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Domino's Pizza Founder Supports Romney
Law & Politics |
2008/01/11 17:32
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Get the door, it's Tom Monaghan. And he's delivering family values to Mitt Romney in 30 minutes or less.
The former Domino's Pizza owner and noted anti-abortion activist today cast his lot with the struggling Romney campaign, which, using its own internal nomenclature, has yet to win a gold medal in a state larger than Wyoming.
Romney is coming of back-to-back second-place finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, places where he once appeared a lock to win. The good news is that he lost those states to two different candidates, Mike Huckabee and John McCain, meaning the GOP race is still relatively wide open.
Monaghan is the wealthy Michigan businessman who, among other things, launched Ava Maria School of Law in Ann Arbor, which was intended to be a conservative counterweight to liberal-leaning law schools. He also runs an anti-abortion political action committee. He is building his own town in southeastern Florida to house his academic and philanthropic ventures.
Many prominent Catholic lawyers, including Mary Ann Glendon, recently nominated by the White House to serve as U.S ambassador to the Vatican, have joined up with the Romney effort because of the candidate's anti-abortion stance.
The Michigan Republican primary is Jan. 15.
"As someone who values the importance of faith in one's life, I recognize in Mitt his deep religious convictions which will serve him well in facing the critical moral issues facing our society," Monaghan said in a statement. " I believe he will stand firm on the pro-life issues and for the traditional family values that our country was founded on and which are so critical to the future of our nation."
Romney and Monaghan met each other in 1998, when Monaghan sold Domino's to Romney's Bain Capital for $1 billion. |
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US Lawmakers Request Probe into Wealth Funds
Lawyer Blog News |
2008/01/11 17:23
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U.S. Senate lawmakers have ordered federal investigators to examine foreign state-run investment funds and whether the much-needed capital infusions being provided to major U.S. banks raises any economic or security concerns.
The Government Accountability Office this week began an investigation into sovereign wealth funds, including the size and types of investments funds are making in U.S. markets, a spokeswoman said.
The probe, which was requested by the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, will also examine what oversight - both international and in the U.S. - is conducted on the funds and whether the funds pose a risk to U.S. economic stability.
The state-run funds, primarily those located in Asia and Middle East, have made headlines in recent months by acquiring stakes in major banks such as Merrill Lynch & Co. (MER), Citigroup Inc. (C), and UBS AG (UBS), a major Swiss bank with extensive U.S. operations.
Both Merrill and Citi, which have already received billions in cash infusions from the funds, are currently in talks to receive even more capital from outside investors.
That has raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have aggressively scrutinized foreign investments in U.S. companies in recent years. The most notable case involved Dubai-controlled DP World. In 2006, federal approval for the firm to manage six U.S. ports sparked a firestorm of controversy and led lawmakers to pass a law overhauling the review process for foreign investments in the U.S.
The role of sovereign wealth funds has yet to reach the same level of scrutiny as the ports deal, but the GAO investigation could signal lawmakers will focus more attention on the issue when they return to Washington this month.
In addition to the Senate Banking panel, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., is also expected to have his committee conduct oversight hearings on the funds this year.
U.S. lawmakers are not alone. A number of European governments have said they are drafting proposals limiting or blocking foreign state-run investments. |
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AZ Law Firm Hired to Handle UT Ski Bus Case
Law Firm News |
2008/01/11 17:16
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A Scottsdale law firm announced Thursday that it is representing two families who suffered injuries and one death Jan. 6 after a ski bus rolled 41 feet down an embankment in southern Utah.
Nine died and 23 were injured in the accident near Mexican Hat, Utah.
The Rasmussen and Torres families have hired Scott A. Maasenand Jeffry R.Gill of M.G. Law Group, a personal injury firm specializing in trucking and bus cases.
Marc Rasmussen, an 18-year-old Deer Valley High School senior, died in the wreckage. His mother, Kim, and four other family members, including a 5-year-old boy, were injured.
Some family members have been released, but Kim remains hospitalized in the San Juan Regional Hospital in Farmington, N.M.
The firm also represents the family of Daniel Torres, 18, Willow Canyon High School student in Surprise.
Maasen said friends of the victims contacted his firm this week. He began interviewing them Tuesday.
He said it is too early to say whether the families will file a lawsuit against Arrow Stage Lines, the Nebraska-based motor coach company contracted to take 17 busloads of skiers to and from Telluride, Colo., for a three-day ski trip Jan.3-6.
"That is the last thing on the victim's minds," Maasen said of a lawsuit. "What is on their minds is getting better and healing."
The National Transportation Safety Board and Utah Highway Patrol are conducting an investigation into the cause of the Jan. 6 accident on State Route 163, near Mexican Hat in southern Utah.
The investigation includes analysis of a "data collector" on board the bus that logs speed at the time of the accident, its exact position on the high desert highway, and records video of the driver.
A Utah Highway patrolman who investigated the accident said the driver, Walland Lotan, 71, was driving at the 65 mph speed limit when he rounded a tight curve, plunging the 52 passengers into the embankment. But Sgt. Rick Eldredge said the driver should have slowed by several miles an hour as he approached the curve.
Maasen said his firm is doing its own probe of the deadly wreck.
"There are a lot of pieces to this puzzle," he said. "We want to know why this happened." |
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Not Guilty Plea in Nev. Sex Tape Case
Court Feed News |
2008/01/10 16:55
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| A man accused of raping a little girl after a videotape of the child being assaulted was found in the Nevada desert pleaded not guilty Wednesday, and a judge set a trial date for April. Chester Arthur Stiles, 37, stood next to his appointed lawyers and stared at the floor, saying little during his four-minute arraignment in Clark County District Court. Stiles is accused of sexually assaulting a 2-year-old girl in September 2003, and a 6-year-old girl that December. Authorities say the videotape is of the first attack. Stiles faces 22 felony charges including lewdness with a child under 14, sexual assault with a child under 14 and attempted sexual assault with a child under 14. If convicted, he could face multiple life terms in prison. The judge set trial for April 14. Stiles was returned to jail, where he has been held since his Oct. 15 arrest in what authorities have called protective isolation. Stiles' lawyer Jeff Banks said he intends to seek bail. Stiles became the object of a nationwide manhunt after a Nye County man turned the videotape over to sheriff's investigators in Pahrump, a town some 60 miles west of Las Vegas. Authorities released images from the tape and pleaded for public help to find the girl and her alleged attacker. The girl was found safe with her mother in Las Vegas on Sept. 28. Stiles was arrested after police in the suburb of Henderson stopped him driving a car with no license plates. The man who turned the tape over, 27-year-old Darrin Tuck, remained jailed Wednesday in Pahrump on a probation violation. Tuck said he found the tape in the desert, and his lawyer has said Tuck had no involvement with Stiles. Tuck has pleaded not guilty to a felony charge of possession of child pornography, which carries a possible penalty of one to six years in state prison. No trial date has been set. |
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Chicago law firms expand in Charlotte
Headline News |
2008/01/10 13:04
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In 1998, Chicago law firm Mayer Brown established an office in Charlotte to be close to that city's bankers. A decade later, its local rivals are trying to muscle in on what has become a lucrative financial-services center.
Winston & Strawn became the latest to jump into the heated Charlotte legal market, announcing Wednesday that it hired away six partners from one of the city's leading firms, Kennedy Covington Lobdell & Hickman. The Chicago-based law firm anticipates that it will add up to a dozen more lawyers from Kennedy Covington, said Thomas Fitzgerald, Winston & Strawn's managing partner.
Charlotte's banking giants, Bank of America Corp. and Wachovia Corp., have turned this drowsy Sunbelt city into a financial powerhouse second only to New York. Chicago once competed for such financial stature when it was home to two of the nation's biggest banks, Continental and First Chicago.
But pro-small-bank laws in Illinois placed so many restrictions on big institutions that expansion became difficult and resulted in today's fragmented Chicago banking market. Consolidation may be on its way, though, after Bank of America acquired LaSalle Bank last year.
In fact, Bank of America's growing presence in Chicago was one of the factors that led Winston & Strawn to target Charlotte for expansion, Fitzgerald said. The firm counts both Charlotte banks as clients in its corporate finance and lending practice but wanted to deepen those ties.
"We believe that our existing relationship with those clients will be enhanced with these individuals," Fitzgerald said. "This was an opportunity to bring additional depth and strength to our lending practice."
To build a stronger business relationship with the Charlotte banks, it helps to have lawyers in the city, said Jay Monge, a partner at Mayer Brown, who relocated to Charlotte from New York in 1999. The year before, Mayer Brown had acquired a boutique tax practice in Charlotte that did a lot of work for Bank of America's predecessor, NationsBank. (In 1998, NationsBank acquired San Francisco's BankAmerica, which had earlier purchased Continental.)
Katten Muchin Rosenman followed Mayer Brown to Charlotte, opening an office in 1999. There was little expansion to Charlotte after that, as Chicago firms looked overseas at the beginning of the decade. Some firms are also reluctant to move to Charlotte because the lawyers there generally charge lower rates than those in Chicago.
But the growth of the Charlotte banks has powered the city's economy, spurring demand for legal services in other areas such as real estate and litigation. Other financial institutions also have sprung up to service the banks, further diversifying Charlotte's financial-services industry.
"For multioffice firms that aspire to have a significant financial practice, Charlotte is a critical element," Monge said.
Indeed, last year three national law firms, including Chicago's Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, opened offices in Charlotte. The others were Atlanta's King & Spalding and New York-based Dewey Ballantine, now Dewey & LeBoeuf.
"It's been a very good legal market for us," said Elliott Portnoy, chairman of Sonnenschein, which recently added a group of litigators in Charlotte.
Winston & Strawn becomes the second national firm to move into Charlotte in 2008, following Atlanta's Powell Goldstein. The moves send a strong signal that the demand for financial-services lawyers in Charlotte has not abated, even with the cloudier outlook for the financial-services industry brought on by the meltdown in the subprime mortgage market.
"This short-term turbulence is not going to affect our ability to build a long-term office," Fitzgerald said.
The more firms that move to Charlotte, the more it helps dispel any lingering notion among lawyers of Charlotte as a sleepy backwater, Monge said. To any naysayers, he likes to boast that Charlotte, unlike Chicago, has a Dean & DeLuca gourmet food store. More than one. |
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Banks Targeted by Italy's First Class-Action Suit
Class Action News |
2008/01/10 11:56
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| Consumer group Adusbef plans to fight Italian banks' use of a certain type of compound interest on loans, in what could lead to Italy's first class-action lawsuit, a statement from the group said. A recently enacted law will allow class-action lawsuits -- commonplace in the countries such as the United States -- to be filed in Italy starting July 2008. Adusbef, which focuses on financial services matters, wants to take aim at the so-called practice of anatocism, where compound interest is calculated on the initial loan plus interest that is accumulated each time the money comes due. "We want to start from the most hated banking practice, this form of usury that is known as anatocism," Adusbef said. That is opposed to using simple interest, in which only the interest on the original money borrowed is added. Although banned by the Italian civil law code, Italian banks have been using compound interest for over 50 years, Adusbef said. No-one at Italian banking association ABI was immediately available for comment. |
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