The Federal Trade Commission, in its first public remarks since a federal judge last week entered a $1.3 billion judgment against payday loan businessman Scott Tucker, called the penalty the largest of its kind, reports The Kansas City Star.

The judgment against Tucker and related entities eclipses the FTC’s previous record judgment from litigation: a $478 million judgment in 2012 ($501.4 million, when adjusted for inflation) against John Beck, the perpetrator of a deceptive real estate get-rich-quick scheme, according to reporter Steve Vockrodt.

U.S. District Court Judge Gloria Navarro last week entered a $1.3 billion judgment against Tucker and others to wrap up a case brought by the FTC in 2012.

“The FTC tracked and sued Tucker, his brother Blaine Tucker and several corporations under their control on claims that they extended loans that deceived consumers about the true cost of their credit,” Vockrodt explains. “For example, the FTC said that $300 loans extended by Tucker’s companies cost $390, at a 30 percent interest rate. In reality, through deceptive loan terms and automatic loan renewals, the FTC said many consumers ended up paying nearly $1,000.”

Read the article.

A federal judge has ruled that closure of Orlando-based Butler & Hosch law firm was illegal because executives knew it would close and didn’t warn employees in accordance with federal law, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

When the firm closed in 2015, about 700 employees in Dallas, Orlando, Miami, Tampa and other locations were told in a conference call that they would not be paid for their final three weeks at work, writes reporter Paul Brinkmann. Law requires 60-day notice of mass layoffs, but employees were told of the plan on the last day.

“If the company were still functioning, the law says it could be required to pay wages and benefits for 60 days to each employee, plus a fine totaling about $21 million — $500 per day per employee,” according to Brinkmann.  But now that claim becomes part of the firm’s bankruptcy process.

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Reuters is reporting that U.S. regulations, proposed by the Treasury to crack down on companies that try to reduce taxes by rebasing abroad, have begun a White House review and could be finalized shortly.

The regulations would make it difficult for U.S. business operations to avoid taxation while shifting profits overseas through a practice called “earnings stripping.”

The White House Office of Management and Budget regulations received the proposed regulations last week and now has up to 90 days to decide whether the rules should be finalized or returned to Treasury for further consideration, reports Reuters’ David Morgan.

“The Obama administration has faced widespread criticism from the business community over its regulatory assault on tax inversions, which are tax-driven mergers in which a U.S. company acquires a smaller, foreign business in a low-tax country and shifts its headquarters there, if only on paper, to avoid higher U.S. taxes,” according to the report.

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Kirkland & Ellis LLP represented Sithe Global Power, an affiliate of the Blackstone Group, in the $1.2 billion sale of its interests in GN Power Mariveles Coal Plant Ltd. Co.  and GNPower Dinginin Ltd. Co.  to Aboitiz Power Corp., through its subsidiary Therma Power Inc.

GMCP is a 604 MW coal-fired power plant that has been operational since 2014 and GNPD is a new 2 x 668 MW facility under construction. Both facilities are in Bataan, Philippines. The sale is subject to customary regulatory approvals and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2016. The full release is available here.

The Kirkland team was led by corporate partners Andrew Calder, Rhett Van Syoc and Kfir Abutbul and associates David Thompson, Ahmed Sidik, Sanjay Bapat and John Montgomery; and included tax partners Thomas Evans and Polina Liberman; antitrust partners Sally Southwell and Sarah Jordan and associate James Parkinson; environmental transactions partner Paul Tanaka and associate Michael Saretsky; and debt finance partner Andres Mena and associate Duncan McKay.

If the goal of compensation clawbacks is to keep corporate executives honest, then they aren’t doing the job, according to a report by The New York Times.

As evidence, writer Gretchen Morgenson points to recent action by Wells Fargo’s board. The bank’s directors acted on Tuesday to recover $60 million in stock grants from two top executives after a phony-account-opening scandal rocked the company and its executives. But the move came almost three years after the improprieties came to light.

There are several reasons givebacks are rare, Morgenson reports: “One is that corporations limit the scope of their recovery policies. For example, the policies are written to cover only a portion of an executive’s pay.”

“Clawbacks extending to all types of compensation are uncommon,” James F. Reda, managing director of executive compensation consulting at Arthur J. Gallagher & Company, told the reporter. “They typically only apply to the cash portion and only to the top executives.”

Read the article.

When a client wants to pursue a lawsuit or arbitration, one of the first things an attorney should do is determine whether the statute of limitations has run on the client’s claim, advise Darren Rowles and Scott Cahalan in a post for  Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP’s Construction Law blog.

“Many people are not aware, however, that parties to contracts, including construction contracts, may have the ability to increase the statute of limitations for a written contract by a factor of more than three hundred percent just by adding a few words to make their contracts ‘under seal.’ As a result, these people may increase their exposure to breach of contract/warranty claims without knowing they are doing so,” according to their post.

They explain that, in Georgia, for example, a written contract that is not for the sale of goods would normally have a six-year statute of limitations measured from the date of breach, But a contract signed “under seal,” has a statute of limitations of 20 years from the date of breach.

Read the article.

Salesforce once enjoyed a cozy relationship with Microsoft, now it’s urging regulators to kill Microsoft’s deal to buy LinkedIn as “anticompetitive,” according to the company’s chief legal officer.

CNN Money is reporting that Salesforce also bid for LinkedIn, but lost out to Microsoft’s $26.2 billion bid for the professional social network.

“Microsoft’s proposed acquisition of LinkedIn threatens the future of innovation and competition,” Burke Norton, chief legal officer at Salesforce, said in a statement. “By gaining ownership of LinkedIn’s unique dataset of over 450 million professionals in more than 200 countries, Microsoft will be able to deny competitors access to that data, and in doing so obtain an unfair competitive advantage.”

“The combative remarks hint at a renewed chill in the relationship between Salesforce and Microsoft,” writes CNN’s Seth Fiegerman. “The two companies entered into a global strategic partnership in 2014, heaping praise on one another after years of fierce competition. It was unclear how Salesforce’s comments would impact the partnership.”

Read the article.

Arbitration clauses seriously harm many consumers. Yet it is nearly impossible to avoid signing them, if a person wants or needs to use the internet, phone, credit cards, loans, medical or long-term care services, and so on, according to an article posted by Newsome Melton on its Arbitration Law blog.

But lately, many state and federal government representatives, judges, politicians, and interest groups have been speaking up about arbitration, the article adds. Some have publicly pulled away from upholding universal “forced arbitration.”

“Individual arbitration clauses are now on the radar of many attorneys, judges, politicians, regulators, journalists, and consumers. It is too soon to tell whether the new or proposed regulations and rules preserving court trials and permitting class actions for consumers will be upheld or overturned,” the article says.

Read the article.

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As John G. Stumpf, the chief executive of Wells Fargo, prepares to face a congressional tribunal on Thursday for the second time in two weeks, questions are intensifying about the bank’s sham accounts scandal and its lethargic response to it, reports The New York Times.

The company announced late Tuesday that Stumpf would forfeit approximately $41 million worth of stock awards, forgo his salary during the inquiry and receive no bonus for 2016.

“The Wells Fargo board also announced the immediate retirement of Carrie L. Tolstedt, the former senior executive vice president of community banking, who ran the unit where the fake accounts were created,” writes Gretchen Morgenson of The Times. “She will forfeit $19 million in stock grants, will receive neither a bonus for this year nor a severance, and will be denied certain enhancements in retirement pay, the board said.”

Read the article.

NBC News reports that a class-action lawsuit filed against Wells Fargo might be hamstrung at the starting line, legal experts say.

Martha C. White writes that mandatory arbitration contract clauses may protect the bank from class-action suits brought by customers who had bank or credit card accounts opened in their names without their knowledge.

“Five years ago, a Supreme Court ruling said it was legal for companies to shield themselves from lawsuits by requiring that customers address grievances through a private arbitration system. Since then, consumers seeking redress from banks, even earlier cases against Wells Fargo in California, have been effectively stopped at the courthouse door,” according to the report.

“There’s no question that it’s very difficult to overturn an arbitration clause, although the facts in this case are pretty damning,” said Ed Mierzwinski, consumer program director for U.S. PIRG.

Read the article.

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SFGATE reports that a Wells Fargo shareholder sued executives of the reeling San Francisco bank Thursday, accusing them of unethical conduct and seeking to make them cover the costs of setting up nearly 2 million unauthorized customer accounts.

Shareholder William Sarsfield said a federal investigation “exposed a far-reaching, systemic breakdown in corporate governance” at the bank. “Wells Fargo fostered a pervasive, widespread company culture in which employees were pressured to engage in misconduct simply to keep their jobs.”

The plaintiff noted that virtually all of the 5,300 employees fired for the conduct were low-level workers, while top executives were untouched.

“Among them was CEO John Stumpf, who made more than $19 million in salary and stock options last year and has seen the value of his stock rise by $200 million in five years,” writes Bob Egelko. “Carrie Tolstedt, who headed the bank division in which the false accounts were created, is retiring and in line for $124 million in stocks and options.”

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Having a mechanism for resolving disputes short of litigation is critical — particularly when working with foreign IT services providers. That’s why incorporating an effective arbitration clause into international outsourcing contracts is critical, writes Stephanie Overby for CIO magazine.

“Every international arbitration organization offers a standard clause IT service buyers can put into their contracts. Such clauses typically state that all disputes arising under or in connection with the agreement shall be resolved by arbitration under the rules of a specific international arbitration organization,” according to the article.

Overby quotes B. Ted Howes, partner and leader of Mayer Brown’s U.S. International Arbitration practice, “While such a standard clause is enforceable, more is required to make the arbitration clause workable and to minimize disagreements at the time of arbitration.”

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The iconic jewelry store Tiffany & Co. is a model for trademark enforcement by aggressively and successfully policing its brand in the courts. Last year Tiffany & Co. filed litigation against Costco, claiming that the warehouse giant sold more than $6 million of ersatz Tiffany engagement rings and improperly used the jeweler’s name on at least 200,000 in-store signs. That trial began this week in federal court in New York, according to an article posted by Androvett Legal Media & Marketing.

Chris Schwegmann, a partner at Lynn Pinker Cox Hurst in Dallas, who focuses his practice on intellectual property litigation, says:

“This type of litigation not only discourages counterfeiters, but also ensures that Tiffany’s luxury brand doesn’t get diluted over time. I find it interesting that Costco argued that ‘Tiffany’ represents a generic term used to describe a ring setting, and not just a brand name. That’s a tough case to make against a company that aggressively defends its brand.

“If this case goes as I expect, it is unlikely that other companies in the industry will try to make the same the same arguments against Tiffany & Co., which is a benefit of aggressive trademark enforcement.”

Read more about the case here.

Acacia Research Corp., the largest publicly traded patent-assertion entity, won a $22.1 million verdict against Apple, reports Ars Technica.

An East Texas jury found that Apple infringed US Patent No. 8,055,820, owned by Acacia subsidiary Cellular Communications Equipment LLC. Reporter Joe Mullin writes that the patent describes a method of how cell phones can use “buffer status reporting” so that phone networks can optimize data usage. The patent originated at Nokia, which sold the patent to Acacia in 2013.

Acacia, in the class of companies that critics refer to as “patent trolls,” buys patents from others, splits the proceeds from litigation with the original patent owner. Acacia-related entities have filed hundreds of lawsuits.

“The company used to advertise a 50/50 split with patent owners and inventors, but its specific arrangement with Nokia is unknown,” according to the report. “The verdict, reached last week, is a validation of Acacia’s increasing interest, announced a few years back, in buying portfolios of patents from large companies, rather than individual inventors.”

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The ABC affiliate in San Antonio reports that in the last six years, lawyers working in the Greater San Antonio area have tripled the number of commercials they run on TV from about 50,000 to more than 180,000 a year, according to data from Nielsen AdIntel.

The flashy commercials have given some South Texas personal-injury lawyers a unique reputationm writes Josh Skurnik, citing the example of Jim Adler, who bills himself as the “Texas Hammer.” Adler can be seen in TV spots standing on semitrucks telling viewers he “will hammer the big trucking companies down to size.”

Adler told KSAT 12 how his script writers and directors helped him come up with the character:

“He agreed with them that he needed a more memorable character than his predecessor ‘Jim Adler, the smart tough lawyer.’ Through acting lessons, an eye for production and bilingual showmanship Adler said he became the grandfather of the unique style of personal injury advertising found in South Texas.”

And it worked.

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The trustee for a bankrupt company decided to drop his lawsuit after watching his expert witness cross examined by an attorney from Ahmad, Zavitsanos, Anaipakos, Alavi & Mensing P.C.(AZA), clearing AZA’s clients of claims that they received fraudulently transferred company assets, the firm reports in a news release.

Rodney Tow, trustee for the estate of the Peterson Group Inc., a Houston real estate development company, had watched AZA’s John Zavitsanos examine his expert witness over whether Peterson Group was solvent and what company assets remained. The legal dispute involved a series of shopping centers and other properties worth more than $30 million.

The night of the expert’s failed testimony Tow informed Zavitsanos that he was completely dropping the case, which was in the third week of trial to a jury in the 269^th District Court in Harris County.

See a video and read about the case.

About one year after revelations surfaced that Volkswagen AG rigged its diesel cars to cheat emissions tests, it has somehow emerged as “the world’s biggest automaker” in the first six months of 2016, outselling Toyota during that period, according to a Bloomberg News report.

“Despite the fact that VW’s market capitalization dropped by as much as $32.6 billion amid the regulatory investigations and lawsuits that followed the scandal, there have been ‘no fire sales’ or unloading of assets at bargain prices to raise cash. Of course, VW and Porsche, which owns a majority of the company’s shares, face thousands of lawsuits in Germany from institutional investors that include BlackRock and the state of Bavaria, which could create billions of dollars in liabilities,” writes Bloomberg’s Gabe Friedman.

“A crisis can lead to the abyss, but it can also be a turning point,” CEO Mueller told about 20,000 employees gathered at the sprawling main factory in Wolfsburg this week. “At Volkswagen, the crisis opened doors for a real change of direction.”

Read the article.

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New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is investigating why Exxon Mobil Corp. hasn’t written down the value of its assets, two years into a pronounced crash in oil prices, reports The Wall Street Journal.

Schneiderman’s office already is looking into Exxon’s past knowledge of the impact of climate change and how it could affect its future business.

“Since 2014, oil producers world-wide have been forced to recognize that wells they plan to drill in the future are worth $200 billion less than they once thought, according to consultancy Rystad Energy,” reports Bradley Olson. “Because the fall in prices means billions of barrels cannot be economically tapped, such revisions have become a staple of oil-patch earnings, helping to push losses to record levels in recent years.”

But Exxon is the only major oil producer not to take any write-downs, leading some analysts to question its accounting practices,” Olson writes.

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The Federal Circuit has affirmed a Western District of Texas decision disqualifying counsel for plaintiff Dynamic 3D Geosolutions LLC and dismissing its patent infringement complaint Schlumberger Ltd. without prejudice, reports IPWatchdog.

Dynamic alleged that defendant Schlumberger’s “Petrel” software infringed Dynamic’s ‘319 Patent, for systems and methods of combining seismic and well log data into a real-time, interactive three dimensional display.

But Schlumberger raised a potential conflict of interest and filed a motion to disqualify Dynamic’s counsel, Charlotte Rutherford. Rutherford previously was deputy general counsel for intellectual property at Schlumberger. The district court found that Rutherford’s work at Schlumberger was substantially related to her current work and “the evidence created an irrebuttable presumption that she acquired confidential information requiring her disqualification,” according to the report by Joseph Robinson and Robert Schaffer.

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Deutsche Bank AB is saying it has no intention of paying the U.S. Justice Department’s demand of $14 billion to settle high-profile probes into its packaging of mortgages in the run-up to the financial crisis, reports MarketWatch.

The Justice Department’s investigations are connected with the bank’s issuance and underwriting of residential mortgage-backed securities between 2005 and 2007, writes reporter Sara Sjolin.

In a statement, the German bank said, “Deutsche Bank has no intent to settle these potential civil claims anywhere near the number cited. The negotiations are only just beginning. The bank expects that they will lead to an outcome similar to those of peer banks which have settled at materially lower amounts.”

“The bank expects that they will lead to an outcome similar to those of peer banks, which have settled at materially lower amounts,” it added, saying it has been asked to make a counterproposal.

The Justice Department has settled mortgage-related claims with Goldman Sachs Group Inc.  for $5.1 billion and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. for $13 billion.

Read the article.