Legal News

The AM Roundup: The SEC Continues to Toughen Up, More

By Ashby Jones

Let’s kick off your day with a link to a non-law-related recession story. According to the LA Times, there’s a whole band of recently laid off people, mostly in their 20s and single, who aren’t sitting around, crying in their beer. Nope, they’re drinking it. It’s called “funemployment,” and it sounds awesome.

On with it:

Cracking the Whip at the SEC: The beleaguered SEC, in its attempt to repair its rep, continues to bare its teeth. The latest: The commission is investigating whether information about imminent stock upgrades and downgrades was improperly used by employees at Lehman Brothers and others. (WSJ) In other SEC news, lawmakers urged the commission to take further steps to crack down on “naked” short selling, as part of a broader effort to curb market manipulation. (WSJ).

Dish Network Wins Reprieve: A federal appeals court has temporarily set aside a lower court’s ruling that favored TiVo Inc. in a long-running patent infringement lawsuit between the company and TiVo. On Tuesday, the U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Texas found Dish to be in contempt of a permanent injunction on TiVo’s digital video recorder Time Warp technology, which lets viewers pause, rewind and fast-forward live shows. Judge David Folsom ordered Dish to pay TiVo $103 million plus interest in damages. (AP)

Shell Human-Rights Suit to Move Forward: The Second Circuit on Wednesday reinstated a case against Shell Nigeria, which a lower-court judge had dismissed last year. In related news, New York federal judge Kimba Wood canceled a hearing on Wednesday in a related civil trial of Royal Dutch Shell over the alleged involvement of the giant oil producer in the executions of protesters in Nigeria in the 1990s. (Bloomberg; Reuters)

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 04, 2009 (boomark / email).