Legal News

The AM Roundup: Harvey Miller to Drive GM, More. . .

By Ashby Jones

In a 1990 WSJ story (link not available), Weil Gotshal’s Harvey Miller famously said he decided early on not to have children because he liked work more. “Children would have been an added pressure,” Miller told reporter Laurie Cohen. “You have to have time to give them love, and I didn’t.”

Had Miller had children in his 20s, the kids would presumably now be middle-aged adults. But given the pace at which Miller, 76, continues to run, we’re not sure he’d even have time to take their phone calls for birthday or Father’s Day wishes. Miller is currently serving on the largest corporate bankruptcy in history — that of Lehman Brothers. And he’ll be running the show for General Motors if and when it files for Chapter 11 protection next Monday. Click here for the WSJ’s page one-story on GM’s probable bankruptcy filing; here for a “sidebar” in today’s Journal on Miller. Writes Jeff McCracken: a “filing by GM would be the ultimate capstone for Mr. Miller, who got into bankruptcy work at a time when it was regarded as beneath most white-shoe law firms.”

San Francisco Zoo Suit Settles: If you and your brother were attacked by a tiger at a zoo, how much would you expect to get in return? For Kulbir and Amritpal “Paul” Dhaliwal, the answer is $900,000. That’s how much the San Francisco agreed to pay the brothers, who survived a fatal attack by an escaped tiger on Christmas Day in 2007. (A friend of the brothers was killed in the attack.) SF Chron.

Aventis Settles False Claims Act Charges: Aventis Pharmaceutical Inc., a subsidiary of Sanofi-Aventis U.S., has agreed to pay the United States $95.5 million to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act by misreporting drug prices to skirt its Medicaid rebate obligations, the department announced Thursday. NLJ.

Cravath Works AOL Spin-Off: Ah to be Cravath. The firm’s lawyers made money helping assemble the AOL/Time-Warner merger back in 2000; now they’re making money pulling it apart. American Lawyer.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 29, 2009 (boomark / email).