The BLT: The Blog of Legal Times

Whole Foods Prevails Against D.C. Antitrust Lawsuit

The plaintiff in a civil antitrust lawsuit against Whole Foods Market Inc. has agreed to judgment in favor of the company, following a decision in April by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit not to hear an appeal of an order denying class certification.

Ekaterini Kottaras, a California woman, sued Whole Foods in 2008 in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming the company's merger with former competitor Wild Oats had led to higher prices. The lawsuit was an offshoot of the Federal Trade Commission's 2007 challenge to the merger, which eventually settled.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg denied Kottaras’ motion to certify a class in the case in late January. Kottaras filed a petition to appeal, which a three-judge appellate panel denied on April 20. On Friday, Kottaras agreed to an entry of judgment in Whole Foods' favor, meaning she could be on the hook for some of the company's costs. The case docket officially closed yesterday.

Foley Lobbyist Decamps to Nonprofit

Foley Hoag is losing a Washington-based partner who lobbied for health care companies to a nonprofit organization that works to reduce medical expenses through technology, the group announced Tuesday.

Rodger Currie, who has been at Foley for about a year, will join the West Wireless Health Institute as senior vice president of its recently established government affairs department. His first day is June 18.

Currie has lobbied throughout his time at Foley for biopharmaceutical companies Amgen Inc. and Orexigen Therapeutics Inc., as well as medical device developer DEKA Research and Development Corp., according to congressional records. And in April, he added another biopharmaceutical company, Chimerix Inc., to his client list.

Dispute Over Issa Statements Flares Up At Clemens Trial

Statements that Rep. Darrell Issa made in 2008 to the press during the congressional inquiry into drug use in professional baseball should not be allowed at the Roger Clemens perjury trial, prosecutors and lawyers for the congressman said today.

Lawyers for Issa, the California Republican who is now the chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, said the statements to reporters are irrelevant and inadmissible. In published reports in Feb. 2008, Issa questioned whether the oversight committee was acting outside the scope of its authority in serving as a prosecutorial body.

Clemens is charged in Washington’s federal trial court with lying to Congress in 2008 when he denied using steroids and human growth hormone. Prosecutors are tasked with trying to convince jurors that the congressional inquiry was legitimate legislative activity. Issa was a member of the oversight committee at the time of Clemens's appearance in Congress.

William Pittard, a House General Counsel’s Office attorney representing Issa and the committee, said attorneys for Clemens at most would be able to elicit from Issa confirmation that his public statements are accurate. “Or, put another way, Mr. Clemens could not probe behind those statements without running afoul of the Speech or Debate clause,” Pittard said in court papers.

The Morning Wrap

ICC in Action: International judges sentenced former Liberian President Charles Taylor to 50 years in prison Wednesday, saying he was responsible for "some of the most heinous and brutal crimes recorded in human history" by arming and supporting Sierra Leone rebels in return for "blood diamonds," the Associated Press reports.

Reward: A former home appraiser will receive $14.5 million as part of a whistleblower lawsuit that accused subprime lender Countrywide Financial of inflating appraisals on government-insured loans, his attorneys said Tuesday, according to Reuters.

Patent Wars: High-tech behemoths in a range of businesses like mobile computing and search and social networking have been suing one another to protect their intellectual property from what they see as the blatant copying and cloning by their rivals. Regardless of the legitimacy of their claims, the aggressive litigation could have a devastating effect on society as a whole, short-circuiting innovation, the New York Times reports.

Intellectual Property Lateral Lawyer Joins McKool Smith

McKool Smith has added an intellectual property lateral attorney to its Washington office, the firm announced Tuesday.

Kent Stevens, formerly special counsel at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, joins McKool Smith as a principal.

Stevens spent 10 years at the International Trade Commission as an investigative attorney and senior investigative attorney with the ITC’s Office of Unfair Import Investigations. He primarily focuses his practice on intellectual property litigation and Section 337 investigations before the ITC.

Former Secretary's Lawsuit Against Ballard Spahr Set for Trial

A lawsuit against Ballard Spahr filed by a former legal secretary in the Washington office is set for trial in July, after a D.C. federal judge last week denied a motion to refer the case to mediation.

Vanessa McFadden worked at the firm from 1989 until she was fired in 2004. She sued Ballard Spahr in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, claiming the firm discriminated against her because of her race and interfered with her right to take time off to care for her husband and herself.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leon granted the firm summary judgment in 2008, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit reversed Leon's decision in 2010 on one of McFadden's claims, that the firm interfered with her right to take time off under the D.C. Family and Medical Leave Act. A jury trial is scheduled for July 23.

Prosecutors Seek Restrictions on Roger Clemens Defense

The prosecutors in the Roger Clemens perjury case are preparing to rest soon, seven weeks into the proceeding, giving the former baseball pitcher a chance to present his case to the jury in Washington.

Seeking to limit the scope of what Clemens’s lawyers can tell jurors, prosecutors late Monday filed court papers arguing that testimony about the pitcher’s athletic work ethic in his high school, college years and early professional baseball career should be off-limits.

The prosecutors, including assistant U.S. attorneys Steven Durham and Daniel Butler, said in the papers that “it appears” Clemens’s defense lawyers want to call former coaches and teammates to address training and work ethic.

“Testimony about the defendant’s training and work ethic, dating over 20 years prior to the steroids and HGH [human growth hormone] use alleged in this case, is far too remote in time to be relevant,” prosecutors said in the papers (PDF).

Dewey’s Lobbying Team Packs It In

Dewey & LeBoeuf's lobbying days are officially over.

The quickly disappearing firm filed its last bunch of lobbying termination reports with Congress on Thursday, four days before it filed for bankruptcy protection. The reports are for Aflac Inc., Fidelity National Financial Inc., Lloyd's of London, Hanover Re Group, Trans-Elect Development Co. LLC, the Dutch Association of Insurers, International Underwriting Association and National Association of Real Estate Investment Trusts, according to congressional records. Those filings followed Dewey's lobbying termination reports for Aegis Insurance Services Inc. on Wednesday and ASML Netherlands B.V. and the Semiconductor Industry Association on May 15. All of the reports list a government advocacy cessation date of May 15.

Of the 11 former clients, Dewey reported lobbying activity from April 1 to May 15 for only the Dutch Association of Insurers, Aflac and Lloyd’s. The Dutch Association during that period paid Dewey less than $5,000 for the government advocacy work of then-Washington managing partner L. Charles Landgraf, the last head of the firm’s legislative and public policy group, and then-senior adviser Dana Marshall. But the firm received $130,000 from Aflac for the efforts of then-of counsels Thomas Howell and Alan Wolff and $110,000 from Lloyd’s for the work of Landgraf, Marshall and then-associate Paul Howard II.

New GC at the Federal Communications Commission

Sean Lev has been named general counsel of the Federal Communications Commission, replacing Austin Schlick, who will step down in mid-June.

Currently deputy general counsel at the FCC, Lev joined the agency at the beginning of the year from the Department of Energy, where he served as acting general counsel and deputy general counsel for environment and nuclear programs. Before he joined Energy in 2009, Lev was a partner at Kellogg, Huber, Hansen, Todd, Evans & Figel specializing in telecom and administrative law.

Schlick, who has not announced his future plans, is also a former partner at Kellogg Huber. He’s served as the FCC’s top legal officer since 2009, spearheading reform efforts including strengthening ex parte disclosure, expanding online filing and access to FCC dockets and improving cost/benefit analysis. According to the FCC, agency lawyers on his watch prevailed in more than 90 percent of court cases challenging rules issued under chairman Julius Genachowski.

Attorney Says Lawsuit Kept Infringers Away from Rolling Thunder

Updated at 3:18 p.m.

The tens of thousands of roaring motorcycles that descended on Washington this weekend for the annual Rolling Thunder Inc. rally are gone, and a lawsuit they filed to stop potential copyright infringers is likely to leave soon as well.

This year marked the 25th anniversary of the Rolling Thunder event in Washington, which raises awareness of soldiers who are prisoners of war or missing in action, and encourages support for veterans. Hoping to stop unauthorized vendors from profiting off of copyrighted artwork developed for each year's ride, organizers filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on May 4 seeking pre-emptive court orders.

Jeffrey Kaufman of Oblon, Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, the lead attorney for Rolling Thunder, said today that the firm believes the lawsuit worked and that it'll be notifying the court soon that no further action is needed.