The U.S. International Trade Commission has unanimously affirmed that PMP Fermentation Products, Inc. was materially injured by unfairly traded sodium gluconate, gluconic acid, and derivative imports from China.

Barnes & Thornburg represented PMP before the commission.

Inn a release, the firm said the final USITC decision of Oct. 16 followed the U.S. Department of Commerce’s imposition of two sets of tariffs, antidumping and countervailing duties totaling over 408 percent on Chinese sodium gluconate products after it was determined they were subsidized and sold in the U.S. market at less than fair value. These tariffs were imposed to protect PMP from unfair Chinese trade and were in response to a petition prosecuted by Barnes & Thornburg.

“We’re delighted the USITC found that PMP was injured by reason of chronically low-priced Chinese imports underselling U.S. products,” said David Spooner of Barnes & Thornburg. “We expect this decision will help level the playing field for the U.S. manufacturer, PMP.”

The Barnes & Thornburg team representing PMP consisted of Spooner, Christine Sohar Henter and Nicholas Galbraith in the firm’s Washington, D.C., office, and Mari Yamamoto Regnier in Chicago.

A New York appeals court has suspended a Suffolk County lawyer for three months for “inexcusable” criticism about courts hearing two of his cases, reports the ABA Journal.

The court rejected a referee’s recommendation for a public censure and suspended lawyer Gino Giorgini for three months.

An example of his comments to a judge include:

“THIS IS LA LA LAND ON STEROIDS. … I CAN NOT COMPREHEND THE #%%#$^% THAT IS THIS DECISION. … This is so bizzaro land that it is hard to type. What is even more pathetic is the case I cited (citation omitted) has been ignored.”

Read the ABA Journal article.

The National Transportation Safety Board is well known for its sleuthing on plane crashes. However, oil and gas executives often need better education about how the agency tackles one of its other responsibilities—investigating pipeline accidents, advise attorneys with the national law firm LeClairRyan.

The catastrophic gas explosions that destroyed dozens of homes in Massachusetts this month have called attention to the NTSB’s role in investigating such incidents, noted Mark A. Dombroff, an Alexandria-based member of LeClairRyan and co-leader of its Transportation Industry practice. “Most, but not all, in the pipeline business are aware that something like this will immediately trigger a federally mandated and led investigation,” he said. “But their counterparts in aviation tend to be far better prepared to contend with the highly specific—and high-stakes—investigative process relied upon by NTSB.”

Read the article.

A former Foley & Lardner partner was suspended two years by the state Supreme Court for lying to the IRS during an audit of two wealthy estates connected to a major area business, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

“The firm fired Adam Wiensch, 55, in 2016 when it learned he had falsified documents related to the transfer of wealth from the owners of Carma Laboratories to their children, a move that attempted to save the family millions in taxes,” writes the Journal Sentinel‘s Bruce Vielmetti.

The court’s opinion recounts Wiensch’s earlier testimony that he had been facing “several highly disruptive and personal” issues at the time of his offenses, and was dealing with depression and alcoholism.

Read the Journal Sentinel article.

As extreme weather becomes more commonplace, agricultural and livestock operations are increasingly facing civil and criminal enforcement and regulatory crackdowns for water runoff contamination caused by events beyond their control. Across the country, ag operations and feedlots have been the focus of a growing number of enforcement actions, including those filed by state attorneys general. Often there are large civil monetary penalties, according to a post on the website of Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

“In many cases, small ag operations can be compliant with regulations before a historic flooding event and still face financial penalties that push family-owned businesses to the brink of bankruptcy or worse,” said attorney Chris Carrington of Denver-based Richards Carrington, who advises farm and ranch owners in legal and regulatory proceedings.

“More and more, governmental entities are under community and political pressure to take action, and that’s often at the expense of due process and fairness. It’s important for these businesses to know and appreciate the law and the forces at play before a catastrophic event occurs.” Carrington is addressing these topics in a series of presentations to the Colorado livestock and agriculture industries.

The Associated Press reports that Florida’s next governor and not incumbent Gov. Rick Scott will get to pick three new justices to the state Supreme Court, the court ruled in a decision with major implications in this year’s gubernatorial campaign.

“In a major rebuke to Scott, the Supreme Court concluded that the Republican governor exceeded his authority when he started the process to find replacements for the three justices,” the AP reports.

Because of age limits of 70, three justices must retire at midnight Jan. 8, the same day Scott is scheduled to leave the governor’s office. Scott, claiming he had authority to name the replacements, last month asked a nominating commission to start accepting applications with a Nov. 10 deadline.

Read the AP article.

Jeff Sessions

President Donald Trump believes Attorney General Jeff Sessions will likely leave his Cabinet at the end of the year, and so far has five potential replacements in mind who could take his place, reports Business Insider.

“Possible successors include retired federal appeals judge Janice Rogers Brown, transportation department counsel Steven Bradbury, Health and Human Services secretary Alex Azar, deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan, and Bill Barr, who served as attorney general under President George H.W. Bush,” according to the article, based on a Wall Street Journal report.

The Washington Post also reported that President Trump talked recently with Sessions’ own chief of staff, Matthew G. Whitaker,  about replacing Sessions as AG, according to people briefed on the conversation, signaling that the president remains keenly interested in ousting his top law enforcement official.

Read the Business Insider article.

Bloomberg Law reports that the U.S. Senate has confirmed Eric Dreiband, a Jones Day attorney who defends companies accused of discrimination, to lead the Justice Department office that enforces anti-bias laws and investigates police civil rights cases.

“Dreiband represented the University of North Carolina when it implemented policies under the state’s since-repealed ‘bathroom bill,’ requiring people to use gender-designated restroom facilities based on the biological sex listed on their birth certificates,” writes Bloomberg’s Chris Opfer. “He also won a case for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco that made it harder for workers to sue for age discrimination under federal law.”

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Image by Håkan Dahlström Photography

Housing Wire is reporting that HSBC will pay $765 million to the federal government as part of a settlement that covers the bank’s mortgage bond activities in the run-up to the housing crisis.

An announcement from the U.S. Department of Justice outlines the resolution of an investigation into the bank’s mortgage origination and securitization activities from 2005 to 2007, according to editor Ben Lane.

While previous HSBC statements on the case didn’t disclose the conduct in question, the DOJ’s announcement alleged the bank allegedly knew it was putting toxic loans into residential mortgage-backed securities and sold the bonds anyway, Lane explains.

Read the HousingWire article.

Image by Steve Jurvetson

Of the all fixes the SEC wants Tesla Inc. to make in the wake of Elon Musk’s now-infamous tweet, one stands out for its novelty: “An experienced securities lawyer” to review all social media communications by the company’s senior officers, reports Bloomberg Law.

“In resolving its fraud claims against Tesla and Musk, the Securities and Exchange Commission specified in the fine print of its settlement proposal that the lawyer hired or designated to vet tweets must have qualifications that’“are not unacceptable to the staff,’” writes reporter Peter Blumberg.

The head of the legal department now is a lawyer who represented Musk through two divorces, Todd Maron.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

The law firm that spent nine years fighting and winning health care for veterans subjected to government-administered human testing of chemicals including sarin, mustard gas, and LSD was awarded $3.4 million in fees, a small fraction of the value of the hours the firm said it put into the case.

Bloomberg Law reports that Morrison & Foerster LLP accepted a fee award from the U.S. Army that’s $16 million less than the fee the firm could have sought.

“The fee award is the latest and nearly last chapter in the litigation by soldiers subjected to the government’s decades-long human testing program who were seeking recognition and health care above what they could get at the Veterans Administration for injuries they suffered,” writes Bloomberg’s Joyce Cutler.

Read the Bloomberg Law article.

Legal experts say the penalties that the SEC doled out to Elon Musk for  “false and misleading” statements made on Twitter could have been much, much worse for Musk and his car company, reports Wired.

Reporter Aarian Marshall writes that “Musk and Tesla will have to each write $20 million checks for the misadventure, which will be disbursed to investors harmed during the wild market swings that occurred after Musk’s tweets.” Musk had tweeted that he planned to take Tesla private and funding had been secured.

“Not settling with the SEC could have led to a more dire outcome,” Marshall explains. “The SEC’s initial suit sought to bar the CEO from becoming an officer or director for any public company, perhaps for life.”

Read the Wired article.

The ABA Journal reports that A Florida lawyer defrauded, deceived and embezzled funds from two mentally disabled clients who were declared innocent after spending 31 years in prison, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by the North Carolina State Bar.

“Henry McCollum and his half-brother, Leon Brown, were exonerated in 2014 after serving decades in prison for the notorious rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl. They received $750,000 each from the state in compensation,” writes Joseph Neff for the Marshall Project.

Orlando lawyer Patrick Megaro took excessive fees when he pocketed a third of the awards despite having done virtually no work on their exonerations or compensation cases, the state bar alleges.

Read the ABA Journal article.

The Washington Post reports on a meeting of the country’s top federal and state law enforcement officials on Tuesday that could presage sweeping new investigations of Amazon, Facebook, Google and their tech industry peers.

Participants voiced lingering frustrations that these companies are too big, fail to safeguard users’ private data and don’t cooperate with legal demands.

“Attorney General Jeff Sessions opened the meeting by raising questions of possible ideological bias among the tech companies and sought to bring the conversation back to that topic at least twice more, according to D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine,” according to reporters Brian Fung and Tony Romm.

But other participants steered the conversation toward the privacy practices of Silicon Valley.

Read the Washington Post article.

Six of the seven members of the Arkansas Supreme Court were formally charged Thursday with violating the state’s judicial canons, an unprecedented action that stemmed from a complaint filed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Wendell Griffen, reports the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The Arkansas Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission accused the justices of failing to provide sufficient chance for Griffen to defend himself as they weighed whether to remove him from all cases involving the death penalty. Griffen’s subsequent removal stemmed from his participation in a public protest against executions.

“Griffen attracted a whirlwind of attention in April 2017, when he issued an order that temporarily halted the state’s plans to carry out executions, and that same day he participated in a public protest against the death penalty,” writes reporter John Moritz. “The protest was held in front of the Governor’s Mansion.”

Read the Democrat-Gazette article.

A federal grand jury has indicted three men for what officials describe as a $364 million Ponzi scheme to defraud investors, reports The Dallas Morning News.

Jay B. Ledford and Cameron R. Jezierski of Texas, along with Kevin B. Merrill of Maryland, raised money from investors who thought they were buying into cheap portfolios of consumer debt on credit cards and student and auto loans, investigators from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Securities and Exchange Commission said.

“The defendants lured investors through an elaborate web of lies, duping them into paying millions of dollars into this Ponzi scheme,” said U.S. Attorney Robert K. Hur in a statement.

The report by Lison Joseph says the trio spent more than $73 million of investors’ money at casinos and to buy diamond jewelry and luxury cars including Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Bentleys and Bugattis.

Read the Dallas News article.

Patrick R. Quigley has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP’s Washington, D.C. office as counsel in the Government Contracts Practice Group.

“We are pleased to welcome Patrick to Bradley in our D.C. office,” said Bradley Washington, D.C., Office Managing Partner Douglas L. Patin. “Patrick brings deep experience in government contracts work, as well as past government service, which will be greatly beneficial to our clients.”

Quigley focuses his practice on litigating bid protests, contract claims, prime/subcontractor disputes, and small business size protests/appeals at the Government Accountability Office, U.S. Court of Federal Claims, boards of contract appeals, and U.S. Small Business Administration, as well as at other federal agencies and in state courts. He conducts internal investigations and defends clients in False Claims Act litigation, government investigations, and suspension and debarment actions.

Most recently, Quigley was an attorney with Arent Fox LLP in Washington, D.C.

Prior to his law career, Quigley served for 16 years with the U.S. Department of State, first as a special agent in the Diplomatic Security Service, and then as a foreign service officer. During his government service, he was assigned to Somalia, El Salvador, Colombia, Peru, India, and Washington, D.C.

Quigley received his J.D. (cum laude) from George Mason University School of Law and his Bachelor of Arts from Emory University.

Image by Mike Mozart

Reuters is reporting that Citigroup Inc. on Friday was ordered to pay more than $12 million by U.S. regulators after it was found that the bank’s investment banking and financial advisory unit misled users of a “dark pool” operated by one of its affiliates.

The article explains:

The bank will pay a penalty of $6.5 million and disgorgement and prejudgment interest totaling $5.4 million, while its affiliate, Citi Order Routing and Execution (CORE), will pay a penalty of $1 million, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said in a statement.

Read the Reuters article.

Rebecca “Becky” Wood, former chief counsel to the Food and Drug Administration, has rejoined Sidley Austin LLP as a partner.

The firm announced Wood will co-lead both the firm’s Food, Drug, and Medical Device Regulatory practice and its FDA group in Washington with partner Coleen Klasmeier.

Wood previously served as Chief Counsel to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Associate General Counsel in the Office of the General Counsel, Department of Health & Human Services. She will focus her practice on providing counsel on a wide range of contentious and non-contentious FDA regulatory and litigation issues to clients in the life sciences industry and private equity firms investing in the area.

In her role as Chief Counsel to the FDA, Wood served on Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s leadership team. She was the principal legal advisor on major initiatives, including efforts to streamline the drug and device development and approval process, modernize the agency’s regulatory framework, combat addiction to opioids and nicotine, enhance the product safety and labeling of food and medical products, and address drug pricing. She served as a liaison to the Department of Justice and the White House and advised agency leadership on legislative matters. She also focused on First Amendment and preemption issues.

“We are delighted that Becky is rejoining us,” said Klasmeier. “Regulatory insight is at the core of our life sciences practice. Based on both her long experience in the industry and her role as the lead legal advisor to the FDA during a transformational period, Becky will enhance our ability to offer deep strategic insight into the complex regulatory issues facing our clients and to defend our clients’ conduct when challenged. Becky’s perspective on the rapidly changing regulatory environment is unique.”

Prior to joining the FDA in 2017, Wood served as a partner at Sidley for more than a decade. She focused her practice on district court and appellate litigation arising under the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act and the United States Constitution, including managing class actions and multi-plaintiff cases. Earlier in her career, she served as a law clerk to Judge Pasco M. Bowman II of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

“Becky is an extraordinarily accomplished litigator,” said Mark Hopson, global co-chair of Sidley’s litigation practice and managing partner of the Washington, D.C. office. “The intersection of her premier regulatory and litigation practices will greatly bolster the firm’s capabilities to help clients across a wide spectrum of legal areas.”

A biotechnology billionaire faces charges from the Securities and Exchange Commission of being part of pump-and-dump schemes that netted $27 million and left retail investors holding the bag, reports MedCity News.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court in New York, the SEC alleged OPKO Health chairman and CEO Phillip Frost took part in three pump-and-dump schemes between 2013 and 2018.

Reporter Alaric Dearment explains that the complaint alleges that Frost was involved in schemes to promote the stock of some companies on the crowd-sourced investment content site Seeking Alpha, on which articles would appear promoting their shares and touting Frost’s involvement in the companies. After the stock prices were pumped up, the defendants would sell it off, the SEC alleges.

Read the MedCity article.