BUSINESS
May 24, 2012 | Chris Mondics
A new firm, Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld L.L.C., announced that it would officially begin representing clients June 1 and would be based in Conshohocken. The firm will be led by founders John E. Royer Jr., Neil A. Cooper, Barry L. Cohen, and Roger Braunfeld. The name partners focus on transactional law, business and corporate law, intellectual property, emerging growth companies and other matters. The firm will start with a total complement of nine lawyers. — Chris Mondics
NEWS
May 23, 2012 | By Bonnie L. Cook
The Pennsylvania Attorney General announced criminal charges Tuesday against four Philadelphia-area men for allegedly scamming 218 elderly clients out of $700,000 in premiums for home-care and health services that were rarely delivered. At a news conference in Norristown, Linda Kelly identified the four as Bruce Howard Cherry, 52, and Robert P. Lerner, 56, both of Philadelphia; Ross M. Rabelow, 52, of Southampton, Bucks County; and Thomas J. Muldoon, 57, of Broomall, Delaware County.
NEWS
May 17, 2012 | By Mensah M. Dean, Daily News Staff Writer
IVAN RODRIGUEZ is guilty of stealing a motorcycle at gunpoint and Donta Craddock is guilty of the same robbery and of involuntary manslaughter or vehicular homicide, but neither murdered four people killed by the speeding getaway Pontiac Trans Am minutes after the June 2009 robbery, the two defendants' attorneys told a Philadelphia jury during opening statements Wednesday. Craddock, 21, who was behind the wheel and paralyzed from the waist down during the fiery crash, sped away not because he was fleeing the robbery but because he thought that a pursuing police officer was going to arrest him on a warrant for not returning to a juvenile-detention center after Easter break, defense attorney Michael Farrell said.
NEWS
May 10, 2012 | By John F. Morrison, Daily News Staff Writer
Remember the 1993 movie "Philadelphia"? A lawyer played by Tom Hanks is fired from a Philadelphia law firm after it is revealed he has AIDS. William J. O'Brien, one of the city's premiere trial lawyers, had a similar case in 1994. He represented the law firm of Kohn Swift & Graf, which was sued in federal court by a 30-year-old lawyer who contended he was fired by the firm because he had HIV. Both the real case and the movie case wound up being settled out of court. For a lawyer renowned for his work on commercial litigation, involving such fields as product liability, insurance fraud, malpractice claims, government relations and the like, Bill was involved in a number of high-profile cases that made headlines.
BUSINESS
April 17, 2012 | Chris Mondics
It wasn't long after Morgen Cheshire was named a partner at Schnader, Harrison, Segal & Lewis L.L.P. that she realized she would soon face a wrenching decision. Making partner at a big firm is a dream for many young lawyers, and finally she was there. In that role, Cheshire wanted more than anything to represent the rich tapestry of foundations, institutes, and other nonprofits that call Philadelphia home — she had been working hard to develop that client base. The ties to Schnader, moreover, were strong: The firm had warmly embraced her, nurturing her professionally over the seven years it had taken to make partner.
NEWS
April 14, 2012 | By Gene Johnson, Associated Press
SEATTLE - The U.S. soldier charged in the shooting deaths of 17 Afghan villagers last month will not participate in an Army review aimed at determining his mental state, his attorney said Friday. Staff Sgt. Robert Bales was expected to face what's called a "sanity board" examination by Army doctors seeking to establish whether he's competent to stand trial and what his mental state was at the time of the March 11 pre-dawn massacre in two southern Afghanistan villages. But his civilian lawyer, John Henry Browne, said Friday he instructed Bales to invoke his Fifth Amendment right to remain silent because the Army will not allow Bales to have an attorney at the sanity board review and will not allow the examination to be recorded.
NEWS
April 10, 2012 | By Sally Downey, For The Inquirer
Donald J. Goldberg, 81 of Rittenhouse Square, a trial lawyer in Philadelphia for 58 years, died of complications from cancer Saturday, April 7, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. Since 1991, Mr. Goldberg had been special counsel in the litigation department of Ballard Spahr and was a member of the firm's white-collar investigations group. He previously had a solo practice in Center City for 30 years. "Partners and associates in the firm treasured any opportunity to learn from Don," Ballard Spahr chairman Mark Stewart said.
BUSINESS
April 8, 2012 | Chris Mondics
When the law firm of Offit Kurman began toying with the idea of expansion seven years ago, it comprised only a handful of lawyers in a small office in suburban Baltimore. The nation was well on its way to recovering from the recession of 2001-02, and the firm hatched an expansion plan that would take it south through the bustling, high-income suburbs north of Washington and on into northern Virginia. Then, it set its sights on Philadelphia. That was a counterintuitive strategy.
BUSINESS
April 8, 2012 | By Joseph N. DiStefano
Microsoft has joined with some of its big technology clients to fill showrooms in Malvern and 26 other business centers around the globe with fancy, elegant gadgets and applications designed to make offices obsolete. Think. for example, of iPads as big as your wall or as accessible as your home TV screen, where colleagues, clients, and customers can share notes, data, and links, and design and promote projects, in real time. A Canadian company, Smart Technologies, has developed generations of these interactive whiteboards over the last 20 years.
NEWS
April 5, 2012 | By David Hiltbrand, Inquirer Staff Writer
Scandal is the intriguing new drama from Grey's Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes. It's built around one of the strongest (in every sense) female characters to hit prime time in recent memory. Olivia Pope (Kerry Washington) is a former Oval Office insider who has formed a thriving, teeming crisis-management firm in Washington, D.C. With her frighteningly fast-talking staff (Henry Ian Cusick of Lost, Columbus Short, Darby Stanchfield, Katie Lowes, and Guillermo Diaz), she represents clients - a Russian diplomat, a Georgetown madame, a decorated military hero - caught in compromising positions.