I am pleased to provide you with the following confidential update.
Oh boy, that's a guarantee some angry partner will be emailing it around town.
Although we will continue to make sure that we are operating as efficiently as possible, we believe that our staffing level is now appropriate and do not anticipate that the firm will have any need to seek staff reductions in the near future and, hopefully, not for the long term. The inflow of new work is on the rise and our timekeepers are increasing their recorded time. This is a positive sign for improved revenues down the road.
Honey, I have great news! My boss says "our staffing level is now appropriate" and they don't anticipate "staff reductions in the near future."
Unlike last year, we're going to make it through Hannukah. Isn't that fantastic?
Yes, kids, the 43-page opinion is here, disregarding the referee's recommendation of public reprimand, and handing Adorno the severest sanction short of disbarment.
The Supremes endorsed the particularly harsh language of the 3d DCA, and detailed a rather sordid and regrettable tale of misconduct, ethical lapses and, frankly, greed.
The intrepid one proves once again why she is the best in the business with this devastating post-mortem of the demise of AdornoYoss:
The final decision apparently was forced on the firm by its bank, Wells Fargo, with which firm leaders were in negotiations the week of March 7. Former partners said the firm owed the bank $8 million. The week ended with a closing announcement, after attempts by Yoss to secure a merger over the last two months failed.
In a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act notice filed with the state March 17, Yoss placed its employee count at 91, under the 100 threshold that would trigger severance pay with less than 60 days' notice. Plantation-based DJSP, a foreclosure processing company that recently dissolved, listed 96 employees at the time of dissolution and was hit with a class action suit by employees who claim they weren't given adequate notice or pay under federal law. Five former employees said the Yoss firm does not plan to pay any severance.
Nice way to say goodbye to your long-term employees, huh?
But I wouldn't rush to sue these guys, I'm not too sure they're collectable:
Some of the biggest losers may be former partners who are owed capital contributions of $30,000 to $100,000 each, Genovese and others said.
Linden, now a partner at GrayRobinson, said he has no expectation of getting his capital contribution back. "If the firm is closing its doors and you are an owner, you're the last one to get paid," he said. "By the time the secured lender is paid, plus the costs of administering the wind-up, I do not anticipate a distribution. I'm not a pie-in-the-sky kind of guy, I'm a realist. I'm moving on. I don't look backwards about stuff like that."
Former West Palm Beach managing partner John Koenig said a group of former partners is considering suing Adorno and Yoss individually for breach of contract.
Former partner Sylvia Krainen already has requested mediation on her claim for her capital contribution, according to former Atlanta managing partner Tracey Blackwell and others. Krainen did not return calls for comment.
Oy veh, what a mess.
Question: how did Hank handle all this strife suffered by his employees and ex-partners?
In 2006, Adorno left Miami for Atlanta, where the firm opened an office in 2004. He bought a $4.2 million house on Tuxedo Lane, sharing the block with the founder of Home Depot and the Atlanta Falcons, and a $2 million Blue Ridge Mountain estate in North Carolina's exclusive Linville Ridge, where Dick Cheney is a neighbor.
Whoa.
If you are forced to live right next toDick Cheney you are most definitely in one of the nine circles of hell -- although, to be fair, this one has a Robert Trent-designed golf course.
In an e-mail sent to employees Friday, managing partner George Yoss notified employees that the firm would be winding down its legal practice and laying off all employees by the end of the month.
“As we are sure you are aware, these have been extremely difficult times for the firm,” stated Yoss in the e-mail. “After meeting with the bank and evaluating the firm’s status and financial position the decision was made to wind down its operation.”
Thanks to a tipster, we have managed to obtain an early draft of the email:
Oh f*&k. F*&k f*&k f*&. F*&k a duck! Why maintain the ruse any longer? We're f*&ked. So f*&k you all and the horses you rode in on. You think this s*&t's easy? You try it. Thank you to our loyal clients who stuck with us through the good times and bad. That's f*&king sarcasm you dimwits. Now good luck finding a job in this economy. Did I mention we're f*&ked?
Yoss out.
Ok, those are pretty strong words, and I apologize for the vulgarities.
I suppose that's why you should never send an email when you're upset or angry.
As we are sure you are aware, these have been extremely difficult times for the firm. Over the past few months we have been dealing with many issues that have had a negative impact on the firm's ability to continue. After meeting with the Bank and evaluating the firm's status and financial position the decision was made to wind down its operations.
Accordingly we are giving to each of our employees the following notice:
It is anticipated that the firm will continue to provide legal services to its clients and will continue to conduct its regular business through March 31, 2011. Effective March 31, 2011, the firm will permanently close most of its facilities and will cease to provide legal services and will begin winding down operations. We hope to accomplish this with the least possible disruption to the lives of our employees, our clients and the community.
With the exception of several employees needed for the wind down period all employees of the firm will be laid off between now and March 31, 2011.
I don't know, the first draft has a kind of raw honesty you don't see much in law firm communications nowadays.....
Yossers, feel free to share your views in comments, our thoughts and prayers are with you and we wish you good luck in finding alternative employment.
I've heard of a lot of reasons why Yoss lawyers are jumping ship, but this is a new one:
Princeton, N.J.'s Wong Fleming, which last year merged into what was then the country's largest minority-owned law firm, Adorno & Yoss, now Yoss, is now stepping out onto the national stage on its own.
The firm announced Monday that it has re-emerged as a 45-lawyer practice that will operate in 13 states and the District of Columbia. It will retain its offices in Princeton, New York City, Philadelphia and Baltimore, which pre-existed last April's merger, and add new ones in Chicago, Seattle, Houston and elsewhere.
CEO Linda Wong says the new and expanded Wong Fleming is the biggest women-owned firm and the third-largest minority-owned firm in the U.S.
Most of the lawyers at the rebranded firm are coming from Adorno & Yoss, which has been shedding lawyers and offices in the wake of a suspension imposed Oct. 27 on founding partner Henry "Hank" Adorno over his handling of a class action. Two days after the suspension, Adorno & Yoss's paychecks bounced when a lawyer trying to collect a $1.5 million malpractice judgment against the firm garnished its bank accounts. Adorno resigned from the firm, now known as Yoss LLP.
It was not Yoss's financial situation, but its inability to maintain its status as a minority-owned firm, which caused Wong Fleming to leave, says Daniel Fleming, Wong Fleming's managing partner.
To qualify as minority-owned, more than half the equity must be held by minorities, and the departure of Adorno, who is Hispanic and owned a large portion of the firm, might have been enough to lose the designation.
"We had to leave because they told us they didn't think they could retain the minority ownership model of the firm," he says. Otherwise, Wong and Fleming "would have ridden out the storm."
So it wasn't the departure of Hank Adorno in disgrace, the bounced checks, the loss of just about everyone but Wes Parsons, the lack of voice mail(!), it was the potential problem with minority ownership status?
Ok, got it.
BTW, I love this statement on the revamped Adorno &Yoss website:
Founded in 1986, Yoss LLP has been one of the fastest growing law firms in the hemisphere.
Rumors have been abounding regarding the Fort Lauderdale Yoss office, and it appears to be true:
Veteran South Florida attorney Jan Douglas Atlas is leaving Yoss LLP and taking several attorneys with him, a source close to the firm said.
Atlas has for years been the manager of the firm’s Fort Lauderdale office, where he practices in commercial litigation and oversees all securities lawsuits.
Atlas could not immediately be reached for comment, and a receptionist said the voice mail for the Fort Lauderdale office was temporarily down.
Wow, even the voice mail is down(!) --restructuring, it's a bitch.
John Koenig, the former Yoss partner in charge in West Palm Beach, said he left Tuesday with associate Mandell Sundarsingh to start the Boynton Beach firm Koenig & Dinkin with lawyer Mitch Dinkin. The new firm specializes in collections, commercial litigation and creditors' rights.
"I left because I was not getting paid," Koenig said. "We were not receiving paychecks for awhile." He also said the Coral Gables-based firm had not paid rent at the office for three months.
Actually, when you're not paying your partners and the office has not paid its rent in three months, I consider that a "restructuring."
Or a "consolidation," or the "implementation of a strategic plan," or "focusing on your core capabilities," or "redeploying firm assets in a more efficient manner," or.......
“I’ve been presented with a terrific opportunity to become part of a strong statewide firm and an extremely well-respected practice group,” Reiter said.
Reiter added, "I also was presented with a terrific opportunity to be paid on time, or just to be paid at all, and I found being paid for work that I do to be a significant factor in my future ability to earn any income."
Oh I kid, I kid.
All is well with Yoss, how could it not be?
I remember a time in college when I was flat-broke, and had to sell my blood to get any cash, plus I ate most meals at the food kitchen where you could get rice and bread for free in exchange for helping to clean up after dinner.
It's hard to describe exactly why I find the state's continued defense of its disastrous citrus canker eradication program so irksome.
Was it the program in the first place, so badly designed, industry-skewed, poorly managed and enforced, and which only succeeded in eradicating a way of life for many of us who grew up in South Florida enjoying the abundant fruit on every street corner and every backyard?
Is it the pointless waste of judicial resources, forcing jurors, experts, judges, and precious time and money to be spent trying the same issues over and over again in county after county?
Financial troubles at Ruden McClosky are deepening, with the Fort Lauderdale-based firm suspending all capital payouts to former equity shareholders.
In a letter to about 50 to 60 former equity shareholders Saturday, co-managing partners Michael Krul and Carl Schuster said the firm was declaring a "moratorium" on all capital account repayments. The three-paragraph letter stated the firm would review the situation "later in the year."
The survival of the firm has been a subject of open debate for months. Sources at two law firms that were approached said Ruden has been shopping for merger partners.
Aren't the repayments a contractual obligation? How can you declare a "moratorium" on paying back a debt?
You gotta love litigating against the state -- it's like fighting with a headless chicken: there's no one in charge, no one accountable, no one making "hard" decisions that involve long-term thinking, and absolutely -- and I mean absolutely -- no one counting the money.
That's how you can wind up with this absurd decision by the 4th DCA, which the DBR reports on here, where the court actually has to explain to the state that spending tons of money trying and losing the citrus canker case does not mean that the state somehow "won" and that they therefore are entitled to -- of all things -- fees(!):
We find the Department’s arguments to be frivolous. No matter how one looks at the facts, the owners prevailed on the significant issues. The mere fact that the owners sought more in damages than the jury awarded does not mean that they did not prevail on both issues of liability and damages.
This is mind-numbingly stupid.
In fact, I can't even begin to put in words how asinine this argument is and that the state actually went ahead and paid Wes Parsons good taxpayer money to take it all the way up on appeal.
God I gotta do something to calm down and take my mind off this drivel:
Ok, it's working -- I'm starting to feel better now.
The slow yet steady drumbeat of departures continues at Adorno &Yoss, according to the ever intrepid Julie Kay:
Neil Linden, head of business litigation at Yoss LLP, is moving to GrayRobinson's Miami office and bringing two lawyers with him.
The nine-year veteran of Yoss, formerly Adorno & Yoss, is leaving with shareholder Phillippe Deve and associate David Levin on an undetermined date.
Linden, national chair of business and commercial litigation department at Yoss, said his departure is due to a conflict that developed over a large institutional client of his and a new client with the firm. The clients were not disclosed.
"We had a conflict we could not resolve," he said.
Hmm, I can't speak to the details of this particular conflict, but I know one conflict that would be difficult for any law firm (in the generic sense of course) to overcome -- I would like to be paid vs. sorry but we really can't pay you right now.
If I were the good folks (folk?) at Yoss, I would consider an entire rebranding overhaul.
For example, it's kinda weird or perhaps even ghoulish that the firm website is still adorno.com.
And the "Yoss" thing feels incomplete and awkward, doesn't it?
It'd be like if Abbott and Costello suddenly just became "Costello!" -- ok Lou, we wish you well, but maybe you need to go in an entirely new direction?
The Intrepid One™ breaks an amazing story of a botched lawsuit, botched again, then apparently botched again:
The malpractice case sprang roots 23 years ago when Jacobs Wind Electric and principal Paul Jacobs first began pursuing legal action against the Florida Department of Transportation in a patent case. Jacobs and his father invented a tidal gate that prevented water stagnation and debris accumulation in waterways.
Two years after allegedly discovering DOT was using the system in 1987, the plaintiffs sued the state in federal court for patent infringement. They later brought suit in Hillsborough Circuit Court, hiring Shahady, then with Houston & Shahady in Fort Lauderdale, in 1998. Soon after, Shahady merged his firm with Adorno & Yoss.
According to Paul Jacobs, Shahady and his firm took no action in the state case from 2001 to 2003. As a result, the suit was dismissed for "want of prosecution." According to the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure in effect at the time, lawsuits that lay dormant for more than one year can be dismissed. That rule has since been changed, and courts automatically notify parties before suits are dropped.
The dismissal was affirmed by the 2nd District Court of Appeal in 2004.
In 2005, Paul Jacobs sued Shahady and Adorno & Yoss for legal malpractice.
"Defendants' conduct in allowing the underlying lawsuit to lie dormant for a period of over one year … was a breach of defendants' duty to exercise reasonable care, skill and diligence on plaintiffs' behalf," the complaint stated.
If Shahady had done something during the year, the Jacobses could have recovered more than $1 million, representing the DOT's savings by using the device, they alleged.
Adorno fought the case right up until the trial last summer when the firm conceded liability. After a one-week trial, jurors found for the Jacobses in July, awarding them $300,000 plus $150,000 in attorney fees. Broward Judge John Murphy III added pre-judgment interest for a total verdict $1.5 million.
Even though the law firm admitted liability, it's appealing the verdict because it does not believe the dollar amount is fair, Shahady said.
"It was our fault that the suit got dismissed," Shahady said in an interview. "Mr. Jacobs did not cause this problem. But we felt pretty strongly that there was no basis for the damage award in terms of dollars."
Ok, question for Tom -- if you admittedly blew the deadline and it was "our fault" the case got dismissed for want of prosecution, why fight liability right up until the date of trial? Why not focus on damages and get the thing quietly settled?
It gets worse:
The circumstances surrounding the garnishment of the firm's Wachovia bank account was another case of Adorno & Yoss dropping the ball. The firm should have posted a bond to cover the judgment pending appeal, but "our attorney was on vacation, and it fell through the cracks," Shahady said.
Just like the underlying case!
It gets worser:
He called the incident "one of those unfortunate things" and said it would not have happened if the Jacobses' case were in Fort Lauderdale rather than Tampa, and if it happened six months later after a change in the Florida Rules of Civil Procedure.
I don't like to be too negative, but what does the court's proximity to your law office have to do with whether or not you allegedly calendared the date a case you are handling could get dismissed for want of prosecution?
Also, why blame the Rules for not informing you of that date?
It gets even worser:
Even though the law firm admitted liability, it's appealing the verdict because it does not believe the dollar amount is fair, Shahady said.
Please don't.
Tom, you're a good lawyer. These things happen. Maybe take what has happened so far in this case as a sign that perhaps you all should consider a different approach?
I also don't see why Larry should feel bad about garnishing the firm to protect the judgment:
"Until the garnishment was issued, senior management at the firm would never talk to me," he said. "I wish they had handled things differently from beginning to end."
Kellogg wound up releasing his garnishment the next day, saying he felt bad that employees did not get paid. At that point, the bond was posted.
An outside observer who did not want to be identified said he was shocked that Kellogg would garnish a law firm's bank account, particularly on payday.
But Kellogg said he immediately dropped the garnishment when he found out employees were affected. "I worked tirelessly on it," he said.
What's shocking about this? Larry is obligated to protect the judgment on behalf of his client, not make sure employees at Yoss get paid from a diminishing set of funds.
And I love how no one allegedly would reach out from Yoss to settle this thing directly with Larry. Instead you appear to be fighting tooth and nail, contesting liability, forcing the matter to go to trial, losing the trial, then appealing the judgment.
Then Julie finds out about it and you get to relive it all over again in the DBR.
Or is there another side to this story that I'm missing? Someone help me out here.
Adorno & Yoss became Yoss LLP today to comply with the law license suspension of firm co-founder and chairman Henry "Hank" Adorno.
Co-founder George Yoss is taking over as managing partner of the Coral Gables-based firm, and Adorno is out as chairman and chief executive officer of the 24-year-old firm.
Adorno was suspended indefinitely last Wednesday by the Florida Supreme Court for his role in a misleading $7 million class action settlement involving the City of Miami that benefited only seven people, but arrangements for operating without him are incomplete. The Adorno-free firm does not yet have a website. That’s still in the works.
In our case, South Florida Lawyers will simply be known as "Lawyers."
The WP's Ezra Klein offers some bracing insights into all those supposedly confidential listserves everyone and her mother belongs to:
A private e-mail list is not public, but it is electronically archived text, and it is protected only by a password field and the good will of the members. It's easy to talk as if it's private without considering the possibility, unlikely as it is, that it will one day become public, and that some ambitious gossip reporters will dig through it for an exposure story. And because that possibility doesn't feel fully real, people still talk like it's private and then get burned if it goes public.
(Boy I hope my Bo Derek Is a Goddess listmates don't turn on me after all these years.)
Given that we just saw the State blow $120k on dubious "expert" anti-gay adoption testimony, I don't want to overstate anything.
But is it too much to suggest that the State's furious scorched earth litigation strategy in defending the citrus canker lawsuits -- paying Adorno & Yoss hundreds of thousands of dollars (millions?) to force Bobby Gilbert to try multiple suits in different forums for the last six years -- ranks up there with one of the more colossally stupid wastes of taxpayer money in recent memory?
I guess I say that given the canker eradication program they have spent so much money vigorously defending at taxpayer expense -- a program that radically changed the landscape of South Florida -- was such a wanker in the first place.
As I've previously written, if you grew up in South Florida you probably remember orange, lemon, grapefruit, sour orange, blood orange, tangelo, those weird hard orange/lemon hybrid fruits, and all manner of citrus in your backyard, in your neighbor's backyard, in the empty yards, in the swales, on your way to school, on your way to your friend's house, and pretty much everywhere you went.
You could bike around the block and collect all the citrus refreshment/armed weaponry you needed in a matter of moments, and later on it turned out all that backyard fruit made a great marinade!
But those days are gone.
In their place, we've had a perpetual transfer of taxpayer funds into the coffers of Adorno & Yoss, so they could seriously argue that suits that raise similar issues in different counties all have to proceed simultaneously (rather than wait for the benefit of an appellate ruling in one of the cases that could impact the legal issues raised in the other suits).
That should have been a big sign that something was rotten in the overly zealous way these cases were defended.
I have no idea why the State feels the need to so obstinately defend their questionable citrus canker program in the first place (pride/hubris from the decisionmakers involved?) but we are finally beginning to see the light at the end of the Wal-Mart voucher tunnel:
The Fourth District Court of Appeal unanimously held that some 55,000 Broward property owners are due $11 million for healthy trees felled by state chain saws from 1995 to 2006.
``Government has regulatory power for the very purpose of safeguarding the rights of citizens, not for destroying them,'' the judges wrote. ``Under any possible meaning, if government cuts down and burns private property having value, then government has taken it. And if government has taken it, government must pay for it.''
Confirming a widely held belief among property owners, the ruling said it was ``apparent from the history of this case that [the Department] destroyed these privately owned healthy trees not because they were `imminently dangerous' to anybody, but instead to benefit the citrus industry.''
Maybe now -- finally -- we have a window for the State to take a breath, reach out and turn off the Adorno litigation spigot and try to find a reasonable resolution to this fiasco?
Of course not:
``We respectfully disagree with the appeal court, and we will appeal it to the Florida Supreme Court,'' Florida Department of Agriculture spokesman Terence McElroy said, citing $44.5 million already paid on claims around the state.
Although the decision applies only to the Broward suit, plaintiffs' attorney Robert Gilbert said it will affect class actions pending in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach, Lee and Orange counties. He called the state's repeated appeals ``abusive.''
Florida ``wasted over $500 million destroying these trees, and millions more battling us in court,'' he said.
Why the reflexive, split-second reaction calling for an appeal? Is it more of the bury-your-head-and-keep-on-going legal strategy we've seen so far?
How about "we intend to carefully study the appellate opinion and confer as to what additional legal steps, if any, will be taken."
Obviously, the state's entitled to a defense and you need to find some numbers everyone can live with, but come on already.
You can read the entire opinion here, but I found the special concurrence by Judge Levine to be powerful:
I fully agree with the majority opinion, but I write to emphasize the clear legal right of the individual homeowner to receive just compensation as a result of the actions of the State. The State's actions in cutting down these trees most assuredly constituted "takings," whether under the regulatory takings or physical takings analysis, that demanded just compensation. Regardless of the type of takings denominated here, the result in this case must be the same — full and just compensation to the homeowners.
By requiring the State to abide by its constitutional obligation to compensate individual homeowners, we safeguard the property rights of all. "The sacred rights of property are to be guarded at every point. I call them sacred, because, if they are unprotected, all other rights become worthless or visionary." Joseph Story, The Value and Importance of Legal Studies (1829), in Miscellaneous Writings of Joseph Story 503, 519 (William W. Story ed., 1852).
In a huge post-trial victory by GT's Steve Binhak over Adorno's Steve Ginsburg, Judge Jordan has overturned a jury verdict -- including an award of punitive damages -- in a condo dispute that involved misrepresentations over whether a new building ("Asia") would block an existing water view at Carbonell on Brickell Key.
Judge Jordan basically found that there was no evidence of damages, and he seems to me to be right:
At the hearing on the post-trial motions, Mr. Soltero argued that the $200,000 or $250,000 “view premium” was supported by evidence that Mr. Enriquez (the seller) told Ms. Aguila (the broker) that Unit 3608, with the view, was worth over $2 million, and that Ms. Aguila herself said it was worth $1.7 million to $1.8 million. See Transcript of Hearing [D.E. 228] at 51. That argument does not work for a number of reasons. First, Mr. Soltero cannot defend the “view premium” on what Ms. Aguila told him that Mr. Enriquez said to her about the supposed value of Unit 3608, or what Ms.Aguila herself opined. See, e.g., Bekins Van Lines v. Schaefffer, 630 So.2d 633, 634 (Fla. 4th DCA 1994) (owner of property could not testify about property’s value “based upon telephone and personal conversations with others”). Second, if Mr. Soltero is suggesting that he bought Unit 3608 for less than what it was really worth with unobstructed water views (i.e., that he paid $1.7 million when it was really worth $2 million or more, as it was represented), then the benefit of the bargain theory may not even apply. Cf. Getelman v. Levey, 481 So.2d 1236, 1239-40 (Fla. 3d DCA 1985) (the benefit of the bargain rule “is designed for a situation where a party has effected a sale of property by representing it as worth more than its actual value,” and does not apply where the buyer obtains the property representing that it is “worth less than its actual value”).
b. Mr. Soltero also relies, in part, on opinions he personally expressed at trial concerning Unit 3608’s actual value, or its value as it was represented. Those opinions, however, cannot save the verdict. First, my trial notes reflect that Mr. Soltero testified that Unit 3608 was worth $1.2 million at the time of trial (i.e., in July of 2009). Such a valuation does nothing to put an actual value on Unit 3608 at the time of the sale (i.e., in December of 2005), or to show what the value was if the representations about Asia had been true, which are the two critical numbers required under Florida law for an appropriate benefit of the bargain comparison. See, e.g., Studebaker, 19 So. at 179; Kind, 889 So.2d at 90. Second, to the extent that Mr. Soltero tried to put an actual or “as represented” value on Unit 3608 as of December of 2005, such an opinion was hopelessly speculative, as Mr. Soltero did not take into account or explain the effect on his valuation of either an overheated real estate market -- in which many were buying as speculators in the hope that prices would continue to climb -- or comparable sales on the 08 line of Carbonell around that time on his valuation.
It is true that under Florida law an owner of property, including an owner of real property, may generally express an opinion as to its value. But such an owner, like any other witness, must be shown to be competent to testify about valuation. Mere ownership, without more, is not enough. And when the valuation of a condominium apartment has to be made in the context of an unsustainable bubble market, like the one that existed in late 2005, and the alleged reduction in value is based in part on something as subjective as a less expansive water view, it was incumbent upon Mr. Soltero to explain that his opinion was something more than mere speculation.
Query -- why not put on a damages expert for the difference in value?
I'm less sure about Judge Jordan killing the puni award ("first time in 10 years on the bench") based on an improper net worth comment made by Ginsburg:
In closing argument, Mr. Soltero’s counsel told the jury that “even $10 million in punitive damages is chickenfeed to Swire, who’s invested over $800 million in Brickell Key alone.” This argument was based on evidence that Swire Pacific Holdings -- and not the Swire defendants on trial -- had invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Brickell Key. The defendants lodged a contemporaneous objection, but I mistakenly overruled the objection. Mr. Soltero’s counsel then told the jury “that’s what the law allows. Those are the punitive damages that [Mr. Soltero] is asking you to award.” As a result of this second statement, I gave the jury a curative instruction: “Let me just add one thing, ladies and gentlemen. Swire Pacific Holdings is not a party in this case. And you may not consider any assets or conduct of Swire Pacific Holdings in deciding the issues in this case, including the issue of punitive damages, if you should award them.”
After closing arguments were finished, I reminded Mr. Soltero’s counsel that I had repeatedly ruled that he could not use the assets of the related Swire entities that were not parties, admonished him for violating those rulings and for “playing games,” and said that I expressed no view on what effect, if any, that improper closing argument would have on a verdict in favor of Mr. Soltero. The response of Mr. Soltero’s counsel was that the $800 million figure came from the website of Swire Realty.
Guess you had to be there, but it sounds like the Judge got a little ticked over Ginsburg going over the line, which is fine, though the curative instruction was pretty good and probably sufficient in most circumstances.
Oh yeah -- our friend DOM (moonlighting from his successful crim practice) represented the defendant broker at trial.
Interesting story by Alana Roberts on the uptick in mergers, particularly at the midsize firm level:
As law firm merger activity has accelerated nationally, South Florida firms have gotten into the dealmaking. Fort Lauderdale-based litigation firm Gordon Hargrove & James got together with San Francisco-based business law firm Sedgwick Detert Moran & Arnold after the latter firm targeted the Southeast for expansion. Michael Tanenbaum, the Newark, N.J.-based chair of Sedgwick Detert, said its 12 offices provided it with coverage of the West, Southwest, Midwest and Northeast. The South has become a major place of interest by law firms looking to merge.
The combination of Sedgwick and Gordon is one of 20 mergers around the country that are scheduled to close in the first quarter, and that number could grow to 25. In recent South Florida activity, Coral Gables-based Adorno & Yoss grew by acquisition and recruiting to 300 attorneys, merging with Houston-based Monty Partners last September. In the same month, it acquired a seven-attorney group from Gordon Hargrove & James. The 40-lawyer Katzman Garfinkel & Rosenbaum is the product of a June 2008 merger between Fort Lauderdale-based Katzman & Korr and Maitland-based Garfinkel Trial Group. The combined firm has since added an office in Las Vegas. The Jan. 1 merger of the 400-lawyer Sedgwick firm with the 21-lawyer Gordon Hargrove & James firm offers the geographic presence the larger California firm was seeking. “We believe and our clients have informed us, in order to provide comprehensive service to our clients, it was important we have an office in the Southeast,” Tanenbaum said. “We have been working with lawyers from Gordon Hargrove & James for a number of years for a number of different clients, so it was just one of those circumstances where there was a perfect match where we could provide benefit to them and they could provide benefit to us.”
A couple of observations -- South Florida is a notoriously bad place for larger national firms to establish offices, though there have been a few recent exceptions. It's uncertain whether the economic downturn will eventually force even those few exceptions to become closer to the rule. In the case of Gordon Hargrove, it seems to be more an issue of acquisition than merger, given the size dynamics.
Second, midsize mergers with firms from out of state present a different set of problems, including issues of personality, compensation, control and direction. There will also be a need to consolidate and streamline operations, which inevitably means some staffers, administrators and perhaps lawyers will have to be let go. I would expect a few lawyers to peel off at the initial stages, with more cuts after the consolidation becomes entrenched. We already saw some Gordon Hargrove lawyers bail out, no doubt aware of the acquisition talks and looking for a better fit or opportunity.
However it turns out, we wish them all well. Remember, in this economy one should be happy to have jobs, clients, and opportunities.
And cameras, diets, Gibsons, Bolero, windsurfing etc...
This is an interesting way for an immigration firm to drum up business:
Under the new structure, Houston and San Antonio offices of Monty Partners are now officially occupied by Adorno’s newly formed immigration practice group.
Before the deal, Adorno only had a Texas office in Dallas.
“They are going to be our Houston office,” says Adorno’s Socol. “Our immigration practice is (now) centered in Houston and Miami.”
Monty Partners employs a roster of about a dozen retired ICE agents on a full-time and contract basis to conduct mock I-9 audits. Companies not only learn if they are in violation of any immigration laws, but also what the fines would have been.
Monty says clients tend to pay more attention when the former agents are presenting the news rather than just lawyers.
“It’s not as lucrative as having just attorneys do it, but the end result for the client is much better,” he says.
Hey, why stop there? I'd like to see some mock round-ups, some mock beatings, a few mock deportations. One time at my old firm we conducted a mock partner execution, but that came after a long Friday night kegger so that's probably a little different.
