A former New York City human rights lawyer was shot and killed on the tiny Pacific island of Yap where she was the acting attorney general — with friends saying Tuesday that she was planning to return soon to the U.S., reports the New York Post.

Rachelle Bergeron, 33, had just returned from her daily jog Monday when she was murdered. The FBI is sending a team to help the investigation, bureau spokesperson Michelle Ernst told the paper Tuesday.

Her husband, Simon Haemmerling, was inside the home and raced out at the sound of three gunshots, reports indicate.

Read the NY Post article.

A Wichita attorney known as “The Bull” has admitted his involvement in cyber threats against his critics, and a federal court ordered him to pay more than $425,000, reports The Wichita Eagle.

Brad Pistotnik pleaded guilty to three misdemeanor counts of being an accessory after the fact to making an extortionate threat over the internet, according to the U.S. attorney. He must pay fines and restitution.

“In his plea, Pistotnik admitted that he paid David Dorsett for ‘reputation management services,’ writes the Eagle‘s Jason Tidd. “That service included Dorsett sending a flood of emails to Leagle, RipoffReport and Jaburg Wilk demanding that negative information be removed from their websites, prosecutors said. The emails threatened to target their advertisers.”

Read the Wichita Eagle article.

Global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP has 30 attorneys representing a wide variety of practice areas on the 2019 Texas Super Lawyers list, which includes some of the top lawyers in the state.

According to Super Lawyers’ publisher, only the top five percent of Texas lawyers are chosen each year through the patented peer-review process it developed. The guide is reported to be one of the nation’s most respected legal guides. The 2019 guide is published in the October issue of Texas Monthly and in the Texas edition of Super Lawyers magazine.

Read about the honors.

Bethanie Livernois has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Dallas office as an associate in the Government Enforcement and Investigations Practice Group.

In a release, the firm said Livernois is the fourth lawyer to join the group in recent weeks.

The firm said Livernois has developed and overseen key investigation and auditing strategies with an emphasis on company investigation procedures and outcomes, diversion risks, and training programs. She is experienced with U.S. export control regulations, U.S. and Texas laws involving trademark and trade secret matters, securities laws, federal plea agreements and probation requirements, and Texas civil procedure.

She previously practiced at Stanton LLP.

Livernois earned her J.D. with honors from Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law and her B.A. with honors from Austin College in Sherman.

Image by Mike Peel

A federal appeals court will reconsider a ruling from a three-judge panel that threw out a lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of illegally profiting off the presidency through his luxury Washington hotel, reports the Associated Press.

The Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed Tuesday to hold a hearing before the full court of 15 judges. Arguments are scheduled for Dec. 12, according to the AP’s Denise Lavoie.

The state of Maryland and the District of Columbia accused Trump of violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution by accepting profits through foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel.

Read the AP article.

Bloomberg Law reports that the partners of Mossack Fonseca & Co., the law firm portrayed as the villains in the new movie Netflix “The Laundromat,” sued the company for libel and trademark infringement.

The firm’s complaint in U.S. district court in Connecticut claims the film “defames and portrays the Plaintiffs as ruthless uncaring lawyers who are involved in money laundering, tax evasion, bribery and/or other criminal conduct.”

The founders of the law firm implicated in the Panama Papers also say “the implications and innuendo converge to cast Plaintiffs in the light of mastermind criminals whose crimes include, but are not limited to, murder, bribery, money laundering and/or corruption.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Robert Shapiro, the former chief executive of Woodbridge Group of Cos., received the maximum sentence of 25 years in prison for running a $1.3-billion fraud that caused more than 7,000 retirees and other investors to lose money, reports Bloomberg.

Shapiro lured investors with promises of returns as high as 10 percent from investments in loans to property developers. Instead, he used money from new investors to repay earlier ones and used $36 million to buy luxury homes, wines, paintings and custom jewelry for his wife, according to Bloomberg’s Bob Van Voris.

“Prosecutors said Shapiro moved money through a network of 270 limited liability companies that he controlled. Investors lost $450 million, according to the government,” Van Voris writes.

Read the Bloomberg article.

The 8th annual Ethics & Compliance Virtual Conference will feature a full agenda dedicated to helping compliance programs remediate risk holistically—from preventive to reactive program components.

The NAVEX Global event, scheduled for Oct. 24, 2019, is designed to help participants understand global complexities, budget restrictions and the future of integrated risk management.

Webinar sessions will include:

• Driving Lasting Impact for Compliance Investment
• How to Impress or Underwhelm a Federal Prosecutor
• Predictive Analytics for Proactive Compliance Programs
• Correlation Between Brand Reputation Damage & Hotline Reports

Register for the event.

The prohibition in New York state on requiring nondisclosure sexual harassment claims in nondisclosure agreements has been strengthened, reports Hogan Lovells.

The law has been strengthened to include all claims of discrimination, harassment and/or retaliation in “any settlement, agreement or other resolution of any claim, the factual foundation for which involves discrimination … that would prevent the disclosure of the underlying facts and circumstances … unless the condition of confidentiality is the complainant’s preference.”

Authors Michael E. DeLarco and Zachary Siegel explain that if the employee requests confidentiality, then the agreement may contain this provision.

Read the article.

Greensfelder, Hemker & Gale, P.C., announced that Laura M. Beckering, Emily J. Jaeger, and Brianna N. Lockridge have joined the firm’s St. Louis office as fall associates. All three return to the firm after working as summer associates in 2017 and 2018.

A member of Greensfelder’s Business Services practice group, Beckering assists businesses and organizations with transactions including formation of entities, buy-sell agreements, and other corporate matters. She also is involved in the St. Louis entrepreneurial community as a representative for St. Louis Startup Ambassadors. During law school, Beckering worked for Saint Louis University School of Law’s Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic, where she helped a startup group form as a nonprofit corporation, as well as reviewed lease agreements and other transactional documents.

Beckering received her J.D. (magna cum laude) from Saint Louis University School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts (cum laude) from Truman State University.

Jaeger is a member of the firm’s Construction practice group. She focuses her practice on construction law, working for clients regionally and nationally in matters related to litigation and arbitration, contract negotiation, mechanic’s liens and day-to-day issues.

Jaeger served an externship with the Federal Public Defender’s Office for the Southern District of Illinois. She received her J.D. (cum laude) from Washington University School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts (summa cum laude) from the University of Missouri.

A member of Greensfelder’s Litigation practice group, Lockridge works on behalf of business clients to assist in all phases of litigation, including research and fact investigation, drafting, and deposition and trial preparation.

Lockridge completed an externship at a public interest law practice focused on death penalty cases. She received her J.D. from Saint Louis University School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts (cum laude) from The Ohio State University.

George D. Medlock, Jr. has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP as a partner and as the firm’s first director of inclusion and diversity. He is based in the firm’s Birmingham office.

In release about this newly created role, the firm said Medlock will oversee the firm’s inclusion and diversity efforts, including working with existing firm committees focused on the recruitment, training and retention of diverse and talented attorneys. He will further the firm’s objective to attract, retain, and promote into leadership roles individuals who foster inclusion and reflect the diversity that Bradley values. Medlock will work with Skeeters, as well as the firm’s board and Inclusion and Diversity Committee, as part of Bradley’s commitment to a work environment in which diverse lawyers thrive and reach their full potential, the firm said.

Prior to joining Bradley, Medlock served as vice president and deputy general counsel for Comcast Cable in Philadelphia. In this role, he developed and led company strategy for all patent matters, including patent prosecution, agreements, and high-stakes litigation. He also previously practiced as a partner at Alston & Bird LLP in Atlanta.

Medlock received his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He also holds a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science, both cum laude, and both from the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Bradley has been recognized by numerous local, regional and national organizations for the firm’s commitment to diversity and inclusion. These include being named among the Working Mother and Flex-Time Lawyers 50 Best Law Firms for Women, and receiving the Nashville Bar Association’s Diversity Committee Leadership Award 15 times since 1994.

Freeborn & Peters LLP announced that Christina L. Flatau, David M. Knapp, and D. Richard Self have joined the firm as associates in the Litigation Practice Group.

Flatau is based in the firm’s Tampa, Fla., office, Knapp is based in Freeborn’s Chicago office, and Self works from both the firm’s Springfield, Ill., and Chicago offices.

A member of Freeborn’s Insurance and Reinsurance Industry Team, Flatau focuses her practice on insurance coverage litigation, professional liability defense, and complex commercial litigation. She has represented insurers in a wide range of complex coverage matters including claims involving bad faith, priority of coverage issues, and rescission issues. She also has represented individuals and entities pursuant to coverage provided under commercial general liability, homeowners, errors and omissions, and employment practices liability insurance policies.

Prior to joining Freeborn, Flatau was an associate at Phelps Dunbar LLP. She received her J.D. (magna cum laude) from the University of Miami School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts from Trinity University.

Knapp is a member of Freeborn’s Intellectual Property Practice Group. His practice focuses on intellectual property (IP) enforcement and defense and IP portfolio management. He has developed patent portfolios in technical fields such as biotechnology, pharmaceuticals, agrichemicals, medical diagnostics, and software. In addition, he advises clients on IP risk management, including patent portfolio due diligence, patent infringement and validity opinions, and freedom-to-operate analyses. He has technical experience in the fields of chemistry, molecular biology, protein biochemistry, and chromatography.

Prior to joining Freeborn, Knapp was an associate at Wilson, Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati, P.C. He received his J.D. from George Washington University Law School. He also holds a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Science (magna cum laude) from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

A member of Freeborn’s Litigation Practice Group and Government and Regulatory Law Practice Group, Self focuses his practice on complex commercial litigation, appellate litigation, antitrust, and government relations.

Prior to joining the firm, Self served as a law clerk for Judge J. Phil Gilbert of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois. He gained experience in civil and criminal matters in government and private practice while working for the U.S. Department of Justice for one summer with the National Security Division in Washington, D.C., and another summer with the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Charlotte, N.C.

Self received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School and his Bachelor of Arts from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Lowenstein Sandler has announced that after founding and leading Lowenstein’s Washington D.C. office for five years, Jeff Blumenfeld will be transitioning responsibility for heading the office to partner Zarema A. Jaramillo effective Jan. 1, 2020.

In a release, the firm said Jaramillo has experience in both the government and the private sector, and she looks forward to building upon the impressive foundation laid by Blumenfeld. Jaramillo focuses her practice on complex antitrust matters including government investigations, M&A transactions, and complex litigation, including high-stakes class action defense. She also advises clients on compliance with U.S. and foreign anti-bribery and anti-corruption regulations, U.S. sanctions and export controls, and foreign investment reporting requirements.

Lowenstein’s Washington D.C. office currently includes three practice groups: Antitrust and White Collar, Global Trade, and Insurance Recovery. Blumenfeld will continue as Co-chair of the firm’s Antitrust & Trade Regulation group.

The civil rights, employment, and whistleblower law firm Katz, Marshall & Banks, LLP announced that Jolena Jeffrey and Antuan M. Johnson have joined the firm’s Washington office as associates and Marilyn Gabriela Robb has joined as a law clerk.

Prior to joining the firm, Jeffrey was an assistant district attorney at the Queens County District Attorney’s Office in New York City. In that role, she managed more than 200 misdemeanor or felony cases, which involved issues including purview of discovery, suppression of evidence, and the legal sufficiency of claims. As a law student, she worked in the Civil Advocacy Clinic, assisting low income persons with employment matters. She also served as the executive editor of the labor and employment law brief. Jeffrey received her J.D. from American University Washington College of Law and her Bachelor of Arts from Babson College.

Johnson was most recently an associate at Debevoise & Plimpto LLP, where he focused his practice on complex commercial litigation matters. As a law student, he served as a teaching fellow for courses on sex equality and sexual harassment in employment and education. He currently serves as a board member for the ERA Coalition, which supports legislative strategies that aim to increase constitutional protections against discrimination. Johnson received his J.D. from Harvard Law School. He also holds a Master of Arts from Yale University and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Pennsylvania.

Robb previously clerked for Judge Duane Benton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. As a law student, she served as editor-in-chief of the Harvard Law & Policy Review, the official legal publication of the American Constitution Society. She also was a student attorney with Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Institute, representing clients facing misdemeanor and felony charges in Boston criminal courts from arraignment to dismissal. Also during law school, she worked for the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice under President Obama, the ACLU Voting Rights Project, and Arnold & Porter LLP. Robb received her J.D. from Harvard Law School and her Bachelor of Arts from Columbia University.

Harrity & Harrity, LLP received the Washington Business Journal (WBJ) Corporate Citizenship Award in recognition of its partnership with the American Heart Association (AHA) of Greater Washington Region.

Part of the WBJ’s Corporate Philanthropy Awards, the Corporate Citizenship Award honors partnerships between Washington, D.C. metro area businesses and nonprofits that demonstrate positive outcomes for both organizations. Harrity and other winners will be formally honored in November at the WBJ’s annual Corporate Philanthropy Awards event.

The firm said Harrity began its partnership with the AHA of Greater Washington in 2017, joining forces to fight heart disease by working to educate policy makers, health care professionals, and the general public, with the goal of one day ending heart disease. The partnership was borne out of John Harrity’s personal experience of suffering and recovering from a “widow maker” heart attack in 2016 at the age of 49. The following year, Harrity launched Harrity 4 Charity, through which Harrity partners pledge to give 5 percent of their profits and Harrity employees pledge to donate a portion of their paychecks to partner charities.

Since 2017, Harrity partners and employees have donated countless volunteer hours to fighting heart disease. The firm also partners with the AHA of Greater Washington for its annual Lawyers Have Heart 10K Race, 5K Run & Fun Walk, which this year raised more than $900,000 for the cause. The last two years, Harrity has not only been the top corporate sponsor of the race, but also the top fundraiser. Most recently, the AHA of Greater Washington named John Harrity and Harrity & Harrity Controller Sandra Maxey co-chairs of the 30th annual Lawyers Have Heart 10K Race, 5K Run & Fun Walk. Also as part of its commitment to the cause, Harrity hosts the annual Harrity Race 5K Run and 1 Mile Fun Run, with 100 percent of the event’s proceeds going to the AHA of Greater Washington.

Financial and regulatory litigation attorney David S. Slovick has joined Barnes & Thornburg’s Washington, D.C., office as a partner in the firm’s Litigation Department. Slovick joins from Cahill Gordon & Reindel LLP in New York, where he was counsel in the Litigation Group.

Slovick is a former senior enforcement attorney at both the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In these roles, he led numerous administrative investigations and federal court actions involving a wide range of conduct in the derivatives and securities markets, including futures, swaps and securities trading practices; market manipulation; insider trading; commodity pool fraud; futures and foreign exchange Ponzi schemes; securities offering and disclosure fraud; accounting fraud; and options trading.

In a release, the firm said Slovick represents financial services firms and individuals in investigations and litigation conducted by the CFTC, SEC, FINRA and CME Group, among other public and private regulators, in a broad array of matters arising under federal laws and rules governing the derivatives and securities markets. Slovick also counsels clients on regulatory compliance matters arising under those laws and rules.

Slovick earned his J.D. from Chicago-Kent College of Law and his B.A. from the University of Wisconsin.

Zapproved has published a guide to understanding in-house ediscovery processing and review.

The guide may be downloaded from Zapproved’s website at no charge.

Whether you handle document review in-house or outsource it to your outside counsel, in-house legal teams can save significant time and money by processing and culling the data themselves.

An effective culling, processing and review system allows you to reduce, organize and review data to find only the facts that matter., the company says on its website.

This means you can:

• Reduce your ediscovery spend
• Minimize the volume of potentially relevant data
• Decrease the time it takes to review

Download the guide.

The trial of two people charged with murdering a prominent Florida law professor locked in a rancorous battle with his ex-wife and in-laws ended with a guilty verdict for one defendant and a mistrial for another.

The victim, Dan Markel, 41, was a professor at the Florida State University College of Law who had helped build a network of online legal scholarship. After a divorce, he and his ex-wife, Wendi Adelson, were given joint custody of their two young sons.

The New York Times reports that the state had charged three people with the murder, hoping to pressure them into revealing whoever may have financed the crime, according to Times reporter Patricia Mazzei.

The Tallahassee jury found Sigfredo Garcia guilty of first-degree murder but was unable to reach a verdict for defendant Katherine Magbanua.

Prosecutors argued that Markel was murdered because a court order prevented his ex-wife from relocating to South Florida with their children. They said her brother and mother then got involved, and arranged to pay the alleged killers $100,000 for the murder.

None of the former in-laws have been charged, and through their lawyers they have maintained their innocence.

Read the NY Times article.

In his 10 months in the administration, White House counsel Pat Cipollone seems to have earned the president’s trust in a way that few aides have done. He is both discreet, and more to the point, clear in his admiration for the president, according to a report in The Atlantic.

“Cipollone—aggressive, dedicated, and at times controlling, according to his colleagues—has helped to frustrate Democratic attempts at oversight, challenging subpoenas and crafting legal arguments to block aides’ testimony before Congress,” write Peter Nicholas and Elaina Plott.

Above the Law reports that last week Cipollone “wrote an eight-page letter to Congressional Democrats, where he openly mocked the impeachment inquiry against Donald Trump, stating not only that the president could not ‘permit his administration to participate in this partisan inquiry under these circumstances,’ but that it ‘lack[ed] any legitimate constitutional foundation’ and violated ‘the Constitution, the rule of law, and every past precedent.’”

Read the Atlantic article.

Although Purdue Pharma LP is based in Connecticut and incorporated in Delaware, the company at the center of the opioid crisis filed for bankruptcy in New York, in a court where its case would be assigned to the only judge who works there, reports The Washington Post.

Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain, on the bench since 2002, has long experience with complicated bankruptcy cases. On Friday he heard arguments over whether to take the unusual step of halting action in about 25 lawsuits brought by various states against Purdue and members of the Sackler family, which owns the company.

The Post article quoted Lynn M. LoPucki, a professor at the UCLA School of Law: “Of course Purdue strategically picked White Plains over all other courts. That’s like asking whether a chess master has a strategy or just makes moves randomly.”

According to The New York Times, the judge on Friday cited mounting costs of litigation that are siphoning funds that could otherwise go to abate the opioid crisis and ordered a pause in legal action by states against Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sacklers.

Read the Post article.