A New Jersey judge struck a BigLaw attorney’s closing argument for Johnson & Johnson on Wednesday in a case alleging asbestos in the company’s talcum powder caused mesothelioma in the plaintiffs’ stomach linings, reports the ABA Journal.

Judge Ana Viscomi of New Brunswick struck from the record the entire argument made by Diane Sullivan, a litigation partner with Weil, Gotshal & Manges.

According to reports, Sullivan told jurors that experts for the plaintiffs didn’t draw a connection between talcum powder and mesothelioma until they were hired by the plaintiffs. “When you don’t have evidence, sometimes you have to create it,” Sullivan said.

Viscomi said the closing argument was “replete with conduct this court has already warned you about.”

Read the ABA Journal article.

Bloomberg Law reports that a North Dakota lawyer can’t pursue his First Amendment claims against the state bar association over compulsory membership and annual dues.

Bloomberg’s Jennifer Bennett explains: “Arnold Fleck sued after learning the State Bar Association of North Dakota was using some of his dues to oppose a state ballot measure he supported. He accused the state bar of violating his right to affirmatively consent before it spent his dues on non-germane political or ideological activities. Fleck also argued that requiring attorneys to belong to SBAND in order to practice law infringes on his ‘right to freedom of association and to avoid subsidizing speech with which he disagrees,’ Judge James B. Loken’s opinion said.”

The case was back in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit after the U.S. Supreme Court granted Fleck’s petition, summarily vacated the Eight Circuit’s decision, and remanded the suit for reconsideration.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

A recent ruling illustrates how courts will typically enforce a valid forum selection clause, absent a compelling showing of prejudice to the party opposing a lawsuit in the agreed-to forum, according to a post by Murtha Cullina’s Family Business Perspectives blog.

Michael P. Connolly explains that “while substantive disputes under an agreement may still arise, a forum selection clause at least may provide a measure of certainty from the outset as to the location of any future legal action. Without such a clause, a party to an agreement may be forced to litigate in a distant, inconvenient or otherwise unwanted location, which may ultimately increase the expense, disruption and risk in connection with any future lawsuit.”

Read the article.

Sullivan & Worcester announced that Angela Gomes has joined the Boston office as a partner in the Corporate practice. Gomes, who moves to Sullivan from Skadden, focuses her practice on securities regulation and corporate finance, as well as mergers and acquisitions and general corporate matters.

Gomes was among Massachusetts Lawyers Weekly “Top Women of Law” in 2017 and was honored by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce in 2015 as one of “Ten Outstanding Young Leaders.” She is a past president of the Massachusetts Black Lawyers Association and has served as director of several nonprofits, including The Boston Dance Alliance, The Midas Collaborative, Greater Boston Legal Services and Lawyers for Civil Rights. She was also recently selected as a Minority Corporate Counsel Association Rising Star for 2019.

Gomes earned her undergraduate degree from Boston University (2001) and received her juris doctor from Boston University School of Law (2005). During law school, she served as both vice president and then president of the Black Law Students Association. She also was articles editor of the Journal of Science and Technology Law. Acknowledging her service, in 2010 Boston University School of Law Black Law Students Association awarded Gomes its “Young Alumni Award,” and in 2018 they awarded her with the “Trailblazer” award. In 2014, Boston University School of Law presented her with its “Alumni Pro Bono Award.” Angela was also a Leadership Council on Legal Diversity Fellow.

Grace H. Lee has rejoined Venable LLP’s Independent School Practice as a partner in the Washington, D.C., office. Lee is the former vice president of legal affairs at the National Business Officers Association (NBOA), where she oversaw the legal affairs and human resources programming for independent school business officers and served as a resource for member schools on current and evolving legal challenges affecting the independent school community.

In a release, the firm said Lee will continue to work with business officers, board members, human resources professionals, and heads of school to advance the mission priorities and culture of institutions while meeting their business needs and mitigating potential liability. Prior to her role at NBOA, Lee was an attorney at Venable from 2007 to 2012, where she provided guidance and legal counsel to the firm’s independent school clients on a broad range of issues including employee policies, contracts, worker classification issues, difficult employee situations, student and family issues, governance, legal claims, and regulatory compliance. She is a frequent presenter at national and local independent school association conferences, has written extensively on school legal issues, and provides a substantial amount of training to faculty and staff around the country.

Lee received her J.D. from George Washington University School of Law in 2001 and her B.A. from Northwestern University in 1998.

Trial attorney Majed Nachawati, co-founding partner of Dallas-based Fears Nachawati Law Firm, has earned recognition on the 2019 Texas Super Lawyers list.

Nachawati’s selection to the annual peer-review listing was based on his class action and mass torts litigation work. He has successfully represented individuals harmed by prescription drugs, medical devices and defective products.

Nachawati is a member of the State Bar of Texas Professionalism Committee, Dallas Bar Association’s Legal Ethics Committee, the Public Justice Board of Directors, the Texas Trial Lawyers Association Board of Directors and is a Leader’s Forum member of the American Association for Justice. Nachawati also recently earned a spot in the 2020 edition of The Best Lawyers in America.

Researchers for Thomson Reuters-owned Super Lawyers compile the annual list of honorees based on nominations from more than 70,000 practicing lawyers in Texas. A blue-ribbon panel of attorneys assists with final selections. Less than 5 percent of all Texas lawyers earn the honor each year.

The Super Lawyers list is published in the October issues of Texas Monthly and the Texas edition of Super Lawyers magazines. The full list is available online at http://www.superlawyers.com.

For the fifth time since 2012, Dallas attorney and former Texas Supreme Court Justice Deborah Hankinson has earned recognition by Texas Super Lawyers as one of the Top Three attorneys in the state.

In addition to practice-specific recognition, Super Lawyers annually awards supplemental honors to the state’s top attorneys regardless of practice focus based on peer feedback. Hankinson, whose practice focuses on alternative dispute resolution and related services, was the second-highest rated attorney in the 2019 listing.

Hankinson also was selected among the Top 50 Women and Top 100 Dallas-Fort Worth attorneys in the recently released publication. She has been recognized on the Texas Super Lawyers list every year since its inaugural 2003 publication.

Texas Super Lawyers selections are based on peer nominations and evaluations, as well as independent editorial research. No more than 5 percent of eligible Texas attorneys are chosen each year for practice-specific recognition. The full 2019 listing will appear in Texas Monthly and in the Texas edition of Super Lawyers magazine.

Since re-entering private practice in 2002 following her tenure on the Supreme Court, she has garnered wide-ranging professional recognition for her ADR work from legal guides and business publications, including Chambers USA, Benchmark Appellate, The National Law Journal, Texas Lawyer, Dallas Business Journal, D Magazine, the Dallas Bar Association and Lawdragon. She also recently was recognized for a 13th time in The Best Lawyers in America guide.

Dallas attorneys Clayton Bailey and Alex Brauer, co-founders of Bailey Brauer, have been selected among the state’s top business litigators in the 2019 edition of the Texas Super Lawyers legal guide.

One of The National Trial Lawyers’ Top 100 Texas Civil Plaintiff Lawyers, Bailey has a national trial and appellate practice. He represents clients involved in complex tort and other commercial cases, corporate litigation and in putative class actions and mass action lawsuits in federal and state courts. A frequent author, he contributed to sections of the American Bar Association’s recently released Agriculture and Food Handbook. This is his ninth Texas Super Lawyers selection.

In a release, the firm said Brauer represents companies and high net worth individuals involved in high-stakes business litigation involving claims of fraud, tortious interference, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, conspiracy, deceptive trade practices, trade secret theft, RICO, and antitrust violations. Brauer has successfully defended clients facing class and collective actions and represented plaintiffs and defendants in complex tort and negligence cases. The 2019 selection is the third for Brauer.

Texas Super Lawyers is published by Thomson Reuters, appearing in Texas Monthly and Super Lawyers magazines. Selection is limited to no more than 5 percent of Texas attorneys and is based on a statewide survey of lawyers and extensive editorial review.

Trial lawyer David Bissinger, a founder of Houston-based Bissinger, Oshman & Williams LLP, has been selected for an 11th consecutive year to the Texas Super Lawyers list.

Bissinger was recognized in the annual legal guide for his work involving complex commercial disputes. The honor is particularly significant, he said, because of Houston’s reputation, history, and culture of outstanding courtroom advocacy.

“Texas has some of the best trial lawyers in the world. It is an honor to be on this list,” he said.

Bissinger represents clients in energy and technology matters, securities and corporate fiduciary litigation, executive compensation, banking, and real estate. He has substantial first-chair jury trial and complex arbitration experience for both plaintiffs and defendants.

Earlier this year, he earned a jury verdict securing all the damages his client sought in a dispute with a commercial landlord. Also, in recent months, he has helped his clients win significant settlements in two large-scale international matters, one for a plaintiff in a wide-ranging trade secret case, and the other for the defendant in a multifaceted corporate dispute spanning three continents.

Beyond his work as an advocate, Bissinger has served as an arbitrator in multiple commercial disputes and has published articles on trial advocacy and substantive topics in commercial law.

A former chairman of the Houston Bar Association’s Securities Litigation and Arbitration Section, Bissinger is AV-rated “Preeminent” by Martindale-Hubbell, the organization’s highest peer rating for legal skills and ethics. He earned his law degree from Vanderbilt Law School, where he served as Editor in Chief of the Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law, and his undergraduate degree from the University of Iowa, where he was Phi Beta Kappa.

Texas Super Lawyers is published annually by Thomson Reuters in Texas Monthly and Super Lawyers magazines. Selection is based on a statewide survey of lawyers and extensive editorial review.

Freeborn & Peters LLP announced that Shelly A. DeRousse, a Chicago partner and co-leader of the firm’s Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Practice Group, is among the honorees of the 2019 Women, Influence & Power in Law (WIPL) Awards presented by Corporate Counsel and InsideCounsel magazines.

Formerly known as the National Women in Law Awards, the WIPL Awards honor general counsel, in-house leaders and law firm partners who have demonstrated a commitment to advancing the empowerment of women in law. According to Corporate Counsel and InsideCounsel, “These women are business strategists, complex problem-solvers, and of course, great lawyers. But what particularly makes these women stand out is their personal dedication to the promotion of diversity in the legal industry. These are women championing women.”

The honorees will be formally recognized at an awards dinner Oct. 16 as part of the Women, Influence & Power in Law Conference in Washington, D.C. Profiles of the honorees will be published in the December issue of Corporate Counsel magazine.

DeRousse is a restructuring attorney and commercial litigator and one of a handful of women in the United States to lead a bankruptcy and financial restructuring practice group at a law firm. DeRousse has experience representing official committees of unsecured creditors in middle market chapter 11 cases.

Since 2016, DeRousse has served as president of the Women’s Bar Foundation (WBF) of Illinois, a non‐profit organization that supports the advancement of women in the legal profession by raising money and awarding scholarships to women in each of the nine law schools in Illinois. During her tenure as president, the WBF has awarded hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to women law students. She also has served on the WBF board for about 15 years.

In addition, DeRousse serves as co-chair of the Breakfast Program Committee and serves on the Network of Women Committee for the Turnaround Management Association for the Midwest Region. In this role, she plans and runs events designed to create connections among professionals in turnaround management. In 2018, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and was one of six U.S. women finalists for the distinguished Chambers award for “Inspiring Role Model in Promoting Gender Diversity in the Legal Profession.” She has also been recognized by Crain’s Business Chicago on its lists of Notable Women Lawyers and Notable Gen X Leaders in Law.

At Freeborn, DeRousse is the partner chair of the firm’s Women’s Leadership Counsel, through which she organizes mentoring, educational and social programs and events for the women attorneys at the firm. She also supervises and mentors the women attorneys who belong to the Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring Practice Group and advocates for women at the firm as a whole and for policies that support women. DeRousse’s Bankruptcy and Financial Restructuring team has the highest percentage of women of all of Freeborn’s practice groups.

DeRousse received her J.D. from DePaul University College of Law and her Bachelor of Science from Illinois State University.

While law firms can and have gone bust for a multitude of reasons, the looming economic downturn will have law firms of all sizes reflecting on their future, predicts Bloomberg Law’s Meghan Tribe.

She quotes Jeffrey Lowe, head of Major, Lindsey & Africa’s law firm practice: “The lesson to take away is no matter how old you are, no matter how revered you are or how long you’ve been around, you can’t count on being around five years from now, 10 years from now, or certainly 20 years from now if you don’t adapt.”

Law firms should be “battening down the hatches” now and looking at the profitability of different practices to get a head start on dealing with issues ahead of an economic slide, Lowe advises.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

CNBC reports that Google’s YouTube will pay $170 million to settle allegations by the Federal Trade Commission and the New York attorney general that it earned millions by illegally collecting personal information from children without their parents’ consent.

The settlement passed in a 3-2 vote by the commissioners, with the two Democrats voting against it, saying it did not go far enough to punish YouTube.

“The settlement requires Google and YouTube to pay $136 million to the FTC and $34 million to New York for allegedly violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act,” according to CNBC.

FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra dissented to the settlement, saying: “This latest violation is extremely serious. The company baited children using nursery rhymes, cartoons and other kid-directed content on curated YouTube channels to feed its massively profitable behavioral advertising business.”

Read the CNBC article.

After experiencing dramatic declines in gross revenue and profitability and an exodus of lawyers in recent years, the Virginia-based legal giant LeClairRyan has filed for bankruptcy, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

The firm filed the petition Tuesday morning in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Richmond, writes Gregory J. Gilligan of the Times-Dispatch.

At its peak, the 30-year-old firm had 25 offices nationwide and almost 400 lawyers.

The firm listed between $10 million and $50 million in estimated assets and liabilities, bankruptcy court documents show.

Read the  Times-Dispatch article.

The Legal 500 United States 2019 Guide recognized nine attorneys resident in the Texas offices of global law firm Greenberg Traurig, LLP.

Those recognized are:

Christopher L. Bell (Houston) – Environmental Litigation; Environmental Regulatory
Joseph F. Coniglio (Dallas) – Healthcare: Service Providers; Healthcare: Health Insurers
Karl G. Dial (Dallas) – Dispute Resolution: Securities Litigation – Defense
William Garner (Houston) – Energy Transactions: Oil & Gas; Energy Regulation: Conventional Power
Shari L. Heyen (Houston) – Finance: Restructuring (including Bankruptcy) – Corporate
Michael L. Malone (Dallas) – Healthcare: Service Providers
Dwayne L. Mason (Houston) – Intellectual Property: Trade Secrets (Litigation and Non-Contentious Matters)
Alicia Sienne Voltmer (Dallas) – Labor and Employment: Labor – Management Relations; Disputes (including Collective Actions) – Defense; Workplace and Employment Counseling
Dale Wainwright (Austin) – Dispute Resolution: Appellate

Read more about the honors.

ContractWorks has published a guide titled “The Contracts Checklist for M&A Due Diligence” and made it available for downloading from the company’s website at no charge.

“Reviewing the contracts and commitments of a target company is one of the most time-consuming and crucial components of a due diligence inquiry,” ContractWorks says on its website. “This guide serves as a non-exhaustive checklist of important contract types to consider during the M&A due diligence process.”

The guide covers:

• Contract due diligence pre- and post-transaction
• Categories of contracts that are important to review and understand
• Tips for getting started and ensuring success

Download the checklist.

BakerHostetler announced that Daniel A. Pepper, most recently a senior legal and privacy executive with Comcast, has joined as a partner in the firm’s Privacy and Data Protection team. He will work in the firm’s Philadelphia office.

At Comcast, Pepper concurrently served as a vice president, deputy general counsel and deputy privacy officer. He was responsible for developing comprehensive global privacy and data security programs to minimize risk and promote compliance with all applicable laws and regulations in the U.S. as well as internationally. This included reviewing potential problem areas across all business units and recommending solutions for compliance with policy and legal requirements.

Prior to Comcast, Pepper was assistant general counsel for information technology, information security, and global clearance and compliance at Verizon Communications, where he served as executive legal liaison for the company’s chief information security officer, chief technology officer and chief information officer. He also was founder and managing member of the Pepper Law Group, which provided outside counsel to numerous Fortune 500 and privately held companies, advising on information technology, security and data privacy, commercial transactions, intellectual property, internet law, digital marketing/advertising, corporate governance, strategic partnerships, and IT and business process outsourcing. Pepper also held legal counsel roles at BEA Systems and Oracle Corp.

Pepper received his B.A. from Rutgers College and his J.D. from the Duquesne University School of Law. He also completed the executive leadership program at Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. Pepper holds the designation of Certified Information Privacy Professional (CIPP/US) from the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP), where he is also a board member. Pepper is also member of the Rutgers University Big Data Advisory Board.

Connie Lewis Lensing has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Nashville office as counsel in the Litigation Practice Group.

After almost 30 years of service, Lensing recently departed FedEx Express, the world’s largest express transportation company, as its senior vice president responsible for all U.S. litigation as well as leading the Environmental, Risk Management and Compliance groups within the legal department.

In a release, the firm said Lensing has experience handling litigation defense and prevention, as well as domestic employment matters. At FedEx Express, she built and led a team of more than 200 professionals. She pioneered the “in-housing” of litigation and trial responsibility for corporate legal departments and is a nationally recognized corporate legal innovator. Her FedEx Express responsibilities included all U.S. and U.S. Virgin Islands litigation, including employment, commercial, benefits, class actions, wage and hour, antitrust, government actions, and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission charges. Ms. Lensing was responsible for FedEx offices in Memphis, Tenn., and Orange County, Calif.

Lensing currently serves as vice chair of the Board of Directors and as chair of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Institute for Legal Reform, which is the Chamber’s primary policy advocacy body. She also serves as a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee and as secretary treasurer of Lawyers for Civil Justice. In addition, she is a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of the National Civil Rights Museum. Along with numerous other Bradley attorneys, Lensing is a member of the International Association of Defense Counsel (IADC), the preeminent invitation-only global legal organization for attorneys who represent corporate and insurance interests. For the IADC, she also previously served on the Board of Directors as corporate vice president, and as Dean of the IADC’s Corporate Counsel College.

A Fellow of the both the Memphis and Tennessee bar foundations and a former board member of the Memphis Bar Foundation, Lensing is a past member of the Tennessee Trial Court Vacancy Commission and a past president of the Leo Bearman, Sr. American Inn of Court. She is a past board member for the Campbell Clinic Foundation, which is devoted to community healthcare, research, and education. Additionally, she has served on the FedEx Officers’ Diversity Board and as a vice president and board member of the International Association of Women in Aviation.

Ms. Lensing is a recipient of the University of Memphis Alumni Association’s 2019 Pillars of Excellence Award. Her other past awards include the University of Arkansas 2016 Citation of Distinguished Alumni, the Women’s Law Student Association’s 2016 Gayle Pettus Pontz Award for Outstanding Woman in Law, and the Minority Counsel Association’s Employer of Choice Award. In addition, she is a five-time recipient of FedEx’s most prestigious award, the Five Star, including the CEO award, and was named to the Memphis Business Journal’s 2013 Memphis Super Women in Business.

Lensing received her J.D. from the University of Arkansas School of Law and her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Arkansas.

Miller & Chevalier Chartered announced that Paul A. Leder, former director of the Office of International Affairs (OIA) at the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), joined the firm as an of counsel in the Litigation Department.

In a release, the firm said Leder Leder led the SEC’s international enforcement and regulatory program, where he worked with senior government officials in the U.S. and throughout the world. He collaborated with foreign regulators, particularly those in Latin America, in cross-border investigations, and provided policy advice to foreign governments and organizations regarding compliance with the FCPA and other anti-bribery laws. Leder also represented the SEC in international organizations, including the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) and the Financial Stability Board.

Prior to his latest role at the SEC, Leder was a partner at Richards Kibbe & Orbe LLP where he represented clients in government investigations and advised on laws and regulations associated with international regulatory issues. Before that, Leder spent more than a decade at the SEC, starting as a trial lawyer in the Division of Enforcement in 1987, joining the Trial Unit soon after the SEC received penalty authority and co-counseling the SEC’s first jury trial. When the OIA was established two years later, Leder joined the leadership team, first serving as assistant director and later as deputy director. From 1997 to 1999, he served as senior adviser for international issues to SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt.

Leder began his legal career as a trial lawyer at the Public Defender Service (PDS) for the District of Columbia where he tried more than 25 jury trials. He is the seventh former PDS lawyer at Miller & Chevalier, including Litigation Department Chair Andrew Wise.

Leder earned his J.D., cum laude, from the University of Michigan Law School, and his B.A., magna cum laude, from the University of Michigan. He is currently a Senior Fellow in the Milken Global Market Development Practice.

Hughes Hubbard & Reed LLP announced that Nicolas Tollet has been elected a partner in the firm’s Anti-Corruption & Internal Investigations practice.

The firm said He joined the firm as counsel in December 2016 from Technip, where he served as vice president of group compliance, and was based in Paris and Rio de Janeiro. Tollet’s practice focuses on internal investigations and compliance, with particular focus on anticorruption and anti-money laundering.

Tollet has experience in compliance, including navigating monitorships, conducting internal and external investigations, establishing compliance programs and conducting third-party due diligence, the firm said. He has experience with anti-corruption and anti-money laundering legislations and has worked on several of the largest transnational corruption cases in the world.

Tollet is involved in the international compliance community. He regularly publishes articles on compliance, speaks at international conferences, and lectures on anti-corruption. In 2017, he was among 37 professionals selected by Global Investigations Review as the leading in-house professionals worldwide for internal investigations, and he is ranked Tier 1 by Legal 500 and identified as a Next Generation Lawyer.

He is admitted to practice in New York, Paris and the U.S. Supreme Court.

Linc Finkenberg has joined Perkins Coie’s Financial Transactions practice and Fintech industry group as a partner in the New York office. Finkenberg joins Perkins Coie from BNY Mellon, where he served as associate general counsel and managing director and led a global team of more than 30 lawyers and 100 transaction managers.

In a release, the firm said Finkenberg most recently served as BNY Mellon’s global practice head for Corporate Trust, where he advised on significant financial deals including the transition of a global bank’s government securities clearing business. He managed BNY Mellon’s legal teams, supervising depositary receipts, treasury, broker-dealer services and government clearing services, and was also integral to high-profile litigation and risk mitigation restructuring, as well as leading the formation and acquisition of overseas trust banks across Latin America, Europe and Asia.

Finkenberg received his J.D. from the New York University School of Law and his B.S. in accounting and finance from Baruch College (City University of New York).