard Roberts, articulating why none of the responsive records—including evidence summaries and confidential source statements—should be released to the public. The WikiLeaks investigation, DOJ said, is ongoing.

Huffington Post Moves to Dismiss Lawyer's Defamation Lawsuit

The Huffington Post moved yesterday to dismiss a defamation lawsuit filed by a Panama-based lawyer, arguing that the site is an "interactive computer service provider" and can't be held liable for third-party content.

Juan Carlos Noriega sued The Huffington Post in December in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Noriega claimed he'd had nothing to do with an article posted on the site in August under his name, and that the company had wrongfully refused to take it down.

The Huffington Post argued in its motion to dismiss (PDF) yesterday that it was immune to Noriega's claims under the federal Communications Decency Act. Even if The Huffington Post contributed to editing or promoting the post in any way, the media company argued that it's protected as long as a third-party provided the actual content.

D.C. Police Union Questions Payments to Attorneys in Mass Arrest Case

As a D.C. federal magistrate judge continues his investigation into the alleged mishandling of evidence in a decade-old mass arrest case, the head of Washington's police union is raising questions about the city's reimbursement of legal fees for city officials involved.

In a letter (PDF) sent yesterday to the D.C. Office of the Inspector General, Fraternal Order of Police Chairman Kristopher Baumann asked for an investigation into public compensation of private lawyers for defendants and other officials, now that U.S. District Magistrate Judge John Facciola's investigation has raised the specter of possible criminal activity.

Under the D.C. Code, the city can pay "reasonable" attorney fees for Metropolitan Police Department members facing a civil lawsuit for wrongful arrest. In an interview today, Baumann said that while the underlying matter is a civil case, Facciola's investigation is veering into issues such as whether police and other city officials committed perjury or submitted false information to the court.

In Q&A, D.C. Forensic Sciences Chief Says Lab Moving Toward Accreditation

It's been four months since the grand opening of Washington's new forensic sciences laboratory. The $220 million facility is fully operational and District of Columbia Department of Forensic Sciences director Max Houck said they have a plan in place for moving towards accreditation and are making progress in filling vacant positions.

The 287,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art building isn't just home to new lab space, though. It is itself an experiment: Houck is guiding the city's transition to independent forensic testing, in which evidence testing and storage are no longer handled by law enforcement.

Houck sat down with Legal Times on January 25 to talk about the lab's first few months. Besides forensic sciences, the new building houses the city's public health lab, which is also under Houck's department, and the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, which continues to manage the city's morgue. His comments have been edited for space.

Lawyers in LivingSocial Class Action Seek $3M in Fees

Lawyers behind a class action against daily deal company LivingSocial are hoping to collect $3 million in fees, the maximum amount that the two sides agreed to in a settlement. The fees are on top of the $4.5 million that LivingSocial agreed to pay to settle claims that its deal voucher expiration dates and other restrictions violated federal and state laws.

The fee arrangement was spelled out in an agreement (PDF) that U.S. District Judge Ellen Segal Huvelle gave preliminary approval to in October. Under the agreement, LivingSocial said it wouldn't contest a request for attorney fees up to $3 million. On January 18, the plaintiffs filed a motion for attorney fees (PDF), asking Huvelle to order the award.

Plaintiffs in the District of Columbia, Florida, California, Minnesota, and Washington filed class actions in early 2011 against LivingSocial, all alleging similar violations of the federal Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act and state laws. The cases were consolidated into a single multi-district litigation in D.C. federal court.

D.C. Circuit Ruling Keeps Businessman’s Retaliation Suit Alive

A Texas businessman who has fought the government for more than twenty years over allegations of retaliatory prosecution for his criticism of the U.S. Postal Service may finally get a chance to take his claims to a jury.

Voting 2-1 this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit refused to halt the suit that the businessman, William Moore, filed in Washington's federal trial court in 1992.

The litigation has a long and complex history, centered in large part on whether the defendants, a group of Postal Service inspectors, are entitled to qualified immunity. On that issue, the D.C. Circuit hasn't gone along with the U.S. Justice Department position. DOJ has pressed a series of challenges of court rulings in the case, fighting all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

In the latest phase of Moore's case, the D.C. Circuit was tasked with deciding whether a Supreme Court ruling last year in a retaliatory arrest case meant Moore's claims—based on a challenge of his prosecution for his alleged role in a kickback conspiracy—could move forward. On January 15, the appeals court said Moore's suit, which explores the relationship between probable cause and retaliation claims, can proceed.