On a Saturday afternoon in November, Louis Meza made plans to meet a friend and fellow cryptocurrency enthusiast for drinks at Ruby Tuesday in New York City’s Times Square. “We’re going to have a great time,” Meza said in a text. “And by the way, I’m putting you in an Uber car at the end of the Continue Reading
‘Doubt’ Fatal to Wilmington Trust Exec Case, Defense Says
Missing links, unsupported charges and reasonable doubt riddle the criminal fraud and conspiracy case federal prosecutors laid out against four Wilmington Trust Corp. executives accused of hiding hundreds of millions of dollars in past due loans, defense attorneys argued near the end of a trial Continue Reading
FERC Can’t Regulate Tenn. City’s Gas Sales, DC Circ. Says
The D.C. Circuit on Tuesday nixed a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission order claiming jurisdiction over Clarksville, Tennessee's natural gas sales to a neighboring city in Kentucky, saying that as a municipality, Clarksville is exempt under the Natural Gas Act from having the gas sales regulated Continue Reading
Closing Arguments in Fraud Trial of Former Bank Executives
Four former Wilmington Trust Corporation executives knew they were misleading banking regulators and investors by concealing the truth about the bank's imploding commercial real estate loan portfolio in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, a prosecutor told jurors Monday in the defendants' federal Continue Reading
Defense Attorneys in Wilmington Trust Case Say Loan Extensions Were Not Illegal
Closing arguments continued Tuesday during the seventh week in the trial of four former Wilmington Trust executives accused of bank fraud. Defense attorneys argued that financial documents and emails presented in the trial prove their clients were acting in “good faith” in how they handled Continue Reading
Should These Bankers Go to Prison? 5-Week Wilmington Trust Trial Wraps
Is it a crime – should bosses go to prison – when bankers wreck government-insured banks and impoverish their own shareholders by making lots of risky loans that don't get paid back?The defense, including Wilmington lawyer Michael Kelly and other local and out-of-town counsel, insisted that Harra Continue Reading
New Jersey Supreme Court’s Review of In re: Accutane Litigation
In its reporting on the In re: Accutane Litigation, Law360 quotes from Ed Fanning’s arguments before New Jersey’s high court on behalf of amici curiae the Healthcare Institute of New Jersey, the New Jersey Business & Industry Association, the Commerce and Industry Association of New Jersey and Continue Reading
T-Mobile, Sprint Face Tough Odds for Tie-Up
Rumors are again whirling that T-Mobile and Sprint are weighing a tie-up, but the No. 3 and No. 4 U.S. wireless players will need to come eye-to-eye on a merger agreement before deciding whether they can muster a successful defense of a deal regulators are likely to deem anti-competitive. "I Continue Reading
Court: Consumer Must Suffer Harm in TCCWNA Cases
A NJBiz.com report discusses the New Jersey Supreme Court’s Spade/Wegner ruling which held that consumers filing suit under New Jersey’s Truth-in-Consumer Contract Warranty and Notice Act (TCCWNA) must suffer some adverse consequence in order to recover the statutorily prescribed $100 penalty. Continue Reading
Why PE Isn’t the Real Reason Retailers Are Going Bankrupt
The idea that private equity backers are to blame for the demise of well-known retailers like Toys R Us, Payless and Claire's is overblown, experts say, and the reality is that the companies fell into bankruptcy because they failed to adapt their business models to combat disruptive and Continue Reading