Virginia Lieutenant Governor Justin Fairfax — accused by two women of sexual assault — faces more than just official scrutiny over the allegations; because he’s a partner in Morrison & Foerster, he’s under investigation by his firm, too.

CNN reports:

“Amid the allegations, Fairfax’s law firm told employees he is taking a leave of absence, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN. The memo states the firm of Morrison & Foerster, of which Fairfax is a partner, has retained outside counsel to conduct an investigation. ‘Justin has agreed to cooperate with the firm’s investigation,’ the memo states.”

Above the Law reports that Fairfax hired Beth Wilkinson of Wilkinson Walsh + Eskovitz after the first allegations of sexual assault surfaced.

The ABA Journal reports that an Illinois ethics complaint alleges that a Chicago civil rights lawyer falsely claimed he and a nonexistent son had stomach cancer in a series of false statements that began when he applied to the University of Chicago Law School.

The complaint alleges that Vincenzo Field made his fake cancer claims to courts as well as the law school. He is also accused of lying to his former firm, Loevy & Loevy, about securing an expert witness who was supposedly unable to work because his daughter was hit by a car, according to the Journal‘s Debra Cassens Weiss.

The tumor-surgery excuse cropped up in two separate cases, in 2013 and 2015, when he asked for discovery extensions.

Read the ABA Journal article.

The National Association of Corporate Directors has published an article discussing new perspectives on how a board of directors can expand the role of the general counsel and benefit from the expertise and solutions the GC can bring to the various functions of corporate governance.

The article can be downloaded from the NACD website at no charge.

The publication explains how a more participatory approach with the general counsel not only strengthens company leadership, but also reduces overall enterprise risk.

The article features an interview with ManpowerGroup director Cari Dominguez and ManpowerGroup’s senior vice president and chief legal officer Richard Buchband. It rovides insight into the various ways a board and the GC can enhance each other.

Download the article.

Hunton Andrews Kurth attorneys won’t be disqualified from an insurance law case where they received 10 inadvertently produced, privileged documents, a Florida district court ruled recently, according to Bloomberg Law.

But the judge had harsh words for both parties, reports Bloomberg’s Melissa Heelan Stanzione:

“The facts underlying this disqualification motion establish that, unfortunately, lawyers on both sides of the litigation acted poorly,” Magistrate Judge William Matthewman said, adding that the attorneys’ conduct didn’t help their clients and was “downright unproductive and silly.”

The motion was the result of defendant’s attorneys mistakenly producing some documents that appeared to be attorney-client privileged between the defendant and its attorneys. The defendant’s counsel filed a disqualification motion against Hunton Andrews over the documents.

The magistrate judge said the defendant and its counsel took reasonable steps to prevent disclosure and to rectify the error. But the court concluded that Hunton Andrews disqualification was not justified.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Bloomberg is reporting that Jeff Bezos’s allegations that he was blackmailed by American Media Inc. could upend the non-prosecution agreement the publisher of the National Enquirer struck last year with federal prosecutors in New York over its illegal aid to the Trump campaign.

Bloomberg’s Edvard Pettersson explains:

“Under the Sept. 20 agreement, the tabloid publisher was supposed to refrain from all illegal activity for a three-year period. The agreement says that if New York-based AMI commits any crime, it can be prosecuted for the ones it was granted immunity against, including perjury and obstruction of justice.”

Robert Schwartz, an attorney with Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan LLP in Los Angeles, said AMI may claim that the emails are between lawyers who are trying to resolve a dispute.

Read the Bloomberg article.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected a class action seeking to hold National Football League teams liable for conspiring to push painkillers on hurt athletes to get them back on the field, finding the claims time-barred, reports Courthouse News Service.

Reporter Nicholas Iovino writes that the players failed to explain adequately why they lacked the essential knowledge to file their lawsuit within the four-year statute of limitations.

“In this case, plaintiffs knew of their injury – that their careers had been ‘cut short’ – as soon as their careers ended due to physical injuries,” the panel wrote.

Read the Courthouse News Service article.

The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the “take first, pay later” approach to building the Mountain Valley Pipeline, in which the company condemned private property in the project’s path before paying opposing landowners for their losses, reports The Roanoke Times.

Reporter Laurence Hammack writes that the ruling was a blow to pipeline foes, who have long decried the use of eminent domain to take parts of family farms and rural homeplaces to make way for a 303-mile natural gas pipeline through West Virginia and Virginia.

Landowners did not contest the laws that allowed the pipeline company to obtain forced easements through nearly 300 parcels in Southwest Virginia, but they objected to a lower-court ruling granting immediate possession of the disputed land before deciding how much each property owner should be compensated, Hammack explains.

Read the article.

Gregory J. Reigel asks and answers the question: Can you really limit your liability simply by including certain language in your agreements?

He finds the answer in a recent Texas Supreme Court ruling in Bombardier Aerospace Corp. v. SPEP Aircraft Holdings, LLC.  In that case, plaintiff aircraft purchasers sued Bombardier, alleging that the engines installed on the plane they bought were not new equipment. A jury found in favor of the plaintiffs and awarded $2.7 million in actual damages and $5.4 million in punitives.

On appeal, Bombardier relied on a limitation of liability clause in the purchase agreement. The state Supreme Court ruling shows that “where sophisticated parties have bargained for a limitation of liability clause in an arms-length transaction, courts are likely going to enforce that clause to limit the damages that may be recovered,” Reigel writes.

Read the article.

Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton has compiled a structured guide to outsourcing contracts in the United States. The guide is available on Lexology.com.

The guide covers the various types of contract forms for outsourcing arrangements, due diligence, customer base, business requirements, HR issues, third-party contracts, duration and renewal, supplier selection, service specifications, charging methods, warranties and indemnities, and ending the agreement.

Authors of the article are James Steinberg, Joshua M. Benson, Farah F. Cook, Joshua S. Ganz, Julie C. Grundman, Maha Khalaj, Lance McCord, Michelle Tyde, Amanda M. Witt and Vita Zeltser.

Read the article.

A recent Texas court decision highlights the requirement that any covenants not to compete, including geographic restrictions, must be reasonable to be enforceable, according to a report on the Ogletree Deakins website.

Lawrence D. Smith writes about Fomine v. Barrett, which involved a non-compete agreement for a case manager in a chiropractic clinic. The agreement prohibited the employee from being involved in any competitive business within a 500-mile radius of the employer’s clinic.

The Houston appellate court found the 500-mile radius to be “significantly broader than the geographic scope” of the former employee’s actual employment activities on behalf of the clinic. It is therefore “broader than is reasonably necessary” to protect the employer’s business interests.

Read the article.

Kurt Ehresman, 52-year-old former senior counsel for global intellectual property at Hershey Co., has sued his ex-employer, claiming he was replaced with a younger, black, female lawyer in a case of race, age and sex bias.

Ehresman, who is white, filed suit Feb. 6 with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, according to a Bloomberg Law report.

Bloomberg’s Patrick Dorrian writes:

“The move came roughly five years after Hershey recruited him to be ‘the first licensed practice attorney’ in the candymaker’s more than 100-year history, Ehresman charges in the complaint. And it required him to give up his ‘entire portfolio of clients’ and private practice as a condition of joining Hershey, Ehresman says.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The ABA Journal reports that a disbarred Georgia attorney facing 15 years in jail for defrauding clients out of their settlement checks remains on the run after police suspect that he stabbed his 77-year-old mother to death over the weekend.

“Richard Merritt, a former personal injury and medical malpractice lawyer from Smyrna, Georgia, was ordered to report to the Cobb County Jail on Friday after pleading guilty in January to more than 30 counts of felony, including theft, forgery and elder-exploitation charges related to crimes committed against 17 former clients.” writes the Journal‘s Amanda Robert.

Merritt had been free “to get his affairs in order,” according to a local TV station.

Read the ABA Journal article.

Bob Young, fired last week as Michigan State University’s general counsel, will receive at least $990,402 in departing the university, school spokeswoman Emily Guerrant said Wednesday.

The Detroit Free Press reports that Young, the university’s top lawyer, had a three-year contract that paid $425,000 a year in salary. The lump sum paid off the balance of the contract.

“Young had been brought in by interim President John Engler to guide the school’s legal strategy as it dealt with the fallout from the Larry Nassar sexual assaults scandal, including hundreds of lawsuits filed by victims of the former MSU doctor. The first round of those suits ended in a $500-million settlement,” according to Free Press reporter David Jesse.

Read the Free Press article.

A host of online tools are available to keep law firm marketing projects organized, automate social media posts and newsletters, and just generally make life easier and more productive, advises Amy Boardman Hunt of Muse Communications.

“If you’re looking to juice up your online presence, these tools can help save time and create a clean, professional look in all your marketing efforts. And best of all, they’re all free or very inexpensive, meaning you can easily fit them into your marketing budget,” she writes.

Some of those tools include spreadsheets, email service providers, social media management, project management, and photo sources.

Read the article.

Boyd Collar Nolen Tuggle & Roddenbery announced that eight of its attorneys have been recognized by Super Lawyers for 2019 in the area of family law.

Founding shareholders Robert D. Boyd, John L. Collar Jr., Richard M. Nolen and Jonathan J. Tuggle, shareholder Tina Shadix Roddenbery, partners Katie Kiihnl Leonard and Kimberli C. Withrow, and associate Caitlyn M. Lindsey-Hood are named among Georgia Super Lawyers.

Additionally, Boyd and Tuggle were recognized among the Top 100 List of all Georgia Super Lawyers, and Roddenbery was among the Top 50 Females..

Attorneys Boyd, Collar and Nolen have been ranked by Georgia Super Lawyers for 16 consecutive years; Roddenbery has been named a Super Lawyer for 14 consecutive years; Tuggle has been recognized eight times by the publication; Leonard has been named a Rising Star for six consecutive years; and Withrow has been recognized for three consecutive years.

Super Lawyers, part of Thomson Reuters, is a rating service of lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high degree of peer recognition and professional achievement. Only five percent of lawyers in Georgia are selected as Super Lawyers.

Selections for Super Lawyers are made through a rigorous process entailing independent attorney-led research, evaluations and peer evaluations. Each candidate is evaluated on 12 indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement, including verdicts/settlements, transactions, special licenses and pro bono service.

Exterro will present a complimentary webinar examining how legal professionals are using O365 in tandem with their own e-discovery software to create a streamlined, comprehensive e-discovery program.

The online event will be Wednesday, Feb. 20, at 1 p.m. Eastern time (10 a.m. Pacific time).

Participants will learn:

• How in-house legal professionals are incorporating O365 into their e-discovery process
• Best practices for leveraging O365’s e-discovery capabilities to secure and search documents without collection
• Practical considerations to remember when incorporating O365 into your broader e-discovery process

Register for the webinar.

A 24-year-old Fort Worth electrician is yet another victim of an exploding vape pen or e-cigarette, and in this case it was fatal. Sitting in a parked car on Jan. 27, the young man died after a piece of the exploding pen severed his carotid artery, according to a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

According to a study published by Tobacco Control, more than 2,000 vape pen explosions and burn injuries occurred in the U.S. between 2015-17.

“If these dangerous explosions and fires are shown to be the result of an inherent design defect that could have been avoided, the companies that designed these products may have significant legal exposure,” says attorney Joel Simon, who focuses on personal injury litigation at Houston-based Fernelius Simon Mace Robertson Perdue, PLLC.

“Moreover, if these companies knew that the interaction of the vape pen’s body and battery posed a significant safety risk, but they did nothing, they could face allegations of gross neglect, which could lead to punitive damages.”

E-cigarettes rely on lithium-ion batteries to operate, but officials are advising users to be aware of the volatile nature of these batteries, according to the Androvett website.

Harvey Brown, a former state appeals court judge and former state district court judge in Harris County, has joined The Lanier Law Firm.

Brown served on the First Court of Appeals bench from 2010-2018. During his tenure, he was named Appellate Judge of the Year by the Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists and Mentor of the Year by the Houston Young Lawyers Association and the Texas Young Lawyers Association. He authored more than 1,000 opinions on the court. Brown also served as a member of the Multidistrict Litigation panel for Texas since 2014.

Brown previously presided over the 152nd District Court in Harris County for more than six years, heard more than 150 jury trials and 200 bench trials, and served as the chair of a panel that administered diet drug product liability litigation in Harris County.

Before his judicial service he was in private practice for more than 20 years, handling both trials and appeals. He was also appointed as a special master in a case and also frequently retained as an arbitrator and mediator.

“Judge Brown will offer a wealth of expertise and insights for our clients in litigation, and we will rely on his vast experience in appellate matters,” said Mark Lanier. “He obviously had a number of opportunities and firms where he could resume his practice, and we’re very gratified he chose us.”

Lanier noted that Brown will also handle trial work and appeals for his own clients as well as having a mediation and arbitration practice.

“Mark Lanier tried a case before me when I was a district judge and he and this firm’s lawyers are well known for their trial skills and innovative approach to presenting evidence and trying cases,” said Brown. “He is a fantastic trial lawyer. I’m excited to have this opportunity to be associated with such a dynamic team as I return to private practice.”

Brown is Board Certified in Personal Injury Law by the Texas Board of Legal Specialization. He is a member of the American Law Institute, the Texas Supreme Court Advisory Committee, the Texas State Bar College, the Texas Center for Legal Ethics, the Garland Walker American Inn of Court, and the Texas Association of Civil Trial and Appellate Specialists. He is also a life member of the Texas Bar Foundation and the Houston Bar Foundation.

A native Texan, Brown earned his undergraduate degree from The University of Texas in 1978, graduating with high honors and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his law degree, with honors, from The University of Texas School of Law in 1981 and was a member of the Texas Law Review and the Order of the Coif. Judge Brown is also an award-winning author, having authored six law review articles.

David Wiese has joined Quarles & Brady LLP’s Business Law Group as a partner in its Washington, D.C. office.

Wiese’s practice covers franchise law, advertising and marketing law, commercial contracting, and regulatory and compliance issues related to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and various state unfair and deceptive acts and practices statutes.

Wiese focuses on sales, distribution and marketing matters with an emphasis on the transportation and retail industries. He regularly advises clients on motor vehicle dealer and franchise-related matters, including relocations, ownership changes, succession issues, open points, sales, exclusivity and site control issues, and performance improvement programs.

“In addition to providing smart, sophisticated legal counsel, David is a savvy business advisor who often helps clients with complicated distribution network strategies and plans, including dealer-related issues that companies face when entering new industries and developing new brands,” said Nikia Gray, Washington, D.C. Office Managing Partner. “We’re excited to welcome him to the firm.”

Prior to Quarles & Brady, Wiese worked as in-house counsel for General Motors and Volkswagen Group of America, Inc., as well as a senior attorney at the FTC. He received his J.D. and M.A. from the University of Iowa, and his B.S. from the University of Illinois.

Steve Israel, a former eight-term congressman and member of the Democratic leadership in the U.S. House of Representatives, has joined Michael Best Strategies LLC as a member of its Board of Advisors.

Israel, who represented Long Island in Congress from 2001-2017, chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), the Democratic Policy and Communications Committee and the House Democratic Caucus Task Force on Defense and Military. He co-chaired the House Democratic Study Group on National Security Policy and served on a variety of committees and subcommittees.

“As a veteran legislator, Steve was the chief architect of numerous House campaign strategies,” said Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Board of Advisors at Michael Best Strategies LLC. “He has developed a vast network of local, state and federal officials throughout the nation on both sides of the aisle. He is highly respected in Washington, and he will be a considerable addition to our group of other former government and public policy professionals.”

As a member on the Michael Best Strategies’ Board of Advisors, Israel will provide advice to the Strategies team and collaborate with the Michael Best law firm on personnel, business development, and policy issues. He will facilitate business development and key networking arrangements with members from various corporate and government entities.

“Steve’s years of experience in Washington and the strong relationships he forged on the Hill make him a great addition to Michael Best,” said Rob Marchant, President of Strategies. “Given the ever-shifting political landscape, perspective like Steve’s is invaluable, and will be a major asset as we continue to provide clients with the highest level of bipartisan service in navigating a range of international and domestic policy issues.”

“Michael Best Strategies is making a name for itself as a top-tier government relations and public affairs consulting firm in the Beltway,” Israel said. “I am honored to become a board member as I’ve known and worked alongside many individuals at the firm during my time in public office. I believe the company’s strong client service is setting a new bar in the industry and I’m proud to be a part of that collaborative and purposeful environment.”

Israel was recently appointed director of the new Institute of Politics and Global Affairs at Cornell University, which will serve as a platform to promote understanding of volatile and complex political dynamics in the United States and around the world. Israel also serves on the boards of Long Island University, the Truman National Security Project, the Theodore Roosevelt Association, the American Battlefield Trust, the Council for a Secure America and Haiti Air Ambulance. He has also authored two books, “The Global War on Morris” and “Big Guns,” and is a regular political commentator and columnist in The New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, 60 Minutes, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, FoxNews, and MSNBC.

Israel earned his B.A. from George Washington University.