New Firm

President Obama's first pick to head the once-fearsome Department of Justice Antitrust Division scared would-be monopolists, at least for a moment. "When markets are competitive, the consumer wins," Christine Varney told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce back in 2009. She blamed the ideology of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that, she claimed, let industries regulate themselves. "Higher prices, reduced product variety, and slower innovations" were the result, Varney said.

Philadelphia's roster of major-league law firms has an addition. The new firm is Myerson & Kuhn, which is touting itself as an all-star player in the nation's legal arena with an impressive list of clients and revenues that it expects to top $50 million in its first year. The firm, which already has about 150 lawyers, opened offices last week in Philadelphia, New York and Dallas. Bowie Kuhn, the commissioner of major league baseball from 1969 to 1984, who was counsel to the prestigious New York law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher, is a name partner of the new firm.

Labor litigation specialist Stephen J. Cabot has left the Philadelphia law firm of Pechner, Dorfman, Wolffe, Rounick, and Cabot to team up with former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn and another high-profile New York lawyer to form a new firm, Myerson & Kuhn. The new firm will be based in New York, with offices in Philadelphia and Dallas. Harvey Myerson was formerly former managing partner of New York's Finley, Kumble, Wagner, Heine, Underberg, Manley, Myerson & Casey, which used to be the nation's fourth-largest law firm and was dissolved several weeks ago. Kuhn had been affiliated with Willkie Farr & Gallagher in New York.

The Newtown Township Board of Supervisors on Tuesday dropped the firm that has been performing its traffic signal maintenance for 15 years and signed on with Lobec Inc. of Broomall for a one-year pact. The supervisors chose Lobec, whose bid was $3,900, over Signal Service Inc. of Exton, the township's long-term provider whose bid was $6,300. "I thought it was time to put it out to bid," said Township Manager Larry M. Comunale, who added that Lobec had been lauded by area townships.

A two-year-old law firm started by John M. Elliott, one of the city's most visible lawyers, has broken up. Robert J. Bray Jr., co-chairman of Elliott & Bray, filed suit in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court last month asking that the firm he set up with Elliott in 1990 be "wound up and dissolved" and that a receiver be appointed for its assets. Bray's suit does not specify any causes for the breakup. In an interview yesterday, Bray said the breakup was a private business matter that he hoped to "resolve amicably.

Three of the nation's five minority-owned brokerage houses, including one in Philadelphia, are teaming up to launch a new financial-services company. The new corporation - to be formally announced at a news conference here next week - will be a joint venture of Daniels & Bell of New York; Pryor, Govan, Counts & Co., of Philadelphia, and Metro Equities Corp., of Chicago. Travers J. Bell Jr., chairman of Daniels & Bell, said yesterday that the new corporation was aimed at serving "not just the minority market, but the 'under-serviced' market" of small investment firms, those with capitalization of between $5 million and $25 million.

Philadelphia has won one and lost one. Labor litigation specialist Stephen J. Cabot has left the Philadelphia law firm of Pechner, Dorfman, Wolffe, Rounick & Cabot to team up with former baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn and another high-profile New York lawyer to form a new firm, Myerson & Kuhn. And, at the same time, Pechner Dorfman is being dissolved. The remaining partners in the 70-year-old firm, including chairman Leonard Schaeffer and Charles Bowser, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

The Camden School District's new insurance broker yesterday met a May 1 deadline for keeping the district insured, and did so for $130,000 less than the coverage provided by a Cherry Hill-based insurance firm owned by former Camden County Party boss George E. Norcross 3d. Concerns that the new broker may not have been able to meet the deadline were raised at a school board meeting last week at which Norcross' Keystone National was kicked off...

To devise a plan to distribute billions in federal money for Sandy relief, the Christie administration hired a company fired for poor management under a similar contract in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in 2008. "It was a complete nightmare," said Steve Greenberg, a former councilman in Galveston, Texas, who said CDM Smith failed to pay subcontractors and to deliver on its promises of home construction after the storm. CDM Smith narrowly survived a dismissal vote from the Galveston City Council in 2011.

IS BRIAN TIERNEY, the former CEO of a company that owned the Daily News , taking his own name in vain? If he wasn't already, he might be now, given a civil suit that was filed this week in Common Pleas Court in which Tierney is listed as both a defendant and a plaintiff. The case of Tierney v. Tierney pits the public-relations guru and his new firm, Brian Communications Group, against his old company, Tierney Communications, which claims that Tierney is violating an agreement not to use his own name in another business.

  When Eric Heil was a senior systems engineering student at the University of Pennsylvania eight years ago, he volunteered to help a nursing-school professor with research aimed at helping doctors make better decisions about which elderly hospital patients needed additional care after discharge. Now 30, Heil is chief executive and cofounder, along with Kathryn H. Bowles, the nursing professor he worked with, of RightCare Solutions Inc., a Fort Washington firm that has licensed the information technology that came out of Bowles' research.

When Eric Heil was a senior systems engineering student at the University of Pennsylvania eight years ago, he volunteered to help a nursing-school professor with research aimed at helping doctors make better decisions about which elderly hospital patients needed additional care after discharge. Now 30, Heil is chief executive and cofounder, along with Kathryn H. Bowles, the nursing professor he worked with, of RightCare Solutions Inc., a Fort Washington firm that has licensed the information technology that came out of Bowles' research.

A NONPROFIT GROUP in Washington thinks that we should know the players in the City Council fight to provide paid sick leave for more people employed here. We couldn't agree more. That's why we were curious about the reluctance of the nonprofit ROC Exposed to tell us more about itself. The group takes its name from its stated mission, exposing Restaurant Opportunities Centers United, a pro-labor organization that pushes for paid sick days for restaurant workers. ROC Exposed, in an email to reporters just before a Council hearing Tuesday on paid sick leave, said that the issue was being pushed by a "labor union front group.

President Obama's first pick to head the once-fearsome Department of Justice Antitrust Division scared would-be monopolists, at least for a moment. "When markets are competitive, the consumer wins," Christine Varney told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce back in 2009. She blamed the ideology of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush that, she claimed, let industries regulate themselves. "Higher prices, reduced product variety, and slower innovations" were the result, Varney said.

To devise a plan to distribute billions in federal money for Sandy relief, the Christie administration hired a company fired for poor management under a similar contract in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike in 2008. "It was a complete nightmare," said Steve Greenberg, a former councilman in Galveston, Texas, who said CDM Smith failed to pay subcontractors and to deliver on its promises of home construction after the storm. CDM Smith narrowly survived a dismissal vote from the Galveston City Council in 2011.

Jack Harris and Buddy Berger freely admit that the timing wasn't the best. It was the fall of 2009 and Harris and Berger, colleagues in the Wilmington office of Chester County-based Riley Riper Hollin & Colagreco, decided to strike out on their own. Both had worked for big firms, Harris at Reed Smith and Berger at Blank Rome, among others. They liked their situation at Riley Riper. But they had the entrepreneurial itch, and thought they might be able to do better on their own. The problem was that the legal marketplace in the fall of 2009 was in a tailspin.

IS BRIAN TIERNEY, the former CEO of a company that owned the Daily News , taking his own name in vain? If he wasn't already, he might be now, given a civil suit that was filed this week in Common Pleas Court in which Tierney is listed as both a defendant and a plaintiff. The case of Tierney v. Tierney pits the public-relations guru and his new firm, Brian Communications Group, against his old company, Tierney Communications, which claims that Tierney is violating an agreement not to use his own name in another business.

* MADE IN JERSEY. 9 p.m. Fridays starting Sept. 28, CBS 3.   BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - There's apparently never a Jersey girl around when you really need one. Which is how "Made in Jersey," CBS' new Friday night series about a Garden State-grown lawyer who goes to work in a Big Apple law firm, came to star as a former ballet dancer from a shore town nearly 3,500 miles east of Atlantic City. Dana Calvo didn't plan it this way. Calvo, who created "Made in Jersey" and as co-executive producer helped hire Bournemouth, England, native Janet Montgomery ("Black Swan")

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

Four executives from Lockwood Advisors Inc., a Malvern-based investment subsidiary of BNY Mellon, have left to form a competitor, Palladiem Partners L.P., in Radnor. Donald G. Robinson, a founder of Lockwood, which was bought by BNY in 2002, is chief executive and co-chief investment officer of the new company. He said the departure had nothing to do with BNY Mellon. "For me, it's sort of a redo to going back to being independent again," Robinson said. Palladiem's plan is to provide investment services to independent financial advisers, broker dealers, and institutions, not directly to individuals.